Defying obsolescence, AMD's 22-year-old Radeon GPUs get new Linux drivers

[emorphy]

Bottom line: For users that still rely on the ancient ATI R300 graphics processor series, open source has come to the rescue once again. This latest update was not an easy fix to make, the developer says, and users will have access to it this year.

The ATI R300 graphics processor series was first introduced in 2002 with the release of the ATI Radeon 9700 Pro. Built on the 150nm process and featuring an AGP interface – later to be supplanted by PCIe – the cards aren't able to run the latest games, but the open-source community still supports them allowing them to run on newer Linux distributions.

Specifically, driver updates for ATI's R300 through R500 series Radeon GPUs will be available this quarter in Mesa 24.0 and users will have access to the update by the end of the year. Open-source developer Pavel Ondracka explains that the Mesa Gallium3D OpenGL driver update will focus on NIR lowering, which is related to the vertex shaders of the GPUs. "The MR moves most of the remaining backend lowering into NIR, namely ftrunc, fcsel – when suitable – and flrp. The backend lowering paths are removed, which is a prerequisite for more backend cleanups, he says, pointing to a MR he has that is ready to get rid of backend DCE for vertex shaders."

There have been numerous updates to the driver over the years by the open source community in its support for the pre-R600 series Radeon hardware, with a recent change being its adaptation to the new Mesa interfaces such as the transition to NIR intermediate representation. AMD, for its part, focuses primarily on current generation and future hardware.

It is worthwhile to take a closer look at the ATI Radeon 9700 Pro as the fact that they can still run a contemporary Linux OS is admirable. The GPU had 110 million transistors, a core clock speed of 325MHz, 256MB of memory, and 19.8GB/s of memory bandwidth. It was the fastest GPU at the time of its launch and the first to fully support DirectX 9.

Today its capabilities are largely limited to displaying windows and text but thanks to the open-source community they are still functional. It should also be noted that this current update was not an easy fix to make, according to Ondracka, who says he tried to get it right five times beforehand but always failed to make it work reasonably until now.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/101430-defying-obsolescence-amd-22-year-old-radeon-gpus.html

 

[CrisisDog]

Aaaah, the video card that put Nvidia to shame when running Unreal Tournament 2003 / 2004…

 

[yRaz]

featuring an AGP interface – later to be supplanted by PCIe

Am I that old that we have to remind people of a time BEFORE PCIe? Although I'm a weirdo that misses ISA slots

 

[nnguy2]

Am I that old that we have to remind people of a time BEFORE PCIe? Although I'm a weirdo that misses ISA slots

My first add on card was the Diamond Stealth forget which version but was running S3 chip in 1995, it used PCI slot just before AGP because popular.

 

[Ecurb]

My proxmox 4 node cluster has mobos+cpus that are 9-11 years old. I appreciate all the continual driver support (or not invalidating drivers). This system works very well for its age and there is no reason to upgrade or waste the hardware when it comes to performance and reliability.

 

[yRaz]

My proxmox 4 node cluster has mobos+cpus that are 9-11 years old. I appreciate all the continual driver support (or not invalidating drivers). This system works very well for its age and there is no reason to upgrade or waste the hardware when it comes to performance and reliability.

When my 3770k died I dropped a 3550 in it and turned it into my NAS. 12 year old hardware still running fine and all it has to do is read and write data at ~200MB/sec for maybe 3 hours a week. Funny thing is that it was a top of the line gaming machine when I bought it. Sometimes I think about replacing it before it dies but I really don't need to. I might just replace it with something new when it dies and get 15 years put of that machine. Been tempted of taking my NAS from 12TB(4x4TB raid 5) to 60TB(5x20TB Raid 6) and if I do that I'll probably build it from the ground up around ECC support.

 

[Ecurb]

When my 3770k died I dropped a 3550 in it and turned it into my NAS. 12 year old hardware still running fine and all it has to do is read and write data at ~200MB/sec for maybe 3 hours a week. Funny thing is that it was a top of the line gaming machine when I bought it. Sometimes I think about replacing it before it dies but I really don't need to. I might just replace it with something new when it dies and get 15 years put of that machine. Been tempted of taking my NAS from 12TB(4x4TB raid 5) to 60TB(5x20TB Raid 6) and if I do that I'll probably build it from the ground up around ECC support.

When I decide to replace my desktop PC, I'll convert it to another proxmox node, probably retire my oldest node, then build a new desktop PC. This gives my cluster a source of future upgrades and leverages old hardware as RAID but meaning redundancy in CPUs, mobos, etc., as well as disks (redundant array of inexpensive, independent nodes: RAIIN).

 

[winjer]

It seems like it was not so long ago that I was playing games with a Radeon 9700. But it's been 22 years already.
Time really doesn't stop for anyone...

 

[RudyBob]

Nothing deserves closet time like an old videocard

 

[Theinsanegamer]

It seems like it was not so long ago that I was playing games with a Radeon 9700. But it's been 22 years already.
Time really doesn't stop for anyone...

I remember having one of these in my netburst shitbox. 9800xt flavor. As a kid it was the greatest thing ever to get up to 10 FPS in supreme commander.

 

[BuckarooBonzaii]

Oh yea, I remember this card, a classic no doubt.

 

[Atmajaya2020]

One of the GPUs from Radeon that used to make me feel jealous as an nVidia card user at that time..

 

[noel24]

Yeah, but will It run Crysis?

 

[amghwk]

The ATi Radeon 9800 XT was a dream card those days. Though, the 9700 Pro was more popular due to its release being earlier and a bit cheaper when the 9800 series were becoming more common.

 

[Mr Majestyk]

Nvivia and Linux are a match made in hell. Radeon all the way for Linux.

 

[VaRmeNsI]

Ahh back when there was an alternative to Nvidia, I miss those days..

 

[GhostLegion]

I remember having one of these in my netburst shitbox. 9800xt flavor. As a kid it was the greatest thing ever to get up to 10 FPS in supreme commander.

There’s a game I don’t often see mentioned. I’m interested in seeing if StormGate can revitalize the RTS genre since it’s kinda dead now comparatively.

 

[mrSister]

Ah the times of UT2004 on a 9600XT come to mind. Good times!

 

[Beerfloat]

Nvivia and Linux are a match made in hell. Radeon all the way for Linux.

Nvidia works just fine, though.

 

[Jonny5]

There’s a game I don’t often see mentioned. I’m interested in seeing if StormGate can revitalize the RTS genre since it’s kinda dead now comparatively.

BAR is alive and well aka Total Annihilation

 

[jpvalverde85]

20+ years and still kicking, what a bad *** gpu!

 

[kinetix]

Well, now I'm working with an Compaq DeskPro EN repairing various hardware (now my oldest surviving HDD, 150MB, after fixing a blown SMC cap. last file change date was Nov-2000), on Windows 98, it have an integrated i815. I just restored an Ati 3D Rage Pro PCI (another exploded SMD capacitor) and an S3 VirgeDX (IC pins bent and in contact!!). preparing to run a Trident VGA for 16-bit ISA (but on 8bits, experimenting) on a 386 motherboard that I have half restored (ravaged by a Varta battery). aaaa, and waiting to receive an MDA/CGA/Hercules for other even older systems....

...And two of these cards that I mention have support in Linux.... guess which ones they are.
hahaha

 

[TopHat]

I thought I was old for still using an ATI Radeon HD 5800, but some people are still using ATI R300?