[SOLVED] How is AMD Radeon HD 6450 for Xonotic?

Moore's law is buggin' me to get an entirely new PC, so I just ordered one from Newegg.
I'm worried about its graphical performance, however.

Will a 1GB AMD Radeon HD 6450 card (Specs in link) produce a smoothish framerate (30+ FPS) at low settings in Xonotic, or is an immediate upgrade to the machine in order?

It packs more than enough RAM and processing power, so I'm not worried about those.
I'll be playing in either Ubuntu or Windows 7, whichever will run it faster. I'm going to dual boot, you see.

That thing is far newer and heavier than my card witch can already run Xonotic maxed out and hold it at 40fps on a 2048 X 1536 resolution. You shouldn't have any problems with it, unless AMD released bad drivers for it.

Thanks so much! I'm clueless about hardware, you see.
I don't want max settings, I want max visibility for frags. So, I'll be good to go once the comp arrives.

I've not played Xonotic 0.5, so I wonder how good I'll be. I used be pretty darn good at Nexuiz, but I've not touched it in a long time and I'm not sure how much my skill will matter in Xonotic rusty or otherwise.

Have some rep for the info and wish me luck please.

Comparing this 6450 with specs for 4890 (which I used for a long time) is kinda confusing. The latter seems to outcome it in several areas. Or am I wrong here?
Just take a look at this:
6450
4890 #1
4890 #2

ATI/AMD doesn't tend to write specs in the same format for every adapter, but still, performance of 1.36 TFlops vs 240 GFlops on 6450 isn't reassuring.

For linux, check this: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=ar...est&num=22 (see page 25 for Nexuiz 2.5.2 benchmark)
And for windows, this: http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/2011-...s,132.html

>for linux...
Just how come 5xxx and 6xxx seem that half-assed compared to 4xxx series? No decent driver support for Linux or what?

Anyway, if you don't need DX11 support, mind taking a look at 4890 or 4870x2. That, unless you're going for low-budget variant.

Ehm, you posted the specs yourself? 1.36 TFlops vs 240 GFlops etc.
6450 HD is an entry level card which is around 35€, 4890 is still around 200€ I think.

Nvidia GTX 460 is around 120€ and should work very well on both OS's. Ati + Linux is just a pain in the back. Gonna replace my Ati HD5750 with a Nvidia soon too.

You guys are confusing me with your tech talk.

The card coming stock with the PC I ordered will provide a workable framerate for Xonotic, that's all I needed to know. I'm not going to be playing many games aside from Xonotic and World or Warcraft (MUST FEED ADDICTION!), and the latter isn't demanding.

I have a PS3 and an HDTV for more performance hungry games.

At low settings you should get 30+ fps with that card on most maps.

I took those from the pages linked.
Well, I see that 6450 isn't a top tier one, but since Anarkist is about to "get an entirely new PC", I'd consider looking at something with more potential, right?

Radeon HD 6450 is not a gaming gpu, don't expect good performance from it. It will be absolutely okay with older game like WoW. Less sure about Xonotic. it's the kind of game that need stable framerate to comfortably play, you might be handicapped when heavy action occurs.

Try Sabayon its 1000 Hz kernel config will make your Xonotic fly - ubuntu 100 HZ MS WOS 300 Hz - And it is as easy to use as Ubuntu - You can use yumi at your MS WOS or Multisystem at your ubuntu to install it from any USB pendrive.

6450 can certainly work, but not without cutting AA/AF/bloom stuff. I've played Xonotic on my old 7300GT @1024x768 with cut down settings without hassle (for reference, see the big benchmark results)

Try Sabayon its 1000 Hz kernel config will make your Xonotic fly - ubuntu 100 HZ MS WOS 300 Hz - And it is as easy to use as Ubuntu - You can use yumi at your MS WOS or Multisystem at your ubuntu to install it from any USB pendrive.

How is this related to the topic?

I wouldn't entirely believe that a different kernel Hz will make any real difference here and even if it does, you can recompile in any noteworthy Linux distro as 1000Hz. There are others that have run 1000Hz for many years, not just Sabayon. I used to run Sabayon and can't say I was ever that convinced of the performance. It's Gentoo based but then much of the Gentoo advantage is then wasted by building everything so bloated. The kernel is massively bloated.

I would definitely not jump to a conclusion that one distro is inherently faster than another for Xonotic - it really won't make that much difference!

Warning This 6450 card is not recommended, its about as slow as a 4670


http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=ar...ux35&num=6


A good choice to buy now may be the 6850 or so or the 5830 shown there
They are in the 100 euro area

A good choice to buy now may be the 6850 or so or the 5830

A better choice would be an NVIDIA card. Although AMD has improved Radeon driver support under Linux, Catalyst can still be awful and the free drivers can't always match it. Under Windows there OpenGL support isn't as good as NVIDIA either. With NVIDIA although the free Nouveau driver is behind in performance, the propreitary driver is still the fastest way to play Xonotic.

oops I assumed open drivers, else you might as well use windows

oops I assumed open drivers, else you might as well use windows

There's a number of points to consider here. While it may be that one has a very strict adherence to open source principles, this is a great example of being 'shackled by open source'.

You pay money for your hardware and by using the propreitary NVIDIA driver you get the best performance. Their Linux driver is actually faster than their Windows driver (and only 10% of the size) so your 'might as well use Windows' point here is contradictory. By using a free driver you get worst performance. This is bad value for money on your investment in hardware.

In addition the propreitary drivers offer the best power efficiency due to better (or in some cases existent) reclocking support and not having to be maxed out load wise all of the time anyway. Ecological ethics outway software ethics for me so I'll take this as a good reason to use the propreitary driver. I'd like to see RMS provide some reason why software is more important than the environment.

Comparing free drivers for AMD and NVIDIA, each wins on some different points. The free Radeon driver is in general closer to Catalyst in performance than Nouveau is to the NVIDIA driver. Each do have their problems on specific series of cards and right now I can't recommend either for Xonotic unless you have some real problem with the propreitary drivers. It's a mixture of performance, artifacts, instability, lack of features. Where the free Radeon driver really does fail right now is still no support for Southern Islands. This compares to on the day basic functionality for NVIDIA's Kepler in Nouveau.

An example I would use is support for older hardware. A graphics card maker has made some hardware and support for it from almost the first release onwards is pretty much the same. They do cut off support for series for good reasons, like getting rid of Geforce FX support in 175 due to it's poor OpenGL 2 support requiring some emulation. I have an old Geforce 6600GT which since series 75 (OpenGL 2 support) until has performed virtually the same regardless of the driver. If instead I was to keep updating the free driver base I would be dealing with regressions week in week out. I have tried this with Nouveau. I don't need this. I've had this before with trying to keep a Via chipset running, at any update one (or more) of the kernel driver, mesa, unichrome, unichrome-dri or openchrome may or may not be working. My time is too valuable to be sorting out these issues.

As much as I admire your stance, it's simply not something I could encourage people in to do. The best graphics performance, stability and support is NVIDIA running the propreitary driver on Linux. Better than any hardware/driver combination on Windows or Linux.