ATI & Radeon 9600 RV350

[John Horne]

On Mon, 2007-04-02 at 23:55 -0400, Claude Jones wrote:
> I've been working on this a few days, and reading about others struggling with 
> the ATI driver. I can't seem to find anything definitive. 
> 
Hi,

If it's any help I have the same card as you. However, I am using the
'radeon' driver. I have had no problems using it, and with beryl.

> glxinfo shows among other things:
> 
> OpenGL vendor string: Mesa project: www.mesa3d.org
> OpenGL renderer string: Mesa GLX Indirect
> OpenGL version string: 1.2 (1.5 Mesa 6.5.1)
> 
I have:

OpenGL vendor string: Tungsten Graphics, Inc.
OpenGL renderer string: Mesa DRI R300 20060815 AGP 4x x86/MMX+/3DNow!
+/SSE TCL
OpenGL version string: 1.3 Mesa 6.5.1

> Running glxgears gives me:
> 
> $ glxgears
> Xlib:  extension "XFree86-DRI" missing on display ":0.0".
> 1951 frames in 5.0 seconds = 389.746 FPS
> 3240 frames in 5.2 seconds = 628.040 FPS
> 3240 frames in 5.0 seconds = 642.329 FPS
> 
I get:

[root at ash ~]# glxgears
libGL warning: 3D driver claims to not support visual 0x4b
9319 frames in 5.0 seconds = 1863.677 FPS
8756 frames in 5.0 seconds = 1751.074 FPS
10568 frames in 5.0 seconds = 2113.578 FPS
12001 frames in 5.0 seconds = 2400.160 FPS
12645 frames in 5.0 seconds = 2528.954 FPS
10775 frames in 5.0 seconds = 2154.851 FPS

The 10-12,000 readings were because I had minimised the glxgears
display. If you have the glxgears running in front of you then I get
about 9,000 frames. Second point to note, is that I used to have a
problem with SELinux and the xorg-x11-drv-fglrx RPM files. SELinux would
cause something like glxgears to run very slow. You could either try
temporarily disabling SELinux (use 'setenforce 0'), or change the
relevant file contexts. The files I changed, and the commands were:

  chcon -t textrel_shlib_t /usr/lib/xorg/modules/drivers/fglrx_drv.so
  chcon -t textrel_shlib_t /usr/lib/xorg/modules/linux/libfglrxdrm.so

> The above are with the Livna driver; after installing it, I rebooted into 
> runlevel 3 and ran fglrx-config-display; then restarted into X
> 
> I've tried various mods to xorg.conf such as disabling composite - my current 
> is:
> 
I have:

=========================================================
# Xorg configuration created by system-config-display

Section "ServerLayout"
        Identifier     "single head configuration"
        Screen      0  "Screen0" 0 0
        InputDevice    "Keyboard0" "CoreKeyboard"
EndSection

Section "Files"
EndSection

Section "Module"
        Load  "glx"
        Load  "extmod"
        Load  "dri"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
        Identifier  "Keyboard0"
        Driver      "kbd"
        Option      "XkbModel" "pc105"
        Option      "XkbLayout" "gb"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
        Identifier   "Monitor0"
        ModelName    "LCD Panel 1280x1024"
 ### Comment all HorizSync and VertSync values to use DDC:
        HorizSync    31.5 - 67.0
        VertRefresh  50.0 - 75.0
        Option      "dpms"
EndSection

Section "Device"
        Identifier  "Videocard0"
        Driver      "radeon"
        Option      "AGPMode" "4"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
        Identifier "Screen0"
        Device     "Videocard0"
        Monitor    "Monitor0"
        DefaultDepth     24
        SubSection "Display"
                Viewport   0 0
                Depth     24
                Modes    "1280x1024"
        EndSubSection
EndSection

Section "DRI"
        Group        0
        Mode         0666
EndSection

Section "Extensions"
        Option      "Composite" "enable"
EndSection
=========================================================


Note: Be careful with the AGPMode option if you use it. The card will
support it (4x), but your motherboard must do so as well.

>
> Am I on a fools errand? Should I forget about the ATI driver and revert?
> 
Well that's your decision :-) However,as said I have had no problems
with this setup and using the ATI card.



John.

-- 
---------------------------------------------------------------
John Horne, University of Plymouth, UK  Tel: +44 (0)1752 233914
E-mail: John.Horne at plymouth.ac.uk       Fax: +44 (0)1752 233839