ATI & Radeon 9600 RV350

Claude Jones claude_jones at levitjames.com
Tue Apr 3 17:48:19 UTC 2007


On Tuesday  April 03 2007 11:15:43 am John Horne wrote:
> 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.
>

Thanks John for this lengthy response. You may have seen later in this thread 
that I finally got my ATI driver working - it turned out I installed the 
wrong kernel-module when I installed the livna driver. However, I don't think 
that was my only issue. Also, as I'll note below, my performance, while 
considerably improved, does not seem to match yours using the radeon driver. 
If that's the case, I would like to revisit the issue and try out the radeon 
driver - using the open source driver is certainly preferable - I have found 
info to the effect that 3D acceleration is supported for our card but is 
classified as experimental - I don't mind being an experimenter, so that's no 
issue for me. Presumably, using the open source driver would eliminate the 
headache of having to update the kernel-module with each kernel update, 
right?

> > 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
>

my glxinfo now shows:

OpenGL vendor string: ATI Technologies Inc.
OpenGL renderer string: MOBILITY RADEON 9600
OpenGL version string: 2.0.6334 (8.34.8)

> > 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
>

The above numbers were from before I fixed my kernel-module

> 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
>

I'm now getting:

$ glxgears
14658 frames in 5.0 seconds = 2931.519 FPS
26963 frames in 5.0 seconds = 5392.432 FPS
26962 frames in 5.0 seconds = 5392.329 FPS
26963 frames in 5.0 seconds = 5392.544 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
>

I'm running Blag 60000 on this laptop, which is basically FC6 with a lot of 
improvements in areas that are of concern to me. Selinux is disabled by 
default in this distro, so that has not been the issue for me. Your number of 
9000 frames is what catches my attention - as you can see, I'm now getting 
close to 5400 frames, which is considerably less than you. 3d motion is 
exceptionally smooth now, and streaming video works well, but, improving 
performance is always desirable, especially if I can achieve it with the open 
source driver. I'm running glxgears from the yakuake terminal, which is a 
utility that drops a terminal window into view by pressing the F12 key when 
it's running; the glxgears are hidden by the terminal window, but, if I drag 
it into view, my performance numbers go way down; also, I just tried opening 
KDE Konsole, which is the KDE terminal window, and running glxgears from 
there produces a visible glxgears window, but horrible performance:

$ glxgears
2903 frames in 5.0 seconds = 580.379 FPS
2501 frames in 5.0 seconds = 500.029 FPS
3629 frames in 5.0 seconds = 725.697 FPS
4996 frames in 5.0 seconds = 999.057 FPS
2289 frames in 5.0 seconds = 457.643 FPS
2501 frames in 5.0 seconds = 500.028 FPS
4073 frames in 5.0 seconds = 814.484 FPS
3166 frames in 5.0 seconds = 632.975 FPS
3775 frames in 5.0 seconds = 754.901 FPS
2502 frames in 5.0 seconds = 500.230 FPS
3260 frames in 5.0 seconds = 651.906 FPS

So, there's some discrepancies there I don't fully understand...

> > 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.
>

Here's mine after installing the correct module and re-running 
fglrx-config-display

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

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

Section "InputDevice"
	Identifier  "Synaptics"
	Driver      "synaptics"
	Option	    "Device" "/dev/input/mice"
	Option	    "Protocol" "auto-dev"
	Option	    "Emulate3Buttons" "yes"
	Option	    "LeftEdge" "120"
	Option	    "RightEdge" "830"
	Option	    "TopEdge" "120"
	Option	    "BottomEdge" "650"
	Option	    "FingerLow" "14"
	Option	    "FingerHigh" "15"
	Option	    "MaxTapMove" "110"
	Option	    "VertScrollDelta" "20"
	Option	    "HorizScrollDelta" "20"
	Option	    "MinSpeed" "0.3"
	Option	    "MaxSpeed" "0.75"
EndSection

Section "Device"
	Identifier  "Videocard0"
	Driver      "fglrx"
	Option	    "VideoOverlay" "on"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
	Identifier "Screen0"
	Device     "Videocard0"
	DefaultDepth     24
	SubSection "Display"
		Viewport   0 0
		Depth     24
	EndSubSection
EndSection

Section "Extensions"
	Option	    "Composite" "Disable"
EndSection

As you can see, you're running composite enable and mine is disabled - I'll 
try your setting later, as I must leave

> > 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.
>

Thanks again for your input - there are still some unexplained anomalies which 
I sure would like to understand. Again, I have a huge increase in performance 
now which is tangible - streaming video was effectively impossible on this 
machine before - the video would just freeze after a couple of frames, and 
perhaps refresh every few seconds - now it's smooth and looks great; glxgears 
was a stutterer as were most of the screen savers - now, these are smooth 
with almost no hesitations to speak of. 

Maybe I need to learn some incantations... ;-)


-- 
Claude Jones
Levit & James, Inc.
Leesburg, VA  20175
703-771-1549




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