ATI Dual Head - noisy fan

hanno · 2008-01-13 21:30:51

Hello there,
After I was very satisfied with Arch running very stable on my old Thinkpad, I decided to put it on my desktop as well.

I succesfully installed Arch, xorg, Fluxbox and the propritary ATI Radeon Drivers. Then I used aticonfig to create a Dual Head compatible xorg.conf reedited it manually and restarted xorg, up this point everything worked well.
But ever since I'm running in Dual Head now, the graphic adapter has become quite noisy, as ist does only in heavy 3D games under Windows, and (I don't know if thats the same issue) my harddrive although keeps making noises like writing/reading all the time.

I can imagine that putting out two different signals may produce more load and so more heat, but under WinXP I was running Dual Head with both monitors at 1600x1200@85Hz and it kept cool and quiet.

Anyone knows a solution to keep it a litte more quiet in here?

jarryson · 2008-01-14 07:24:23

if your driver is catalyst, try

aticonfig --lsp

and

aticonfig --set-powerstate=1

i dont know how to do on radeon driver

hanno · 2008-01-14 11:34:55

Right, it's the Catalyst Driver, running on a Radeon 1959XT.

I felt quite relived after your Post, but:

[root@myhost hanno]# aticonfig   --lsp              
    core/mem      [flags]
-----------------
* 1: 500/594 MHz  [overdrive, default state]

[root@myhost hanno]# aticonfig   --set-powerstate=1
Setting the requested power state failed or is not supported yet.
Possible reasons for failure:
  - thermal control is in effect
  - trying to set the current power state again
Modes unsupported due to bandwidth limitations:
  - dual head/big desktop/clone modes
aticonfig: parsing the command-line failed.
[root@myhost hanno]#

So, what should I try next?

Last edited by hanno (2008-01-14 11:37:01)

hanno · 2008-01-14 12:48:02

I just gave a second thought to that, if i can overclock the Board, maybe there is also a way to "underdrive" the Chip and it's Memory since i don't think that much power is needed in a Desktop Enviroment... But how...?

Arch Linux

#1 2008-01-13 21:30:51

ATI Dual Head - noisy fan

#2 2008-01-14 07:24:23

Re: ATI Dual Head - noisy fan

#3 2008-01-14 11:34:55

Re: ATI Dual Head - noisy fan

#4 2008-01-14 12:48:02

Re: ATI Dual Head - noisy fan

Board footer