Radeon HD OpenSource driver Issues

Jaymes · 2009-04-03 01:56:59

Hi Folks:

Here is a shower stopped for me. While using the open source drivers with Arch for radeon HD, I have serious heating issues with my laptop. I have CPU Frequency scaling that is functioning properly; thus, the only source I can think about is the graphics card. Lspci shows:

$> lspci | grep -i vga
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc Mobility Radeon HD 3400 Series

Other than a lack of 3D acceleration (for now ), I have no problems other than heating problems with my laptop. Has anyone else had problems with this graphics card in laptops and heating? Can someone suggest other vectors for heat sources? Other than upgrading to xserver 1.6 (in testing) and installing the proprietary, are there other options?

Thanks for insights!

(I am currently using the Catalyst driver in Ubuntu with no problems as well as the open source driver too, but I didn't have a chance to test the temperatures)

leeyee · 2009-04-03 02:29:46

Open source drivers for HD3400 series don't have power management yet, so laptop fan will keep running, so is the situation here. But that might not be a heating problem, sensors show that GPU temperature is about 50C, while CPU is 30-40C.

Just give property driver a try, then you can determine this is driver's problem or not.

Jaymes · 2009-04-03 03:32:51

Thanks for your reply. To do the proprietary driver, I'll have to upgrade to the xserver in testing?

leeyee · 2009-04-03 11:45:11

Jaymes wrote:

Thanks for your reply. To do the proprietary driver, I'll have to upgrade to the xserver in testing?

Well, sorry I forgot to note you that catalyst is now not supported in official repository, you may need to install it from AUR. 9.4 needs xserver 1.6 in testing, but there is also 9.3 work with current stable xserver, I recommend you 9.3.

Jaymes · 2009-04-03 16:54:58

9.3 is available for the current xserver, excellent!

For anyone looking this up, the package is in the AUR, catalyst-old 9.3-1. You must have a kernel version that is less than ( < ) 2.6.29. This also has a dependency on catalyst-utils-old 9.3-1. These packages only work on xserver version 1.5 or any version previous to 1.6.

I'll try these when I get home and see if it improves my heating problem.

Thank you for the help leeyee!

Jaymes · 2009-04-07 04:26:48

I attempted to do an install of the catalyst drivers, but I didn't have much luck. I followed the post here http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php? … 60#p512460 , essentially removing libGL via pacman -Rd libgl then proceeding to install catalyst-old and catalyst-utils-old. The utils spit out the following error:

missing dependency for ati-dri : libgl>=7.2

at the end end of its install. It seems to be fully installed and all file locations for the install are ok. Upon throwing the fglrx into the modules array in rc.conf and restarting, I couldn't get into X. It stated that it couldn't find my video card ... which is odd, as I have it working with fglrx in Ubuntu 8.10. My card is a Radeon HD 3400--I guess in the R600 series of revisions. Did ATI give Ubuntu a special version?

It looks like our ATI installation guide needs to be updated. I don't mind searching around through forum posts, but the first place I checked was the wiki which appears outdated for proprietary installs. I think I'm going to give it an update once I get this problem sorted out.

I do appreciate the opensource radeonhd drivers, but as mentioned before, I think the lack of power savings definitely shows on a laptop

Any suggestions?

EDIT: My card is a Mobility Radeon HD3400 which is the m82 series.

Last edited by Jaymes (2009-04-07 05:02:24)

leeyee · 2009-04-07 04:32:20

well, ati-dri is DRI extension for opensource driver, you can safely remove this if you are using catalyst. After install catalyst, you need to modify your xorg.conf to use "fglrx" as the device driver. Add fglrx into rc.conf is not necessary, and might cause problem, because now X server will automatically load it if you've indicated in xorg.conf.

Arch Linux

#1 2009-04-03 01:56:59

Radeon HD OpenSource driver Issues

#2 2009-04-03 02:29:46

Re: Radeon HD OpenSource driver Issues

#3 2009-04-03 03:32:51

Re: Radeon HD OpenSource driver Issues

#4 2009-04-03 11:45:11

Re: Radeon HD OpenSource driver Issues

#5 2009-04-03 16:54:58

Re: Radeon HD OpenSource driver Issues

#6 2009-04-07 04:26:48

Re: Radeon HD OpenSource driver Issues

#7 2009-04-07 04:32:20

Re: Radeon HD OpenSource driver Issues

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