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Ownaginatious

Member

Registered: 2010-08-28

Posts: 60

[SOLVED] Picture messed up on new Radeon 5770

So recently I swapped out my 8800 GTS for a Radeon 5770 card. I started up the computer with the new card into the CLI, added the catalyst repository and updated. The Nvidia drivers I was using were automatically removed (nvidia and nvidia-utils) and replaced with catalyst and catalyst-util.

So after that, I removed all my xorg.conf files and ran the following command as root to generate a new one:

aticonfig --initial

It generated a new file, but when I execute the command

startx

A very messed up looking 'desktop' starts up. All I see are some really messed up colours towards the top of the screen, and a 'square' that is my mouse pointer as far as I can tell.

Here is a video of what happens to try and better explain what I mean.

Does anyone know how to fix this?

Last edited by Ownaginatious (2012-02-08 05:20:38)

desm0tes

Member

From: 127.0.0.1

Registered: 2012-02-04

Posts: 233

Website

Re: [SOLVED] Picture messed up on new Radeon 5770

I had a somewhat similar output once and the only bugfix was buying a VGA-card.

I don't want to scare you or something, but I'd recommend opening your PC and checking, if it's installed properly.

---

my dA site

Ownaginatious

Member

Registered: 2010-08-28

Posts: 60

Re: [SOLVED] Picture messed up on new Radeon 5770

Well, I've got the card working perfectly when I boot into Windows, so I don't think it's a physical installation issue or a case of a bad card.

Durden

Member

Registered: 2011-06-19

Posts: 261

Re: [SOLVED] Picture messed up on new Radeon 5770

I would highly recommend using the free drivers. The catalyst proprietary ones are seriously messed up.

dirtdog

Member

Registered: 2012-02-07

Posts: 7

Re: [SOLVED] Picture messed up on new Radeon 5770

I had an hour long fight with the new catalyst drivers this weekend, experiencing the same issues as you. (The previous version of the drivers worked without problems)

In the end I gave up and installed the free "radeon" driver.

Ownaginatious

Member

Registered: 2010-08-28

Posts: 60

Re: [SOLVED] Picture messed up on new Radeon 5770

So I fixed it!

It turns out the problem was, the 'catalyst' package somehow managed to not even install itself. There was no 'fglrx' module to load. I simply installed it, and things worked fine. No idea how 'startx' was not crashing without it .

There is a note in the catalyst page in the arch wiki that says before upgrading to the new catalyst drivers, you have to completely remove the old ones. That may be the issue you're experiencing dirtdog.

dirtdog

Member

Registered: 2012-02-07

Posts: 7

Re: [SOLVED] Picture messed up on new Radeon 5770

Good you got it to work. Alas, I had removed all the catalyst drivers prior to my attempt. Thanks for the heads up tho.

dirtdog

Member

Registered: 2012-02-07

Posts: 7

Re: [SOLVED] Picture messed up on new Radeon 5770

I'll be damned - I just retried with "catalyst-hooks" and it worked