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Simsor

Member

Registered: 2012-08-13

Posts: 3

Catalyst 13.1 driver and Mobility Radeon cards breaking X

Hello!
Seeing the recent update of the Catalyst drivers, I decided to try and install them on my laptop, a HP G62-B48SF. This computer has two ATI cards, a Mobility Radeon HD 4200 and a Mobility Radeon HD 5400. On Windows, they "switch" according to the usage of the computer (eg. playing games, on battery...). The 13.1 changelog says the ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5400 card is supported.

Here is the output of lspci: http://pastebin.com/6uJEM2x3

The problem is, after installing catalyst-dkms, catalyst-utils and lib32-catalyst-utils, disabling KMS and rebooting, X won't start. I just get a frozen screen with whatever was on it prior to typing startx.
Doing grep '(EE)' /var/log/Xorg.0.log doesn't yield anything. On the other hand, grep '(WW)' gives

[   646.162] (WW) Falling back to old probe method for fglrx
[   646.176] (WW) fglrx: No matching Device section for instance (BusID PCI:0@1:5:0) found
[   646.176] (WW) fglrx: No matching Device section for instance (BusID PCI:0@0:17:0) found
[   646.176] (WW) fglrx: No matching Device section for instance (BusID PCI:0@0:18:0) found
[   646.176] (WW) fglrx: No matching Device section for instance (BusID PCI:0@0:18:2) found
[   646.176] (WW) fglrx: No matching Device section for instance (BusID PCI:0@0:20:0) found
[   646.176] (WW) fglrx: No matching Device section for instance (BusID PCI:0@0:20:2) found
[   646.176] (WW) fglrx: No matching Device section for instance (BusID PCI:0@0:20:3) found
[   646.176] (WW) fglrx: No matching Device section for instance (BusID PCI:0@0:20:4) found
[   646.176] (WW) fglrx: No matching Device section for instance (BusID PCI:0@0:22:0) found
[   646.176] (WW) fglrx: No matching Device section for instance (BusID PCI:0@0:22:2) found
[   646.176] (WW) fglrx: No matching Device section for instance (BusID PCI:0@1:5:0) found
[   646.176] (WW) fglrx: No matching Device section for instance (BusID PCI:0@1:5:1) found
[   646.182] (WW) fglrx(0): board is an unknown third party board, chipset is supported
[   646.360] (WW) fglrx(0): Option "VendorName" is not used
[   646.360] (WW) fglrx(0): Option "ModelName" is not used

The "chipset is supported" line seems comforting, but it doesn't work :(

Using the open-source xf86-video-ati works, but the 3D performance is ridiculous, which is why I'd like to use proprietary drivers.

Here's what I tried to solve it:

• Changing the card in xorg.conf to the 4200 one: same results.

• Playing with aticonfig options, mainly using the PowerXPress options to switch cards: same results.

• Doing voodoo rituals. I had high hopes in this one, but it didn't work.

So my question is: can I use these drivers with my setup ? If so, how ?

Thank you for your time and answers !
Simsor

PS: if you need any more information, I'll gladly provide them !

Gusar

Member

Registered: 2009-08-25

Posts: 3,605

Re: Catalyst 13.1 driver and Mobility Radeon cards breaking X

The 13.1 changelog says the ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5400 card is supported.

5400 is supported, but 4200 isn't, that's probably the issue if 4200 is used for output (similar to Nvidia Optimus, where Intel is always used for output). So unless you can deactivate the 4200 and use 5400 for output, you're screwed. There's a 13.1-legacy driver that supports the 4200, but you'll need to downgrade X to 1.12 to use it.

Simsor

Member

Registered: 2012-08-13

Posts: 3

Re: Catalyst 13.1 driver and Mobility Radeon cards breaking X

After a quick search around the BIOS settings, I can't disable a card in particular, so I might be out of luck
I tried downgrading to linux 3.6 and it didn't solve it. I'll stick with th open-source drivers and try the legacy later today or tomorrow.

Thank you anyway !

sirkubador

Member

Registered: 2010-06-16

Posts: 10

Re: Catalyst 13.1 driver and Mobility Radeon cards breaking X

I have the same problem. I'm using dedicated mobility radeon 5700, my Xorg won't start saying kernel module is not compatible (plus segfault). I tried to downgrade to catalyst 12.8 and xorg 1.12 with no luck but one change - with xorg.conf generated from aticonfig, screen just freezes (i had to manually delete it and run on VESA drivers). It seemed like KMS enabled, but nomodeset has to be in effect (it is present in regenerated grub.cfg). I tried catalyst-test (13.2 beta) with no luck either.

This happened after kernel and catalyst-test upgrade.

Anyone any clue?

Gusar

Member

Registered: 2009-08-25

Posts: 3,605

Re: Catalyst 13.1 driver and Mobility Radeon cards breaking X

You don't have the same problem. Simsor has a 4200, which isn't supported by the mainline catalyst driver anymore. But you have a 5700, which is supported. So whatever issues you have, you should open a separate thread and provide detailed logs (dmesg, /var/log/Xorg.0.log), so we can see what exactly is going on.