[Solved] Games with xf86-video-ati

davidjosepha · 2014-02-14 00:25:59

I'm having trouble getting some games to work with my 6970 using the open source drivers. I switched from catalyst because I was having quite a few major issues I was unable to resolve even after following numerous guides on how to resolve them. The foss drivers have fixed all that, so I'd like to stay with them. However, I'm having some trouble with some games that shouldn't be all that intensive, for example, Monaco and Fez. Both are 2D games (overhead and side-scroller) and I'm having trouble playing both now. However, I can play Minecraft without glitch, which presumably would require at least as much capability as the other games. I think I just don't have all the settings right for the driver for it to work optimally. I've tried following a bunch of the stuff on the wiki, but it hasn't helped. Here's my /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/20-radeon.conf:

Section "Device"
    Identifier "Radeon"
    Driver "radeon"
    Option "ColorTiling" "on"
    Option "AccelMethod" "EXA"
    Option "RenderAccel" "on"
    Option "EXAPixmaps" "on"
EndSection

Are there any settings I should change/add, or anything else I can do, or have I just hit the limit of what the foss drivers can do currently?

Last edited by davidjosepha (2014-02-17 15:59:54)

drcouzelis · 2014-02-14 14:41:56

First, those games aren't "2D" as far as the video card is concerned. There's plenty of stuff that is being 3D rendered (backgrounds, characters...) and all in super duper HD graphics.

Second, you never actually said what the problem is, just that there is "some trouble".

davidjosepha · 2014-02-14 14:47:38

Oh, sorry. Basically just that they run slowly, at unplayably low framerates.

joanmanel · 2014-02-14 15:00:18

If you plan on gaming, go back to the catalyst drivers. I have a card HD7770 (I assume you have an HD6970, which is a very good card), and everything goes fan.

The gaming experience is not that good though. Low FPS on games like Dota2.

skottish · 2014-02-14 15:49:23

Turn on dpm if you're still on the 3.12 kernel. The wiki says how. If that's not enough, switch over to the [mesa-git] repo for newer versions of OpenGL and performance enchancements or wait until the end of the month for mesa 10.1. The 3.13 kernel that should hit [core] soon will also have enhancements.

**EDIT**

The radeon entry in the wiki is what I was referring to.

Last edited by skottish (2014-02-14 16:00:15)

ooo · 2014-02-14 16:27:32

I think disabling "EnablePageFlip" could improve performance with radeon, by disabling vsync.

Also I recommend trying glamor instead of EXA. It won't effect your games but should make 2d much smoother in my experience.

skottish · 2014-02-14 17:06:57

ooo wrote:

Also I recommend trying glamor instead of EXA. It won't effect your games but should make 2d much smoother in my experience.

Glamor is recommended for Southern Islands and up, where it's the default. EXA is recommended for Northern Islands, which is what the OP's card is and is the default.

ooo · 2014-02-14 17:45:41

skottish wrote:

ooo wrote:
Also I recommend trying glamor instead of EXA. It won't effect your games but should make 2d much smoother in my experience.
Glamor is recommended for Southern Islands and up, where it's the default. EXA is recommended for Northern Islands, which is what the OP's card is and is the default.

I know, but glamor could still be a lot faster with older cards, even though its not default. iirc glamor is enabled for default for newer cards mainly because they haven't made EXA work for SI and later yet, and probably never will. They use EXA by default for older cards because glamor is still relatively new, and may still miss some features or have bugs on some hardware.

In my experience with r600 card (HD4350 i think) glamor was noticeably faster, and I didn't have any major issues with it. I simply suggested trying if it works and seems faster for you.

davidjosepha · 2014-02-15 16:51:37

skottish wrote:

Turn on dpm if you're still on the 3.12 kernel.

I've tried following the wiki but I've had no success. When I add the radeon.dpm=1 boot parameter, I get a blank screen on boot. I tried using these commands:

# echo balanced > /sys/class/drm/card0/device/power_dpm_state
# echo auto > /sys/class/drm/card0/device/power_dpm_force_performance_level

but even as root it wouldn't let me modify those files (which don't currently exist...). How do I write these files?

skottish · 2014-02-15 17:40:52

davidjosepha wrote:

skottish wrote:
Turn on dpm if you're still on the 3.12 kernel.
I've tried following the wiki but I've had no success. When I add the radeon.dpm=1 boot parameter, I get a blank screen on boot. I tried using these commands:
# echo balanced > /sys/class/drm/card0/device/power_dpm_state
# echo auto > /sys/class/drm/card0/device/power_dpm_force_performance_level
but even as root it wouldn't let me modify those files (which don't currently exist...). How do I write these files?

DPM should be working great with the 6970. Would you please post the exact kernel line that you used and for which boot loader? Maybe it's something simple.

Last edited by skottish (2014-02-15 17:41:47)

davidjosepha · 2014-02-15 22:49:04

I'm using syslinux. Here's the line

APPEND root=/dev/sda1 rw radeon.dpm=1

Edit: after adding the line again, it worked. No idea what changed, but at least it's working. Still no gain in FPS in game--gonna try some of the other things mentioned in this thread.

Edit2: "EnablePageFlip" set to off did not improve the gameplay significantly (if at all).

Last edited by davidjosepha (2014-02-15 22:59:28)

skottish · 2014-02-16 03:54:20

davidjosepha wrote:

I'm using syslinux. Here's the line
APPEND root=/dev/sda1 rw radeon.dpm=1
Edit: after adding the line again, it worked. No idea what changed, but at least it's working. Still no gain in FPS in game--gonna try some of the other things mentioned in this thread.

That surprises me. DPM should have given you a large to gigantic performance increase. For sanity sake, I'd check to make sure that DPM started alright:

dmesg | grep -i dpm

Other than this, I'm out of ideas other that what's already been posted. Newer kernels and newer mesa/radeon stuff will help, but nothing like DPM.

R00KIE · 2014-02-16 13:10:24

These was some problem with the way some cards where setup by the driver/drm that made them use only a small part of all the available horsepower, but I'm not sure it affects your card. I've seen that at phoronix but it's not easy to find in the middle of so much stuff.

Edit
I was thinking about this http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=n … px=MTU1MTE
It seems it is for 7000+ series cards and probably doesn't apply to yours.

Last edited by R00KIE (2014-02-16 16:01:19)

davidjosepha · 2014-02-16 16:11:09

skottish wrote:

That surprises me. DPM should have given you a large to gigantic performance increase. For sanity sake, I'd check to make sure that DPM started alright:
dmesg | grep -i dpm
Other than this, I'm out of ideas other that what's already been posted. Newer kernels and newer mesa/radeon stuff will help, but nothing like DPM.

[    0.000000] Command line: BOOT_IMAGE=../vmlinuz-linux root=/dev/sda1 rw radeon.dpm=1 initrd=../initramfs-linux.img
[    0.000000] Kernel command line: BOOT_IMAGE=../vmlinuz-linux root=/dev/sda1 rw radeon.dpm=1 initrd=../initramfs-linux.img
[    4.404084] [drm] radeon: dpm initialized

Looks like it's working. I had only been testing by playing Monaco, since that's the game I've really been wanting to play, but it looks like the minor glitchiness in Fez is gone now. Seems like this definitely has improved something, and that the problem is probably related to Monaco with the foss driver, not an overall issue with my driver settings. Thanks for all the help

davidjosepha · 2014-02-17 15:57:24

I figured out what the problem was and I feel stupid for not having thought of it sooner. I just thought I'd post back here in case anyone else encounters a similar issue and finds this topic while searching only to not get their answer.

When I installed Steam, I was using the catalyst driver, and after installation, you get a list of optional dependencies, one for each graphics card driver you might be using. Since I was using catalyst, I only installed lib32-catalyst-utils, but since I removed catalyst and started using xf86-video-ati, I needed to install lib32-ati-dri. After doing that, Monaco runs perfectly (which, obviously it should, since it's not that intensive) and I got Team Fortress 2 to run well with all settings on high and 8x antialiasing. Huge improvement from not even being able to get past the TF2 menu

Marking this thread as [solved].

HarlemSquirrel · 2014-02-20 05:55:20

I just wanted to report that on Arch Linux 64-bit with GNOME desktop and kernel 13.13.3 my HD 6670 is working great with the open source xf86-video-ati radeon driver after some trial and error tweaking. Basically, using this Arch guide <https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/ATI#Glamor>, I enabled glamor and turned EXAPixmaps off. This seems to be the most stable. After playing several games of Dota 2 in a row I am happy to report no freezing and no artifacts! There are still some minor hiccups but even those are way down.

joanmanel · 2014-02-20 10:26:05

HarlemSquirrel wrote:

I just wanted to report that on Arch Linux 64-bit with GNOME desktop and kernel 13.13.3 my HD 6670 is working great with the open source xf86-video-ati radeon driver after some trial and error tweaking. Basically, using this Arch guide <https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/ATI#Glamor>, I enabled glamor and turned EXAPixmaps off. This seems to be the most stable. After playing several games of Dota 2 in a row I am happy to report no freezing and no artifacts! There are still some minor hiccups but even those are way down.

I have an HD7770, which is similar to HD6670. With the open drivers my FPS were dreadful.

I also play Dota2, 1080p, al max, dreadful (in w8 it runs smooth)

can you tell me the settings you are using for dota2??

Jojonintendo · 2014-02-20 13:14:28

As I can see here, this guy is using the Radeon 7770 (like me, and many others it seems) and got Dota 2 playing smoothly with full effects. It seems that DPM is not working great yet, and that we must switch profiles to get the best of it.

I can't wait to see linux-3.13 on the core repo to try it

joanmanel · 2014-02-20 14:05:59

For me, Dota2 al max at 1080p is horrible with both open source and catalyst. If I put the settings to medium, medium shadows and remove some of the lighting, the game is OK with catalyst then (not with the open source ones).

Thank you for the link. It seems they suggest installing stuff outside the official sources. I don't know, I prefer to follow the official repos.

So yeah I will wait until linux-3.13 arrives. At the moment I have 3.12.9

Hmm I just check and in [testing] they have 3.13.3-1 ... I may try it later.

Last edited by joanmanel (2014-02-20 14:10:43)

Jojonintendo · 2014-02-20 14:28:09

I play Dota 2 at 1080p at low settings pretty well with OS driver. I tried linux-3.13 from testing but didn't get any boost (didn't try the performance setting though). What the reddit link suggests is to set the performance setting as said here in the Arch wiki. Mesa driver is already the latest I think. Actually we would only need a graphical tool to configure radeon before playing and voilà!

HarlemSquirrel · 2014-02-20 16:34:08

joanmanel wrote:

HarlemSquirrel wrote:
I just wanted to report that on Arch Linux 64-bit with GNOME desktop and kernel 13.13.3 my HD 6670 is working great with the open source xf86-video-ati radeon driver after some trial and error tweaking. Basically, using this Arch guide <https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/ATI#Glamor>, I enabled glamor and turned EXAPixmaps off. This seems to be the most stable. After playing several games of Dota 2 in a row I am happy to report no freezing and no artifacts! There are still some minor hiccups but even those are way down.

I have an HD7770, which is similar to HD6670. With the open drivers my FPS were dreadful.
I also play Dota2, 1080p, al max, dreadful (in w8 it runs smooth)
can you tell me the settings you are using for dota2??

My settings are all the way up but with anti aliasing off. You can simply enable the testing repo and update with pacman to try the 3.13 kernel. That's what I did! For me, I still have to force dpm with a kernel parameter. I think dpm and glamor are only default for 7000 series and newer.

Last edited by HarlemSquirrel (2014-02-20 16:35:06)

joanmanel · 2014-02-20 20:54:05

HarlemSquirrel wrote:

joanmanel wrote:
HarlemSquirrel wrote:
I just wanted to report that on Arch Linux 64-bit with GNOME desktop and kernel 13.13.3 my HD 6670 is working great with the open source xf86-video-ati radeon driver after some trial and error tweaking. Basically, using this Arch guide <https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/ATI#Glamor>, I enabled glamor and turned EXAPixmaps off. This seems to be the most stable. After playing several games of Dota 2 in a row I am happy to report no freezing and no artifacts! There are still some minor hiccups but even those are way down.

I have an HD7770, which is similar to HD6670. With the open drivers my FPS were dreadful.
I also play Dota2, 1080p, al max, dreadful (in w8 it runs smooth)
can you tell me the settings you are using for dota2??
My settings are all the way up but with anti aliasing off. You can simply enable the testing repo and update with pacman to try the 3.13 kernel. That's what I did! For me, I still have to force dpm with a kernel parameter. I think dpm and glamor are only default for 7000 series and newer.

can you elaborate about the dpm thing?

clfarron4 · 2014-02-20 21:59:11

HarlemSquirrel wrote:

For me, I still have to force dpm with a kernel parameter. I think dpm and glamor are only default for 7000 series and newer.

It's enabled for all r600 cards and later: http://kernelnewbies.org/Linux_3.11 That's everything from the AMD Radeon HD2000 and later.

HarlemSquirrel · 2014-02-21 00:12:16

clfarron4 wrote:

HarlemSquirrel wrote:
For me, I still have to force dpm with a kernel parameter. I think dpm and glamor are only default for 7000 series and newer.
It's enabled for all r600 cards and later: http://kernelnewbies.org/Linux_3.11 That's everything from the AMD Radeon HD2000 and later.

Another thread says that Arch patched this kerenl to remove automatic dpm for some cards because it was buggy: https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php … 8#p1381708

skottish · 2014-02-21 01:39:34

HarlemSquirrel wrote:

clfarron4 wrote:
HarlemSquirrel wrote:
For me, I still have to force dpm with a kernel parameter. I think dpm and glamor are only default for 7000 series and newer.
It's enabled for all r600 cards and later: http://kernelnewbies.org/Linux_3.11 That's everything from the AMD Radeon HD2000 and later.
Another thread says that Arch patched this kerenl to remove automatic dpm for some cards because it was buggy: https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php … 8#p1381708

The AMD devs did it, not the Arch devs. I thought that it was going to happen on the 3.14 kernel, but it apparently happened at 3.13.3.

**EDIT**

I added a bit to my post that you linked above with the reference to Alex Deucher disabling dpm by default for the Barts series cards like my HD 6850.

Last edited by skottish (2014-02-21 02:04:57)

Arch Linux

#1 2014-02-14 00:25:59

[Solved] Games with xf86-video-ati

#2 2014-02-14 14:41:56

Re: [Solved] Games with xf86-video-ati

#3 2014-02-14 14:47:38

Re: [Solved] Games with xf86-video-ati

#4 2014-02-14 15:00:18

Re: [Solved] Games with xf86-video-ati

#5 2014-02-14 15:49:23

Re: [Solved] Games with xf86-video-ati

#6 2014-02-14 16:27:32

Re: [Solved] Games with xf86-video-ati

#7 2014-02-14 17:06:57

Re: [Solved] Games with xf86-video-ati

#8 2014-02-14 17:45:41

Re: [Solved] Games with xf86-video-ati

#9 2014-02-15 16:51:37

Re: [Solved] Games with xf86-video-ati

#10 2014-02-15 17:40:52

Re: [Solved] Games with xf86-video-ati

#11 2014-02-15 22:49:04

Re: [Solved] Games with xf86-video-ati

#12 2014-02-16 03:54:20

Re: [Solved] Games with xf86-video-ati

#13 2014-02-16 13:10:24

Re: [Solved] Games with xf86-video-ati

#14 2014-02-16 16:11:09

Re: [Solved] Games with xf86-video-ati

#15 2014-02-17 15:57:24

Re: [Solved] Games with xf86-video-ati

#16 2014-02-20 05:55:20

Re: [Solved] Games with xf86-video-ati

#17 2014-02-20 10:26:05

Re: [Solved] Games with xf86-video-ati

#18 2014-02-20 13:14:28

Re: [Solved] Games with xf86-video-ati

#19 2014-02-20 14:05:59

Re: [Solved] Games with xf86-video-ati

#20 2014-02-20 14:28:09

Re: [Solved] Games with xf86-video-ati

#21 2014-02-20 16:34:08

Re: [Solved] Games with xf86-video-ati

#22 2014-02-20 20:54:05

Re: [Solved] Games with xf86-video-ati

#23 2014-02-20 21:59:11

Re: [Solved] Games with xf86-video-ati

#24 2014-02-21 00:12:16

Re: [Solved] Games with xf86-video-ati

#25 2014-02-21 01:39:34

Re: [Solved] Games with xf86-video-ati

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