My xf86-video-ati run Radeon 2600HD is now working great in 2D?

handy · 2009-07-23 08:50:42

My machine is a first model alu' 24" iMac, running a Radeon 2600HD.

It has been having lots of problems with the ATi proprietary drivers for roughly the last 6 months. Nothing new there I know.

I have been using the xf86-video-ati open drivers, since the last (9.6) Catalyst upgrade, as they were doing a better job for me on my Arch 64bit install.

Though I have been begrudgingly using Leopard & watching for a Catalyst upgrade for a couple of weeks or so, since the xf86-video-ati drivers, though better than Catalyst, were still still very laggy. Even so, I decided to do an -Syu --aur last night which even though it did not include the xf86-video-ati package, after a reboot, the always existing problems of scroll, window movement/resize & video playback lag were no longer existent?

My 2D display has never been better on this machine, & the video playback is also better than it has ever been. Perhaps the vlc upgrade contributed to video somewhat?

Anyway, does anyone have any idea what changed? As it has set me free from the AMD/ATi development circus (in 2D at least)?

My glxgears output is below, it shows that 3D is still very slow:

handy ~ $ glxgears
unknown chip id 0x9583, can't guess.
1800 frames in 5.0 seconds = 359.809 FPS
1800 frames in 5.0 seconds = 359.803 FPS
1799 frames in 5.0 seconds = 359.620 FPS
1819 frames in 5.0 seconds = 363.775 FPS

R00KIE · 2009-07-23 10:34:59

Well, the open source drivers do not provide any 3d acceleration at all so don't expect any stellar glxgears results.
I guess that soon we should see 3d support for radeonhd cards. I'm also waiting for that.

handy · 2009-07-24 03:44:56

I know about the lack of 3D support for most ATi cards using the open drivers. As previously stated this doesn't bother me on my Arch install.

What I'm interested in, is why all of a sudden I now have a great 2D display & movie playback when using the open ATi drivers (when after trying them on & off over a period of over a year they have always been crappy on this machine); this happened after an upgrade that did NOT upgrade the ATi open drivers, X.org or the kernel?

A total mystery to me in my ignorance?

riri · 2009-07-24 08:51:10

Hi handy

I'm experimenting the radeon driver, and I've problems obtaining good 2D performances. I'm sure I'm doing something wrong with the Xorg configuration. Could you post your xorg.conf so as I can compare ?

Are you using the radeonhd or radeon driver. Because for me, the former is far less performant than the later (I did not retry with the latest update tough)

handy · 2009-07-24 13:39:07

Hi riri,

I'm using the radeon driver, I'll post my xorg.conf, which has a few extra comments in it that I added for my own benefit, they may assist you too.

I also tried the various possible optimisations from the Arch wiki, they are still in my xorg.config, though they are commented out (as they did me no good), followed by an identifying comment.

Hope it helps you:

Section "ServerLayout"

# PS/2 Mouse not detected
# Serial Mouse not detected
    Identifier     "Xorg Configured"
    Screen      0  "aticonfig-Screen[0]" 0 0
    InputDevice    "Keyboard0" "CoreKeyboard"
    InputDevice    "USB Mouse" "CorePointer"
EndSection

Section "Files"

# Additional fonts: Locale, Gimp, TTF...
#    FontPath     "/usr/share/lib/X11/fonts/latin2/75dpi"
#    FontPath     "/usr/share/lib/X11/fonts/latin2/100dpi"
# True type and type1 fonts are also handled via xftlib, see /etc/X11/XftConfig!
#    FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/Type1"
#    RgbPath      "/usr/share/X11/rgb"
    ModulePath   "/usr/lib/xorg/modules"
    FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/misc:unscaled"
    FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/misc"
    FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/75dpi:unscaled"
    FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/75dpi"
    FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/100dpi:unscaled"
    FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/100dpi"
    FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/PEX"
    FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/cyrillic"
    FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/ttf/western"
    FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/ttf/decoratives"
    FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/truetype"
    FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/truetype/openoffice"
    FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/truetype/ttf-bitstream-vera"
    FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/latex-ttf-fonts"
    FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/defoma/CID"
    FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/defoma/TrueType"
EndSection

Section "Module"

#    Load  "type1"
    Load  "ddc"  # ddc probing of monitor
    Load  "dbe"
    Load  "dri"
    Load  "extmod"
    Load  "glx"
    Load  "bitmap" # bitmap-fonts
    Load  "freetype"
    Load  "record"
    Load  "drm"    # this one was added for OPEN ATi driver support
#       Load  "synaptics"
EndSection

Section "ServerFlags"
    Option        "AutoAddDevices" "False" # this turns off hotplugging which needs HAL to work
    Option        "AllowMouseOpenFail" "true"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
    Identifier  "Keyboard0"
    Driver      "keyboard"
    Option        "CoreKeyboard"
    Option        "XkbRules" "xorg"
    Option        "XkbModel" "pc105"
    Option        "XkbLayout" "us"
#    Option "XkbVariant" ""
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
    Identifier  "USB Mouse"
    Driver      "mouse"
    Option        "Device" "/dev/input/mice"
    Option        "SendCoreEvents" "true"
    Option        "Protocol" "IMPS/2"
    Option        "ZAxisMapping" "4 5 6 7"
    Option        "Buttons" "5"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
    Identifier  "aticonfig-Monitor[0]"
        Option      "VendorName" "iMac-24"  ## for open driver, may not be needed?
#    Option        "VendorName" "ATI Proprietary Driver"
    Option        "ModelName" "Generic Autodetecting Monitor"
    Option        "DPMS" "true"
EndSection

Section "Device"
##    Identifier  "aticonfig-Device[0]"       # ATi's closed driver
##    Driver      "fglrx"            # ATi's closed driver    
    Identifier  "iMac_ATi"    # Handy's alias for OPEN ATi driver
    Driver        "radeon"    # Handy's installed OPEN ATi driver
#    Option        "AccelMethod" "exa"     # for OPEN ATi driver - to enamble 2D & Xv acceleration on R6XX - default AccelMethod shadowfb
#    Option        "DRI" "on"  # for OPEN Ati driver - as above comment but -> default DRI disabled
#    Option        "AGPMode" "8"  # handy added to hopefully improve OPEN driver speed?
#    Option        "ColorTiling" "on"  # handy added for OPEN driver, for speed?
    Option        "AccelMethod" "EXA"  # as above for OPEN driver
    Option        "EnablePageFlip" "on"  # as above, for OPEN driver
EndSection

Section "Screen"
    Identifier "aticonfig-Screen[0]"
    Device     "aticonfig-Device[0]"
    Monitor    "aticonfig-Monitor[0]"
    DefaultDepth     24
    SubSection "Display"
        Viewport   0 0
        Depth     24
    EndSubSection
EndSection

Section "DRI"
#       Group           "video"
#    Mode            0666    #  remove when using OPEN driver instructions, though may possibly be userful, time will tell?
EndSection

riri · 2009-07-24 15:18:12

Hi

Thanks for your xorg.conf, I was pretty sure that with the same configuration on a similar environment (kernel + xorg). Unfortunately, this do not work :
* I still have an Xorg freeze as soon as I enable the glx module (I've to force 'Disable "glx"' in the Module section).
* 2D Acceleration not available :

(==) RADEON(0): Default visual is TrueColor
(**) RADEON(0): Option "EnablePageFlip" "on"
(**) RADEON(0): Option "AccelMethod" "EXA"
...
(--) RADEON(0): Chipset: "ATI Radeon HD 2400 PRO AGP" (ChipID = 0x94c4)
(WW) RADEON(0): R600 support is mostly incomplete and very experimental
...
(II) RADEON(0): Framebuffer space used by Firmware (kb): 16
(II) RADEON(0): Start of VRAM area used by Firmware: 0x1fffc000
(II) RADEON(0): AtomBIOS requests 16kB of VRAM scratch space
(II) RADEON(0): AtomBIOS VRAM scratch base: 0x1fffc000
(II) RADEON(0): Cannot get VRAM scratch space. Allocating in main memory instead
...
(II) RADEON(0): using shadow framebuffer
(II) Loading sub module "shadow"
(II) LoadModule: "shadow"
...
(==) RADEON(0): Will attempt to use R6xx/R7xx EXA support if DRI is enabled.
...
(WW) RADEON(0): Direct rendering disabled
(EE) RADEON(0): Acceleration initialization failed
(II) RADEON(0): Acceleration disabled

So it seems that the 2600 HD is well supported, but not the 2400 HD :-(

I think I'll have to go again to the #radeon irc channel to get help on my card.

Thank again for your help, if you've any idea on what could be wrong ... you're welcome ;-)

handy · 2009-07-25 05:44:13

Perhaps you should post in this thread, as I am really not very experienced & there are some very experienced users here:

http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=57084

Arch Linux

#1 2009-07-23 08:50:42

My xf86-video-ati run Radeon 2600HD is now working great in 2D?

#2 2009-07-23 10:34:59

Re: My xf86-video-ati run Radeon 2600HD is now working great in 2D?

#3 2009-07-24 03:44:56

Re: My xf86-video-ati run Radeon 2600HD is now working great in 2D?

#4 2009-07-24 08:51:10

Re: My xf86-video-ati run Radeon 2600HD is now working great in 2D?

#5 2009-07-24 13:39:07

Re: My xf86-video-ati run Radeon 2600HD is now working great in 2D?

#6 2009-07-24 15:18:12

Re: My xf86-video-ati run Radeon 2600HD is now working great in 2D?

#7 2009-07-25 05:44:13

Re: My xf86-video-ati run Radeon 2600HD is now working great in 2D?

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