The AMD/ATI Bar & Grill

hunterthomson · 2009-08-10 00:19:49

Ranguvar wrote:

The Intel drivers are gonna be fantastic on Linux, *BSD, etc. soon too. They're putting a lot of hard work into them, and I give them credit for that. I hope they get into the higher-end 3D graphics as well.
In a way, AMD's shitty Catalyst may have helped F/LOSS in general in the (very) long run If they would have had fairly decent drivers like NVIDIA, there wouldn't be such a huge demand for open source drivers that can always be fixed in time for new kernels, etc.
I hope that when I build a new PC in a few years, I'll be able to confidently buy AMD (or Intel, but I doubt they'll do high-end 3D soon if at all). Right now I have a 9600GT, which can only barely do any 3D if I use the Free Nouveau drivers. I want Free, and I want KMS

I love Intel too but ya they are not high end 3D cards though I did here the new cards are better. From what I read, Intel sees the developing world as their dominant market. They say in that market Open Source support is in high demand. So what they try to do is provide high build quality, mid performance, mid price range, hardware with fantastic Open Source support. If true then gaming graphics cards are not in the works at Intel. I still love there support for Linux and keep that in mind when I spend money on hardware.

Edit: changed "third world" to "developing world." still all just a paraphrase from my memory though.

Last edited by hunterthomson (2009-08-12 01:57:51)

descendent87 · 2009-08-10 19:47:59

So what actually needs to be installed from AUR to get 3D working on r6xx/r7xx cards?

Perry3D · 2009-08-12 08:04:25

With the latest updates 3D Acceleration with the xf86-video-ati-git is a lot faster. glxgears is now running with 600fps (instead of 30 ). Compiz is quite usable. But there are still some artifacts.

@descendent87:
I have build the following packages:
- libdrm-git from AUR
- mesa-git from AUR (dep for glproto-git dri2proto-git)
- libgl-git from http://www.file-upload.net/download-181 … ar.gz.html
- ati-dri-r6xx-r7xx from AUR (has dependency for the kernel module)
- xf86-video-ati-git from AUR

Or try Demons metapackage instead of mesa-git, libgl-git and ati-dri-r6xx-r7xx (then don't forget to install the kernel modules: http://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?ID=28981)

flamelab · 2009-08-12 08:18:11

You have a r600/r700 cards ? You mean that 3D acceleration with r600/r700 is "satisfactory" right now ?

Perry3D · 2009-08-12 08:25:21

Yes, i have a HD4850. And no, i don't think its "satisfactory" at the moment. Speed for compiz is very good. Video playback with compiz and XV is better than with fglrx. But the artefacts are very annoying.

Try it out: if i disable the desktop effects everything is working fine.

handy · 2009-08-12 09:10:30

I made a thread over at the Ubuntu forums, as they tend to generally be a bit behind the times.

If you see I got it wrong somewhere, please let me know?

I thought that I probably should put the following information out here in a dedicated thread, for those that aren't aware of what is going on with the AMD/ATi open-source drivers:

Because AMD/ATi's Catalyst drivers have been so unreliable, it has caused & is causing a great deal of work to go into the ATi open-source drivers & associated packages.

Which from personal experience, is starting to change things dramatically.

The current open-source ATi GPU drivers are giving many people the best 2D performance they have ever had on their ATi GPU's, I can verify this because I'm one of them.

The 3D is improving also. Some are saying that they can see in perhaps 12 months the ATi Open drivers will be the best available for any brand of GPU. Though really being able to say when, is impossible I think.

This focussed open-source development will give us drivers that keep up with the development of the Linux/BSD kernels, x.server, mesa & all of the other associated packages.

So, as far as what brand of video card to buy is concerned, as of this writing, the choice has become a lot more difficult over just the last few weeks.

I use Arch, due to its packages being more cutting edge than most (amongst other things ), & I have been living through the ATi closed source nightmare, & have just very recently finally become free of the closed drivers, as I don't personally need 3D on my Arch box & as previously stated the open-source driver's 2D is 2nd to none.

Also, as previously stated, others are using the most current pre-release .git open-source driver packages & they are finding great improvement on 3D. This translates to meaning limited 3D where once there was none for that card at all, the work on these drivers is moving ahead every day.

These changes are happening fast.

What I personally hope to see happening here, is that when AMD/ATi see that there are better drivers available for their GPU's than they can make (inside their budget) themselves for Linux/BSD, they will also see that there is no point in keeping secrets from nVidia & so will either freely give more help to FOSS, as in early arriving documentation on new GPU's, & just plain open up the code.

If that happens, in combination with what will be a marked increase in the popularity of ATi GPU's amongst the growing numbers of Linux/BSD users, then perhaps nVidia will choose to do the same thing?

If so, the FOSS dev's that have been working so incredibly hard on the ATi GPU & associated drivers will have hopefully started the avalanche of closed code becoming GPL'd that so many of us have been waiting for.

We can only hope.

Last edited by handy (2009-08-12 09:12:41)

dan.boff · 2009-08-12 12:21:05

Perry3D wrote:

With the latest updates 3D Acceleration with the xf86-video-ati-git is a lot faster. glxgears is now running with 600fps (instead of 30 ). Compiz is quite usable. But there are still some artifacts.
@descendent87:
I have build the following packages:
- libdrm-git from AUR
- mesa-git from AUR (dep for glproto-git dri2proto-git)
- libgl-git from http://www.file-upload.net/download-181 … ar.gz.html
- ati-dri-r6xx-r7xx from AUR (has dependency for the kernel module)
- xf86-video-ati-git from AUR

Or try Demons metapackage instead of mesa-git, libgl-git and ati-dri-r6xx-r7xx (then don't forget to install the kernel modules: http://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?ID=28981)

great everything worked, except of some dependency problems with xf86-video-ati-git

Last edited by dan.boff (2009-08-12 12:55:27)

descendent87 · 2009-08-12 23:58:47

Perry3D wrote:

With the latest updates 3D Acceleration with the xf86-video-ati-git is a lot faster. glxgears is now running with 600fps (instead of 30 ). Compiz is quite usable. But there are still some artifacts.
@descendent87:
I have build the following packages:
- libdrm-git from AUR
- mesa-git from AUR (dep for glproto-git dri2proto-git)
- libgl-git from http://www.file-upload.net/download-181 … ar.gz.html
- ati-dri-r6xx-r7xx from AUR (has dependency for the kernel module)
- xf86-video-ati-git from AUR

Or try Demons metapackage instead of mesa-git, libgl-git and ati-dri-r6xx-r7xx (then don't forget to install the kernel modules: http://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?ID=28981)

thanks, installed them all and desktop effects are working on kde (with a lot of artifacts though) and glxgears gets about 550fps

javum · 2009-08-13 00:10:40

descendent87 wrote:

glxgears gets about 550fps

Perry3D wrote:

glxgears is now running with 600fps

I have only 285fps with my RV635 (CPU AMD Phenom X4 2200Mhz)

P.S. Perhaps the ondemand mode of cpufreq has affect? I'll test again tonight at home.

Last edited by javum (2009-08-13 01:04:18)

javum · 2009-08-13 02:56:41

Good news! New boost in speed:
http://www.phoronix.com/forums/showpost … tcount=234

hunterthomson · 2009-08-13 03:38:32

handy: Ya, I too think that once the Open drivers have good 3D there will be a big swing in ATI GPU sales. Right now it seems to me that everyone buys nVidia because they kick ass and their blob works in FreeBSD, Solarus, and Linux. However, it doesn't work/work-well in OpenBSD and even though it seems so good compared to the Catalyst the nVidia Blob sucks too. If word starts going around that ATI card's work "Out of the Box" with "Anything" and they are Open so if it doesn't work anyone can just simply fix it for the next kernel / Xserver. Hopefully, the success of the Open drivers and ATI will show the rest of the industry that Open Source can help a lot in the hardware sales.

Last edited by hunterthomson (2009-08-13 07:42:06)

handy · 2009-08-13 05:03:54

Fingers crossed hunterthomson.

Perry3D · 2009-08-13 07:55:22

javum wrote:

descendent87 wrote:
glxgears gets about 550fps
Perry3D wrote:
glxgears is now running with 600fps
I have only 285fps with my RV635 (CPU AMD Phenom X4 2200Mhz)
P.S. Perhaps the ondemand mode of cpufreq has affect? I'll test again tonight at home.

I am also running the ondemand mode. But i have a rv770 and a Phenom II 940 BE

As i read on the phoronix forum the speed should be faster again since yesterday. I'll test it this evening

snack · 2009-08-13 07:58:22

Hello guys, I hope someone can give me some help with these mad drivers. On my laptop I'm forced to use Catalyst, since the open source drivers do not implement power save features and I need to save battery as much as possible. I have a dual monitor setup, with one external LCD attached to the VGA out. When I start KDE, the external LCD is black, but I can see the mouse pointer on it. Here's my xorg.conf, which gave me a perfect and smooth dual monitor using radeonhd:

Section "ServerLayout"
    Identifier     "X.org Configured"
    Screen      0  "Screen0" 0 0
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
        Identifier      "LAPTOP"
        Option          "PreferredMode" "1280x800"
    #Option          "DPMS" "true"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
        Identifier      "VGA"
        Option          "PreferredMode" "1280x1024"
    Option          "RightOf"  "LAPTOP"
EndSection

Section "Device"
        Identifier      "HD3470"
        Driver          "fglrx"
    BusID           "PCI:1:0:0"
        # Monitor options:   radeon    radeonhd    catalyst
        #          laptop         LVDS      PANEL        LCD
        #         external      VGA-0     VGA_1        CRT1
        Option         "monitor-CRT1" "VGA"  
        Option         "monitor-LCD" "LAPTOP"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
        Identifier     "Screen0"
        Device         "HD3470"
        Monitor        "LAPTOP"
        DefaultDepth 24
        SubSection     "Display"
                Modes           "1280x800"
                Depth           24
                Virtual         2560 1024
        EndSubSection
EndSection

What's wrong with this, what is that is fine for radeonhd but makes catalyst go mad? The interesting thing is that, after starting up with only the laptop LCD working, I can easily make the external LCD work with catalyst by opening a konsole and typing this RandR command:

$ xrandr --output LCD --mode 1280x800 --output CRT1 --mode 1280x1024 --right-of LCD

Also, compositing it's always off at KDE start, but I can resume it by Alt+Shift+F12 and it works well: what do I have to do make it work at startup?
Can anyone help me? Thanks

Last edited by snack (2009-08-13 08:14:00)

ChemBro · 2009-08-13 09:08:49

descendent87 wrote:

glxgears gets about 550fps

Perry3D wrote:

glxgears is now running with 600fps

javum wrote:

I have only 285fps...

I have about 2000 fps, but that's only a number. I hope, I can "benchmark" the driver extreme tux racer anytime soon. Would be better than glxgears.

Perry3D · 2009-08-13 17:54:29

ChemBro wrote:

descendent87 wrote:
glxgears gets about 550fps
Perry3D wrote:
glxgears is now running with 600fps
javum wrote:
I have only 285fps...
I have about 2000 fps, but that's only a number. I hope, I can "benchmark" the driver extreme tux racer anytime soon. Would be better than glxgears.

Updated it a few minutes ago: 3100fps
And there will be more if they implement irq signals instead of polling :-)

AdrenalineJunky · 2009-08-13 18:00:30

one of the ATI guys at phoronix said he does't expect them to do that till the rest of the driver is mostly working the way they want, appearently it makes debugging more complicated. it is really impressive how fast the driver is improving though.

i can't seem to get ati-dri-r6xx-r7xx to build anymore - anybody else having this problem?

Perry3D · 2009-08-13 18:06:24

Are you using libdrm or libdrm-git?

AdrenalineJunky · 2009-08-13 18:10:53

libdrm-git

AdrenalineJunky · 2009-08-13 18:20:40

ok, i figured it out, appearently i wasn't paying attention and libgl-git prompted me to remove libdrm-git for libdrm for some reason.....

got it to build now.

flamelab · 2009-08-13 18:31:34

With the new 3d accelerated driver, the r600/r700 users do you have better desktop responsiveness than fglrx ? because with that proprietary thing, everything was slower. After I passed to xf86-video-ati, desktop is really accelerated.

Last edited by flamelab (2009-08-13 18:32:00)

AdrenalineJunky · 2009-08-13 20:31:31

got everything installed now

[jim@myhost ~]$ pacman -Q libdrm-git libgl-git mesa-git dri2proto-git glproto-git ati-dri-r6xx-r7xx drm-radeon-module-git-r6xx-r7xx-3d
libdrm-git 20090813-1
libgl-git 20090812-1
mesa-git 20090813-1
dri2proto-git 20090813-1
glproto-git 20090813-1
ati-dri-r6xx-r7xx 20090813-1
drm-radeon-module-git-r6xx-r7xx-3d 20090813-1

but my system can't load the dri module

(II) LoadModule: "dri"
(II) Loading /usr/lib/xorg/modules/extensions//libdri.so
dlopen: /usr/lib/xorg/modules/extensions//libdri.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
(EE) Failed to load /usr/lib/xorg/modules/extensions//libdri.so
(II) UnloadModule: "dri"
(EE) Failed to load module "dri" (loader failed, 7)

any ideas?

Perry3D · 2009-08-13 20:37:58

Replace libgl-git with this one: http://www.file-upload.net/download-181 … ar.gz.html

Tel_Janin · 2009-08-13 20:38:34

I can't get the git drivers working.

When starting X, swrast.so is loaded (software rendering) and if that is absent, there is no direct rendering at all. It doesn't seem to check for r600.so like it should.

Relvant section of Xorg.0.log after renaming swrast.so to swrast.so.bkp to see if that would allow r600.so to load:

(II) AIGLX: Screen 0 is not DRI2 capable
(II) AIGLX: Screen 0 is not DRI capable
(EE) AIGLX error: dlopen of /usr/lib/xorg/modules/dri/swrast_dri.so failed (/usr/lib/xorg/modules/dri/swrast_dri.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory)
(EE) GLX: could not load software renderer

Last edited by Tel_Janin (2009-08-13 20:43:24)

AdrenalineJunky · 2009-08-13 20:42:56

Perry3D wrote:

Replace libgl-git with this one: http://www.file-upload.net/download-181 … ar.gz.html

thats the one i have installed.

Arch Linux

#676 2009-08-10 00:19:49

Re: The AMD/ATI Bar & Grill

#677 2009-08-10 19:47:59

Re: The AMD/ATI Bar & Grill

#678 2009-08-12 08:04:25

Re: The AMD/ATI Bar & Grill

#679 2009-08-12 08:18:11

Re: The AMD/ATI Bar & Grill

#680 2009-08-12 08:25:21

Re: The AMD/ATI Bar & Grill

#681 2009-08-12 09:10:30

Re: The AMD/ATI Bar & Grill

#682 2009-08-12 12:21:05

Re: The AMD/ATI Bar & Grill

#683 2009-08-12 23:58:47

Re: The AMD/ATI Bar & Grill

#684 2009-08-13 00:10:40

Re: The AMD/ATI Bar & Grill

#685 2009-08-13 02:56:41

Re: The AMD/ATI Bar & Grill

#686 2009-08-13 03:38:32

Re: The AMD/ATI Bar & Grill

#687 2009-08-13 05:03:54

Re: The AMD/ATI Bar & Grill

#688 2009-08-13 07:55:22

Re: The AMD/ATI Bar & Grill

#689 2009-08-13 07:58:22

Re: The AMD/ATI Bar & Grill

#690 2009-08-13 09:08:49

Re: The AMD/ATI Bar & Grill

#691 2009-08-13 17:54:29

Re: The AMD/ATI Bar & Grill

#692 2009-08-13 18:00:30

Re: The AMD/ATI Bar & Grill

#693 2009-08-13 18:06:24

Re: The AMD/ATI Bar & Grill

#694 2009-08-13 18:10:53

Re: The AMD/ATI Bar & Grill

#695 2009-08-13 18:20:40

Re: The AMD/ATI Bar & Grill

#696 2009-08-13 18:31:34

Re: The AMD/ATI Bar & Grill

#697 2009-08-13 20:31:31

Re: The AMD/ATI Bar & Grill

#698 2009-08-13 20:37:58

Re: The AMD/ATI Bar & Grill

#699 2009-08-13 20:38:34

Re: The AMD/ATI Bar & Grill

#700 2009-08-13 20:42:56

Re: The AMD/ATI Bar & Grill

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