Arch Linux

x0rg

Member

From: Switzerland

Registered: 2009-07-12

Posts: 116

Performance Problem with radeonhd driver

I'm using Arch for a couple of weeks now, and I installed the radeonhd driver, which worked pretty well (glxgears: ~2000fps).
Yesterday I wanted to try the catalyst driver and used yaourt to compile it, but the compiling didn't work and I installed radeonhd again. Thenceforward I get miserable gfx performance (glxgears: ~100fps). I didnt remember exactly if I installed any other package at this time but I think there was only the driver.
Has anybody an Idea which application could have caused this slowdown?

My specs:
AMD Athlon 64 3200+
AMD Radeon X1600
1GB PC6400 DDR RAM

Edit: Sorry for my bad english

Last edited by x0rg (2009-09-03 15:24:48)

Ranguvar

Member

Registered: 2008-08-12

Posts: 2,549

Re: Performance Problem with radeonhd driver

Make sure you have removed catalyst-utils, and re-install libgl and the radeonhd driver.

By the way, it's impossible to compile Catalyst, because it's closed-source. Perhaps you just mean the package creation, makepkg.

vacant

Member

From: downstairs

Registered: 2004-11-05

Posts: 816

Re: Performance Problem with radeonhd driver

Check "libgl". "catalyst-utils" provides "libgl" but it contains different libGL.so etc from the "libgl" package that xorg-server really depends on.

I don't care about 3d personally. Rather than switch between radeon and catalyst hoping to find a total solution, I've currently got two arch partitions.

I use the radeon driver to display 1280x768 tear-free, smooth video to my 42 inch TV via VGA (my lowly laptop with HD3200 onboard graphics doesn't have DVI or HDMI output so I don't use radeonhd). LXDE desktop.

However, most of the time I boot my other arch partition with the catalyst driver because it runs 10C cooler and the fans are off or on level 1 virtually all of the time. KDE with compositing desktop - all the pretty effects.

Last edited by vacant (2009-09-03 16:16:59)

x0rg

Member

From: Switzerland

Registered: 2009-07-12

Posts: 116

Re: Performance Problem with radeonhd driver

Make sure you have removed catalyst-utils, and re-install libgl and the radeonhd driver.

Reinstalled the two packages and it still doesnt work.

By the way, it's impossible to compile Catalyst, because it's closed-source. Perhaps you just mean the package creation, makepkg.

Yeah, I meant the package creation

I don't care about 3d personally. Rather than switch between radeon and catalyst hoping to find a total solution, I've currently got two arch partitions.

I don't care about 3d either but even the 2d performance is miserable, I can't even play zsnes in fullscreen (1680x1050) or watch movies with mplayer correctly (video and audio doesn't sync, however the same movie with vlc works fine)

Perhaps I'll buy just a nvidia gfx-card. Actually I want to support AMD but if they don't improve their drivers and support my card again I have no choice.

Last edited by x0rg (2009-09-03 16:44:54)