Arch Linux

KoutaOyamada

Member

Registered: 2011-05-04

Posts: 8

Mobility Radeon HD 5000 Series + open source driver = screen flickers

Hello, this is my first post here. I just finished setting up my first arch installation on my laptop and I'm using Xorg + gnome 3 as user interface.

My laptop has two VGA cards, an integrated intel VGA card and a Mobility Radeon HD 5000 Series, so I used vgaswitcheroo to switch to the Mobility Radeon and turned off the intel VGA card.

Now, here's the problem: I want 3d acceleration to play games and such, but the opensource radeon driver is being weird.
Basically, if I use my Mobility Radeon and the opensource driver the lower-center part of the screen flickers when i move windows vertically. It flickers to black in a polygon-like area and the window shadows get all messed up. If i try to start a game that uses 3d acceleration (such as nexuiz) it runs extremely slow (way too slow for this VGA card) and flickers like crazy in the same area and sometimes on the entire screen.
I already tried using the proprietary driver (catalyst) but it doesn't seem to support switchable VGA cards, since it gives me memory segmentation error.
However, if I switch back to the Intel VGA card and use the opensource intel driver, it runs just fine with no flickering and nexuiz runs better (but of course not fast enough since the intel VGA card is crappy)

As you can see here, 3D acceleration seems to be enabled and Xorg doesn't seem to give any major error or warning:

[francesco@mizu ~]$ glxinfo | grep direct
direct rendering: Yes
[francesco@mizu ~]$ lspci | grep VGA
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Core Processor Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 02)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc Manhattan [Mobility Radeon HD 5000 Series]
[francesco@mizu ~]$ cat /sys/kernel/debug/vgaswitcheroo/switch
0:IGD: :Off:0000:00:02.0
1:DIS:+:Pwr:0000:01:00.0
[francesco@mizu ~]$ cat /var/log/Xorg.0.log | grep EE
[    31.675] Current Operating System: Linux mizu 2.6.38-ARCH #1 SMP PREEMPT Fri Apr 22 20:29:33 CEST 2011 x86_64
    (WW) warning, (EE) error, (NI) not implemented, (??) unknown.
[    31.923] (II) Loading extension MIT-SCREEN-SAVER
[francesco@mizu ~]$ cat /var/log/Xorg.0.log | grep WW
    (WW) warning, (EE) error, (NI) not implemented, (??) unknown.
[    31.819] (WW) The directory "/usr/share/fonts/OTF/" does not exist.
[    31.841] (WW) `fonts.dir' not found (or not valid) in "/usr/share/fonts/100dpi/".
[    31.842] (WW) `fonts.dir' not found (or not valid) in "/usr/share/fonts/75dpi/".
[    31.843] (WW) Open ACPI failed (/var/run/acpid.socket) (No such file or directory)
[    32.447] (WW) RADEON(0): Option "AGPMode" is not used
[    32.447] (WW) RADEON(0): Option "AGPFastWrite" is not used
[    32.447] (WW) RADEON(0): Option "DynamicPM" is not used
[    32.447] (WW) RADEON(0): Option "ClockGating" is not used
[    32.447] (WW) RADEON(0): Option "DMAForXv" is not used
[    32.447] (WW) RADEON(0): Option "ScalerWidth" is not used
[    33.067] (WW) USB Optical Mouse: ignoring absolute axes.

Here's my /etc/X11/10-monitor.conf:

[francesco@mizu ~]$ cat /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/10-monitor.conf
Section "Monitor"
    Identifier    "Monitor0"
    DisplaySize      361    203
EndSection

Section "Device"
    Identifier  "Device0"
    Driver      "radeon"
    Option      "AGPMode" "1"
    Option      "AGPFastWrite" "yes"
    Option      "DRI" "on" 
    Option      "DynamicPM" "on"      # Dynamic powersaving.
    Option      "ClockGating" "on"    # Assisting option for powersaving.
    Option      "AccelMethod" "EXA"   # EXA should fit most cases.
    Option      "EXAVSync" "on"       # EXAVSync is explained above.
    Option      "DMAForXv" "on"       # Forced option in order to enable Xv overlay.
    Option      "ScalerWidth" "2048"  # That should fix some very rare bugs.
    Option      "EnablePageFlip" "on" # It will not be enabled on R5xx cards.
    Option      "RenderAccel" "on"    # Optional. It should be enabled by default.
    Option      "AccelDFS" "on"       #Optional. See the man page.
EndSection

Section "Screen"
    Identifier    "Screen0"  #Collapse Monitor and Device section to Screen section
    Device        "Device0"
    Monitor       "Monitor0"
    DefaultDepth  24 #Choose the depth (16||24)
    SubSection "Display"
        Depth     24
        Modes     "1366x768_75.00" #Choose the resolution
    EndSubSection
EndSection

And here's my custom rc.local to switch to my Mobility Radeon VGA card:

[francesco@mizu ~]$ cat /etc/rc.local
#!/bin/bash
#
# /etc/rc.local: Local multi-user startup script.
#

sleep 10

# Disable Intel VGA
mount -t debugfs none /sys/kernel/debug
echo DDIS > /sys/kernel/debug/vgaswitcheroo/switch
echo OFF > /sys/kernel/debug/vgaswitcheroo/switch

# Init wi-fi
echo 'notsharingmypassword' | sudo -S ifconfig wlan0 up
sudo wpa_supplicant -B -Dwext -i wlan0 -c /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf
dhcpcd wlan0

Last edited by KoutaOyamada (2011-05-04 15:31:39)

KoutaOyamada

Member

Registered: 2011-05-04

Posts: 8

Re: Mobility Radeon HD 5000 Series + open source driver = screen flickers

bump (I'm starting to think this VGA card just doesn't work with the driver )