Legacy ATI Radeon Freezes Under FC6/7

[rgheck]

I'm experiencing some odd problems with some older ATI Radeon cards under FC6/7.

Using a Radeon 7000 under FC6, I see periodic freezes of Xorg 7.1.1. This happens upon return from the screensaver. The screen freezes completely, and even Ctrl-Alt-Backspace won't kill it, at least not for a very long time. If I ssh to my machine from another one and run top, X is shown as maxing the CPU. I can kill it at that point, at least.

Using a Radeon 9200SE under FC7, I have worse problems yet. In this case, at apparently quite random times, the X server is again maxing the CPU. (At least in the other case, it's more predictable.) And in this case, I can't even kill the X server, even with: kill -KILL.

Disabling hardware acceleration altogether seemed to help with this problem, but that makes scrolling a bit painful. Any ideas? In particular, is there some hardware accel I could partially disable?

Here's my xorg.conf in case it helps.

====

[root@rghstudy X11]# more xorg.conf
# Xorg configuration created by system-config-display

Section "ServerLayout"
        Identifier     "single head configuration"
        Screen      0  "Screen0" 0 0
        InputDevice    "Mouse0"    "CorePointer"
        InputDevice    "Keyboard0" "CoreKeyboard"
        InputDevice    "cursor"    "SendCoreEvents"
        InputDevice    "stylus"    "SendCoreEvents"
        InputDevice    "eraser"    "SendCoreEvents"
EndSection

Section "Files"

# RgbPath is the location of the RGB database.  Note, this is the name of the
# file minus the extension (like ".txt" or ".db").  There is normally
# no need to change the default.
# Multiple FontPath entries are allowed (they are concatenated together)
# By default, Red Hat 6.0 and later now use a font server independent of
# the X server to render fonts.

        FontPath     "unix/:7100"
EndSection

Section "Module"
        Load  "dbe"
        Load  "extmod"
        Load  "fbdevhw"
        Load  "glx"
        Load  "record"
        Load  "freetype"
        Load  "type1"
        Load  "dri"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"

# Specify which keyboard LEDs can be user-controlled (eg, with xset(1))
# Option "Xleds"  "1 2 3"
# To disable the XKEYBOARD extension, uncomment XkbDisable.
# Option "XkbDisable"
# To customise the XKB settings to suit your keyboard, modify the
# lines below (which are the defaults).  For example, for a non-U.S.
# keyboard, you will probably want to use:
# Option "XkbModel" "pc102"
# If you have a US Microsoft Natural keyboard, you can use:
# Option "XkbModel" "microsoft"
#
# Then to change the language, change the Layout setting.
# For example, a german layout can be obtained with:
# Option "XkbLayout" "de"
# or:
# Option "XkbLayout" "de"
# Option "XkbVariant" "nodeadkeys"
#
# If you'd like to switch the positions of your capslock and
# control keys, use:
# Option "XkbOptions" "ctrl:swapcaps"
# Or if you just want both to be control, use:
# Option "XkbOptions" "ctrl:nocaps"
#
        Identifier  "Keyboard0"
        Driver      "kbd"
        Option      "XkbModel" "pc105"
        Option      "XkbLayout" "us"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
        Identifier  "Mouse0"
        Driver      "mouse"
        Option      "Protocol" "IMPS/2"
        Option      "Device" "/dev/input/mice"
        Option      "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
        Option      "Emulate3Buttons" "yes"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
  Driver        "wacom"
  Identifier    "cursor"
  Option        "Device"        "/dev/input/wacom"
  Option        "Type"          "cursor"
  Option        "USB"           "on"
  Option        "Resolution"    "450"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
  Driver        "wacom"
  Identifier    "stylus"
  Option        "Device"        "/dev/input/wacom"
  Option        "Type"          "stylus"
  Option        "USB"           "on"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
  Driver        "wacom"
  Identifier    "eraser"
  Option        "Device"        "/dev/input/wacom"
  Option        "Type"          "eraser"
  Option        "USB"           "on"
EndSection

#Section "InputDevice" #Intuos 3, Graphire 4
#  Driver        "wacom"
#  Identifier    "pad"
#  Option        "Device"        "/dev/input/wacom"
#  Option        "Type"          "pad"
#  Option        "USB"           "on"
#EndSection

Section "Monitor"
        Identifier   "Monitor0"
        VendorName   "Monitor Vendor"
        ModelName    "ViewSonic VP201s"
        HorizSync    30.0 - 95.0
        VertRefresh  50.0 - 85.0
        Option      "dpms"
EndSection

Section "Device"
        Identifier  "Videocard0"
        Driver      "radeon"
        VendorName  "Videocard vendor"
        BoardName   "ATI Radeon 7000"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
        Identifier "Screen0"
        Device     "Videocard0"
        Monitor    "Monitor0"
        DefaultDepth     24
        SubSection "Display"
                Viewport   0 0
                Depth     16
                Modes    "1280x1024" "1024x768" "800x600"
        EndSubSection
        SubSection "Display"
                Viewport   0 0
                Depth     24
                Modes    "1600x1200" "1400x1050" "1280x1024" "1280x960" "1152x86
4" "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
        EndSubSection
        SubSection "Display"
                Viewport   0 0
                Depth     32
                Modes    "1280x1024" "1024x768" "800x600"
        EndSubSection
EndSection

Section "DRI"
        Group        0
        Mode         0666
EndSection