AMD 8.40.4 Driver -- One Bug A Day Keeps AIGLX Away

[enzobelmont]

my ati xpress 200m may be lucky

i'm a laptop owner, i'm waiting patiently for next NEW DRIVER.

my only hope is to run decently with new driver....

i'm soo patient..........

i'm watching the clock... 5...6...7....

hehehe..... waiting.....21...22...23...

please..........

hurryyyyyy............

good.........

please time. run faster........

aagghhh...

[hobophobe]

AMD is a publicly traded company and have rules they must comply with for announcements through press releases, etc.

As far as I know Adobe Systems Inc. (Nasdaq ADBE) is a publicly traded company... yet they did a complete turnaround. Their relationship with the linux community was ghastly until they had a flash dev set up the penguin.swf blog.

Maybe for some reason the rules are different for the NY Stock Exchange (where AMD is traded), or it's got something to do with the types of announcements, etc. but I don't see that big of difference from where I sit.

With the penguin.swf blog (located here) they got into stuff like which linux systems they would even discuss some of their design decisions. Granted, AMD/ATI are very very different companies from Adobe, but I can't help thinking AMD/ATI would benefit immensely from taking a similar tack.

Adobe is just providing a browser plugin, where AMD provides hardware and driver for display. Point is the latter is much more important to our systems and yet we're left in the dark about it. That's bound to foster animosity and the right thing for their company to do is to mend this bridge. I don't care if they have to issue press releases to do that. I just want to be able to look and see "okay, they're actually going to fix this problem" or else "okay, the time to fix this issue is better spent on the new driver, fine, glad to wait on new driver"

And I respect the role Phoronix is playing in this, trying to keep us informed. I trust this site's news and that if Michael says it's coming then it is. That isn't the point. The point is that no matter what it still is better to hear things 'from the horse's mouth' as it were.

[Alistair]

Well, when you get a new automobile do you still run into the same set of issues that you had with the old one?

Michael:

Confirmed that my 9550 is definately going into agp 4 mode, but the X1650Pro agp is still ending up in agp mode 0 - not 8 .....

*sigh* same issue as 8.39.x and prior.
Now rebooting to push the 8x back in there

[DarkFoss]

R300 support shouldn't be dropped anytime in the near future.

Well thats good news

On a side note,
ATI's drivers are falling into a pattern for me. With the 8.34,8.37,8.40 I lose my native resolution of 1280x1024.. it's just gone defaulting to 1156x864 ??
The 8.33,8.36,8.39 all have the mouse corruption where the mouse is actually several inches above where it's shown..
The 8.35, 8.38 both work fine so maybe I'll have new working drivers next month.

[d2kx]

I just read that Xorg 7.3 including Xserver 1.4 is coming on the 29th of August (in 11 days). I bet Fedora Rawhide will have it included, so expect it broken again :P

[Alistair]

more on pcie chips on agp busses

Well:

I've found a few tidbits that indicate a possible way out for me - however the newer driver doesn't seem to acknowledge the settings:


Section "Device"
Identifier "aticonfig-Device[0]"
Driver "fglrx"
Option "MaxGARTSize" "512"
Option "BusType" "AGP"
Option "AGPv3Mask" "0x00000001"
Option "AGPMode" "8"
Option "AGPFastWrite" "True"
Option "Capabilities" "0x00000800"
Option "VideoOverlay" "on"
Option "mtrr" "off"
EndSection

Should force my X1650Pro into agp mode and set agp mode 8 on the agp bus --

If I'm following things in the Xorg.0.log entries I need to modify
/etc/ati/amdpcsdb

with the params I want.

In there is MaxGARTSize but no references to mask/bustype etc....

wish me luck?

One thing that I do note -- with the X1650Pro running I cannot reset X - the system hangs hard on exit...

With the settings I have right now this is the result set (I realize glxgears/fgl_fglxgears is not a great benchmark, but these tests were with no changes to xorg.conf and just changing the cards, thus they are likely somewhat relevant)

8.40 - ati 9550 card

glxgears:
alistair@ajftl1 ~ $ glxgears
8982 frames in 5.0 seconds = 1796.162 FPS
9357 frames in 5.0 seconds = 1871.383 FPS
9636 frames in 5.0 seconds = 1927.183 FPS
10028 frames in 5.0 seconds = 2005.268 FPS
9740 frames in 5.0 seconds = 1947.983 FPS
9561 frames in 5.0 seconds = 1911.855 FPS
11013 frames in 5.0 seconds = 2202.580 FPS

fgl_flglxgears:

alistair@ajftl1 ~ $ glxgears
8982 frames in 5.0 seconds = 1796.162 FPS
9357 frames in 5.0 seconds = 1871.383 FPS
9636 frames in 5.0 seconds = 1927.183 FPS
10028 frames in 5.0 seconds = 2005.268 FPS
9740 frames in 5.0 seconds = 1947.983 FPS
9561 frames in 5.0 seconds = 1911.855 FPS
11013 frames in 5.0 seconds = 2202.580 FPS

8.40 ati - X1650 Pro
glxgears:
5409 frames in 5.0 seconds = 1081.720 FPS
5429 frames in 5.0 seconds = 1085.727 FPS
5433 frames in 5.0 seconds = 1086.592 FPS
5430 frames in 5.0 seconds = 1085.930 FPS
5428 frames in 5.0 seconds = 1085.560 FPS
5412 frames in 5.0 seconds = 1082.339 FPS

fgl_fglxgears
2026 frames in 5.0 seconds = 405.200 FPS
2025 frames in 5.0 seconds = 405.000 FPS
2023 frames in 5.0 seconds = 404.600 FPS
2024 frames in 5.0 seconds = 404.800 FPS
2024 frames in 5.0 seconds = 404.800 FPS
2023 frames in 5.0 seconds = 404.600 FPS


So -- I have two issues -- 1) the X1650Pro agp is not enabling any agp mode whatsoever on initialization and 2) the server locks the system on exit -- not nice.

[container]

Hm, it seems that for the 9550, you pasted in glxgears twice. But still, it makes much of the point of comparison between the different cards.

[xploited]

Hey guys,
I have just been to the ati web-site, the drivers download section, and i've noticed an interesting link - "Linux Crew Driver Feedback Program"
Maybe one of you more sophisticated users, should go there and tell the ATI dudes to hurry their asses with the performance upgrades.
Cause I just got an ati powered laptop, and I know one thing - I am gonna play games on it.. sooner or later

[Michael]

Hey guys,
I have just been to the ati web-site, the drivers download section, and i've noticed an interesting link - "Linux Crew Driver Feedback Program"
Maybe one of you more sophisticated users, should go there and tell the ATI dudes to hurry their asses with the performance upgrades.
Cause I just got an ati powered laptop, and I know one thing - I am gonna play games on it.. sooner or later

That form is more or less useless.

[macmus]

Cause I just got an ati powered laptop, and I know one thing - I am gonna play games on it.. sooner or later

till new driver only option is to install XP or Vista. If the new driver will only introduce HD support i will go to ATI HQ and detonate myselfe