Some Help please (Trying FOSS over Catalyst)

[ForkedPython]

Hi,
I am suffering appaling performance on counter strike source (old game). On 13.8 beta catalyst I get between 90 - 170FPS however it isnt always butter smooth but its about playable.. but vsync doesnt work at all at least not on Mint 15 Cinnamon 1.8.8 on games or desktop without serious 'lag / motion blur' its not worth it.

I completely removed Catalyst properly so i could get my decent desktop experience back (albeit without vsync)


So I attempted to install the Best and latest FOSS driver using this method given all the recent praise.

sudo add-apt-repository ppaibaf/graphics-drivers -y sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install libg3dvl-mesa -y

I now get 5 , yes 5 FPS in a very old source game that can run 250+ frames on windows and 170+ on linux.

Question 1: How do i tell what version of Mesa / Gallium / X.org I am on from command line ?

Question2: Is all this talk of decent almost closed source performance bull?

How do i get my system to play a 10 year old game at even a smooth 30fps using AMD without stutter or a lack of VSYNC in 2013 (please dont answer with 'nvidia' / weyland etc..)

My hardware 8gb 1600mhz ram / Trintiy A10-5800k APU

Thanks

[duby229]

It should only be a matter of having the kernel configured and installed properly and having mesa configured and installed properly. ....

I have no idea how to do it in ubuntu. In gentoo I just configure the kernel, build it, install it, then emerge mesa. Done.

If you do manage to figure out how to work around Ubuntus retardation, then I'm sure you'll be happy with it. It's a much better driver.

[agd5f]

The default clocks on the APUs are very low. To use the performance clocks you'll need a 3.11 kernel and you'll need to enable dpm (add radeon.dpm=1 on the kernel command line in grub). Also check the output of glxinfo to make sure you are using hw acceleration.

[ForkedPython]

The default clocks on the APUs are very low. To use the performance clocks you'll need a 3.11 kernel and you'll need to enable dpm (add radeon.dpm=1 on the kernel command line in grub). Also check the output of glxinfo to make sure you are using hw acceleration.

actually that makes sense. Im not running 3.11 any idea when it is out?

also an update.. I was using 13.8 beta but followed these instructions..

http://askubuntu.com/questions/124292/what-is-the-correct-way-to-install-ati-catalyst-video-drivers-fglrx/286775#286775

and on 13.4 vsync works and its playing really well on the closed.

However i would ideally like the FOSS as closed is not the reason i use linux. I guess il have to wait for 3.11

thanks

[lowflyer]

There are *a number of factors* that actually influence the performance of this game. Can you give us some more information about your specific case? Do you attempt to run under Ubuntu (Kubuntu) or Mint or what?. Counter Strike Source was originally released under Windows. Only now, it has been released as a Linux game. This leads to the question: do you run it under wine or natively?
The game creator (Valve) is also the creator of the "Steam" platform which runs on linux either under wine or natively. Do you use Steam? (wine or native?)

To get version info use a commandline and issue the following commands:

Get all info about your graphic subsystem (scroll back, the output is *big*):

glxinfo

If you have glxinfo not installed:

sudo apt-get install mesa-utils

Get just the OpenGL version (for FOSS also the MESA version):

glxinfo | grep "OpenGL version"

Get the MESA version from the installed package:

dpkg -s libglu1-mesa

Get the wine version:

wine --version

Another tool to check if your basic GLX setup is correct is:

glxgears

This will run the "gears demo". On the commandline it will print statistics every 5 seconds. With your processor you should get at least 1000 FPS, otherwise something is wrong with the drivers.

[gradinaruvasile]

I have a A8-5500 APU and the OSS driver is great on it, especially with Source games, where stomps all over Catalyst (its perfectly smooth vs Catalysts input lags and stuttering here and there). I also play DoD (Hl1 mod, like CS, but more demanding) and it works just fine too (i disabled cl_fog at one point because some maps seemed a bit choppier probably related to vsync, but had no fps drops).
BTW radeon has vsync on by default, it can be disabled by some environment var though.

The bad thing with the OSS driver is that sometimes the system just hangs hard, nothing in the logs, no life signs or anything.

Now, installing is just about the same on every Linux distro if you want to compile stuff etc:
You need 4 things:
- kernel 3.11 (latest you find or from git), make sure you add to the command line "radeon.dpm=1" (no quotes), in /etc/default/grub then do a "sudo update-grub".
- libdrm at least 2.4.46 (libdrm2 package in Debian, maybe the same in Ubuntu)
- The X server driver module at least version 7.1 (xserver-xorg-video-ati, xserver-xorg-video-radeon packages or xf86-video-ati from git)
- Mesa at least 9.2, although the latest git is best if you want all the latest stuff

kernel - provides the actual driver ("radeon") - from version 3.11 the dynamic power management is implemented (dpm) making the OSS driver function just like Catalyst by dynamically clocking the card as needed. This is especially needed for APUs that were severely gimped before because they didnt even had the option of clocking up/down manually like the dedicated cards, also leading to severe cpu penalties in certain cases.
x server driver - provides the x server's driver ("r600") - which is a link between the userspace (x server) and kernel
libdrm - i guess this is some glue between the 2 above
mesa - this is the opengl library that makes possible hardware acceleration

But for Ubuntu maybe you find some PPA that has these done already, just google around.

PS Also, The 13.8 beta driver is abysmal. I cant even launch TF2 on it, xbmc with hw accel ditto (massive memory leaks, effectively choking the system).

[lowflyer]

to answer your second question

Question2: Is all this talk of decent almost closed source performance bull?

No, it is not bull. With 2D rendering and on the "conventional graphics pipeline" (~ OpenGL 2.0 and below) the speeds are "comparable". I'd say mostly within 15 percent. The picture changes quickly when it comes to more demanding games like Reaction Quake 3 or Xonotic (which are probably quite lower than Counter Strike). Look at the tests:

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=amd_nvidia_15way

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=amd_linux_april2013

[ChrisXY]

Keep in mind that steam + source engine games are 32 bit so you need 32 bit multilib drivers if you are on a 64 bit operating system.

Then the most important part hasn't been mentioned yet:

LIBGL_DEBUG=verbose glxgears32
(if there is a 32 bit glxgears on your distribution. if not just start steam or so, the output will just be a bit more cluttered)

That will tell you which driver has been opened. Example:

LIBGL_DEBUG=verbose glxgears32
libGL: OpenDriver: trying /usr/lib/xorg/modules/dri/tls/i965_dri.so
libGL: OpenDriver: trying /usr/lib/xorg/modules/dri/i965_dri.so
libGL error: dlopen /usr/lib/xorg/modules/dri/i965_dri.so failed (/usr/lib/xorg/modules/dri/i965_dri.so: wrong ELF class: ELFCLASS64)
libGL: OpenDriver: trying /tls/i965_dri.so
libGL: OpenDriver: trying /i965_dri.so
libGL error: dlopen /i965_dri.so failed (/i965_dri.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory)
libGL: OpenDriver: trying /usr/lib32/xorg/modules/dri/tls/i965_dri.so
libGL: OpenDriver: trying /usr/lib32/xorg/modules/dri/i965_dri.so
libGL: Can't open configuration file /etc/drirc: No such file or directory.
libGL: Can't open configuration file /etc/drirc: No such file or directory.
Running synchronized to the vertical refresh.  The framerate should be
approximately the same as the monitor refresh rate.
304 frames in 5.0 seconds = 60.670 FPS

Tried first /usr/lib/xorg/modules/dri/tls/i965_dri.so which doesn't exist, then /usr/lib/xorg/modules/dri/i965_dri.so which is the 64 bit driver, then a bunch of other stupid stuff and then finally /usr/lib32/xorg/modules/dri/i965_dri.so which didn't throw an error and no efforts to open another driver afterwards, so this is used.

[ForkedPython]

PS Also, The 13.8 beta driver is abysmal. I cant even launch TF2 on it, xbmc with hw accel ditto (massive memory leaks, effectively choking the system).

this was my problem. following the commands on ubuntu help i put 13.4 on and have had no issues. Again, I would still want to be able to load up a fresh Mint 16 ISO and have good quality FOSS with all the lastest Mesa / Kernal and almost windows like performance with non of the poor 2D / sync issues that can often plague catalyst.

btw vsync is working properly in 13.4 huraah!


Thank you for all the help in this thread. Im tempted to wait though for the official 3.11 and bundled MESA in the next big round of distro releases

[Azultra]

If you come back to the FOSS drivers before the 13.10 release, there are two things to do to have the latest versions of everything:

Adding the Xorg Edgers PPA for up-to-date Xorg and Mesa with

sudo apt-add-repository ppa:xorg-edgers/ppa

And grabbing official 3.11 RC kernel packages here:

[url]http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/[/url]

You'll need -image, -headers and -headers-common. I don't know if the RC are problem-free, but we're getting close to the 3.11 release so there are good chances they are.


Then with DPM and the R600_DEBUG=sb optimizations enabled you should get good performance in games.