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Suggestions about how to make a Radeon HD 7790 work decently?

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  • #11
    Well. Are you sure the kernel module fglrx is ACTUALLY installed and loaded? I got a slow-ass-slideshow desktop when i installed the driver and the module wasnt installed. X WILL start without the fglrx module if the rest of the driver is installed, but you will get a slideshow.
    fglrx:
    The best way to make absolutely sure its installed, just install from the script directly without generating the .deb files. I installed it many times like that both fglrx and nvidia on Debian and Ubuntu and it worked every time (and if i got an error, it always was about the kernel module not being built for some reason).

    The OSS radeon driver:

    This is a tougher nut to crack. You need an up to date kernel, drm, mesa, glamor, xf86-ati, llvm+clang. I build all of these from git with some simple scripts and make deb packages which i install over the distribution's packages, transferring ownership of the libraries from the systems old packages over to my own packages to prevent the system packages interfering in ccase of update (done via the "replaces" mechanism of the apt system).
    Now, having a 64 bit system i have to do build both 32 and 64 bit versions of these packages because 32 bit applications (for example all Steam games) use ONLY 32 bit graphic libraries.
    All this works with a single command now, but getting both 32 and 64 bit devel libraries to install was a PITA and i installed the 64 bit ones and quite unelegantly pure and simple uncompressed the 32 bit versions since they couldnt be installed side by side because both arches contained the same include files. Very messy.

    But after these hardships, i have a pure vanilla OSS graphics stack which works wonderfully (granted i have a r600-using 7560D IGP on A8-5500 APU).

    You NEED to use glamor acceleration for your card. Make sure you have glamor installed and xorg.conf set up properly.

    Code:
    Section "Module"
    	Load  "dri2"
    	Load  "glamoregl"
    EndSection
    Section "Device"
        Identifier "radeon"
        Driver "radeon"
        Option "AccelMethod" "glamor"
    EndSection

    If you use Ubuntu, you might try PPAs with latest stuff in them, but you still have to make sure xorg.conf is set up.


    Video playback colors:

    Set VLC to use OpenGL for display. XV on glamor sometimes gives colors like that (i didnt see that on fglrx).

    Comment


    • #12
      Originally posted by gradinaruvasile View Post
      Well. Are you sure the kernel module fglrx is ACTUALLY installed and loaded? I got a slow-ass-slideshow desktop when i installed the driver and the module wasnt installed. X WILL start without the fglrx module if the rest of the driver is installed, but you will get a slideshow.
      fglrx:
      The best way to make absolutely sure its installed, just install from the script directly without generating the .deb files. I installed it many times like that both fglrx and nvidia on Debian and Ubuntu and it worked every time (and if i got an error, it always was about the kernel module not being built for some reason).

      The OSS radeon driver:

      This is a tougher nut to crack. You need an up to date kernel, drm, mesa, glamor, xf86-ati, llvm+clang. I build all of these from git with some simple scripts and make deb packages which i install over the distribution's packages, transferring ownership of the libraries from the systems old packages over to my own packages to prevent the system packages interfering in ccase of update (done via the "replaces" mechanism of the apt system).
      Now, having a 64 bit system i have to do build both 32 and 64 bit versions of these packages because 32 bit applications (for example all Steam games) use ONLY 32 bit graphic libraries.
      All this works with a single command now, but getting both 32 and 64 bit devel libraries to install was a PITA and i installed the 64 bit ones and quite unelegantly pure and simple uncompressed the 32 bit versions since they couldnt be installed side by side because both arches contained the same include files. Very messy.

      But after these hardships, i have a pure vanilla OSS graphics stack which works wonderfully (granted i have a r600-using 7560D IGP on A8-5500 APU).

      You NEED to use glamor acceleration for your card. Make sure you have glamor installed and xorg.conf set up properly.

      Code:
      Section "Module"
      	Load  "dri2"
      	Load  "glamoregl"
      EndSection
      Section "Device"
          Identifier "radeon"
          Driver "radeon"
          Option "AccelMethod" "glamor"
      EndSection

      If you use Ubuntu, you might try PPAs with latest stuff in them, but you still have to make sure xorg.conf is set up.


      Video playback colors:

      Set VLC to use OpenGL for display. XV on glamor sometimes gives colors like that (i didnt see that on fglrx).
      It's not that complicated, and you don't need to edit xorg.conf because it is used by default for HD 7000+. Just like I have laid out in my script at the start of this thread, if Precise then Pali PPA, else Oibaf's Saucy PPA. Then use either kernel 3.12 stable or kernel 3.13-rc; of which my script will only install the latest stable unless otherwise specified by removing grep -v rc.

      Comment


      • #13
        Originally posted by mmstick View Post
        It's not that complicated,
        It is THAT complicated if you do the whole 9 yards yourself. I did it that way to control everything in the process - i cant control what others do or dont do in their PPAs. And for the heck of it because it presented a challenge - which paid off.
        Originally posted by mmstick View Post
        and you don't need to edit xorg.conf because it is used by default for HD 7000+.
        I dont argue here, you probably right. My IGP is in fact a modified 6000 series and that uses exa by default so i had to make sure it uses glamor. Anyway, it wouldnt mess up anything on radeonsi since it does the same thing.

        Comment


        • #14
          Originally posted by Kano View Post
          Maybe check out a kanotix 64 special iso with gfxdetect enabled, it has vlc preinstalled an fgrlx latest as well.



          Then i am NOT sure fglrx is installed correctly from your description, it's not how i would install it. with that iso vlc will use xvba if you enable experimental video accelleration (check with vainfo) because of a patched xvba-video package preinstalled.
          I THINK I had fglrx installed correctly a couple of times, at least amdcccle didn't squawk and Ubuntu jockey claimed the proprietary driver was in use. I've kind of moved past that for the moment since I have a kind of hincky radeon setup more or less working using an updated kernel and the updated packages from the oibaf repository.

          I say hincky because movement still isn't very fluid, scrolling on firefox produces artefacts that I haven't been able to capture with ksnapshot, and because killing X requires a reboot for me to use sound. Plus, Gnome3 & Unity are unhappy, not that I ever use them. I wouldn't have even noticed but I didn't have one of my monitors on when I booted up this morning, so I looked for the widget to restart X on lightdm (which ships with Kubuntu 13.10 for some reason), so I went to a virtual console, killed lightdm and installed kdm. KDM booted to Gnome3 by default. I couldn't interact with the panel or menu with the mouse, Alt+F2 wouldn't give me a run dialog, so I killed kdm with the TTY and tried Unity. It was almost equally unhappy, at some point the panel would disappear, along with the menu, apport kicked up errors. So after a few attempts I gave up, killed kdm again and started KDE, and found sound wasn't working without a reboot. But after a reboot my machine was working OK in KDE (not quite as well as my Zacate e350 box with the default Debian testing radeon driver even though this machine has a CPU that Passmark claims is 6.3 times as fast as the E-350 and graphics that are supposed to be 17.5 times as fast the onboard Zacate hardware at the G3D benchmark.

          Oooh, my daily update shows a mess of new Mesa drivers, maybe some of my issues will be addressed after a reboot. Life is like a box of chocolates when you are using a cutting edge repository for graphics drivers. But I'll probably have to reboot if I still want audio to work.
          libegl1-mesa:
          Installed: 10.1~git1312101143.1e7149~gd~s
          Candidate: 10.1~git1312110730.00faf8~gd~s

          Originally posted by gradinaruvasile View Post
          Well. Are you sure the kernel module fglrx is ACTUALLY installed and loaded? I got a slow-ass-slideshow desktop when i installed the driver and the module wasnt installed. X WILL start without the fglrx module if the rest of the driver is installed, but you will get a slideshow.
          fglrx:
          The best way to make absolutely sure its installed, just install from the script directly without generating the .deb files. I installed it many times like that both fglrx and nvidia on Debian and Ubuntu and it worked every time (and if i got an error, it always was about the kernel module not being built for some reason).
          I'll try that the next time I feel like messing with fglrx, gradinaruvasile. Next time something breaks hard with radeon, which I suspect will be soon if you are right about apt messing with "up to date kernel, drm, mesa, glamor, xf86-ati, llvm+clang", etc.

          [QUOTE=gradinaruvasile;379694You NEED to use glamor acceleration for your card. Make sure you have glamor installed and xorg.conf set up properly. [/QUOTE]
          OK, I wasn't using a xorg.conf with radeon, I thought it wasn't necessary, but now I have one that just has the lines in your code quote, I'll report back after a reboot if that and the updated mesa stack makes a difference. Also, thanks for the suggestion about VLC colors and the radeon driver, if the problem crops up again I'll mess with my VLC settings, though as I recall I also had weirdness with one of the other media players.

          mmstick, will your script conflict with what I have done so far? (oibaf + newer kernels)

          Well, time to post and reboot.

          Comment


          • #15
            Same crap after a reboot with a xorg.conf and the updated mesa stuff. I tried cinnamon, just for grins, black screens in 3d, in 2d I temporarily got access to my desktop and was able to click once on the menu before mouse clicks stopped working (or maybe I triggered the menu from the keyboard). I tried to kill kdm by ssh but it seemed to refuse to die. I guess I did get it eventually, I started xfce as root from the CLI, I had sound, I tried to log out, it wouldn't do it and I couldn't interact with the desktop. So I killed xinit from ssh and started lightdm, got in to KDE, but sound was no longer working. Probably it is convinced it is still active for the root account. No worse, but no better, ah well, that is enough for such a short day.

            Comment


            • #16
              Originally posted by Praxis View Post
              I THINK I had fglrx installed correctly a couple of times, at least amdcccle didn't squawk and Ubuntu jockey claimed the proprietary driver was in use. I've kind of moved past that for the moment since I have a kind of hincky radeon setup more or less working using an updated kernel and the updated packages from the oibaf repository.

              I say hincky because movement still isn't very fluid, scrolling on firefox produces artefacts that I haven't been able to capture with ksnapshot, and because killing X requires a reboot for me to use sound. Plus, Gnome3 & Unity are unhappy, not that I ever use them. I wouldn't have even noticed but I didn't have one of my monitors on when I booted up this morning, so I looked for the widget to restart X on lightdm (which ships with Kubuntu 13.10 for some reason), so I went to a virtual console, killed lightdm and installed kdm. KDM booted to Gnome3 by default. I couldn't interact with the panel or menu with the mouse, Alt+F2 wouldn't give me a run dialog, so I killed kdm with the TTY and tried Unity. It was almost equally unhappy, at some point the panel would disappear, along with the menu, apport kicked up errors. So after a few attempts I gave up, killed kdm again and started KDE, and found sound wasn't working without a reboot. But after a reboot my machine was working OK in KDE (not quite as well as my Zacate e350 box with the default Debian testing radeon driver even though this machine has a CPU that Passmark claims is 6.3 times as fast as the E-350 and graphics that are supposed to be 17.5 times as fast the onboard Zacate hardware at the G3D benchmark.

              Oooh, my daily update shows a mess of new Mesa drivers, maybe some of my issues will be addressed after a reboot. Life is like a box of chocolates when you are using a cutting edge repository for graphics drivers. But I'll probably have to reboot if I still want audio to work.
              libegl1-mesa:
              Installed: 10.1~git1312101143.1e7149~gd~s
              Candidate: 10.1~git1312110730.00faf8~gd~s



              I'll try that the next time I feel like messing with fglrx, gradinaruvasile. Next time something breaks hard with radeon, which I suspect will be soon if you are right about apt messing with "up to date kernel, drm, mesa, glamor, xf86-ati, llvm+clang", etc.


              OK, I wasn't using a xorg.conf with radeon, I thought it wasn't necessary, but now I have one that just has the lines in your code quote, I'll report back after a reboot if that and the updated mesa stack makes a difference. Also, thanks for the suggestion about VLC colors and the radeon driver, if the problem crops up again I'll mess with my VLC settings, though as I recall I also had weirdness with one of the other media players.

              mmstick, will your script conflict with what I have done so far? (oibaf + newer kernels)

              Well, time to post and reboot.
              If you read what my script does, you'll know what it does. It first looks to see if you have an NVIDIA GPU or have fglrx installed. If you have fglrx installed the script exits with a message telling you to uninstall it if you want the latest and greatest foss. If you have an NVIDIA GPU it installs NVIDIA's proprietary graphics. Otherwise it then checks to see if you are running Ubuntu 12.04, and if so, it will add Pali's PPA for the latest open source drivers, else it will add Oibaf's PPA for the latest open source drivers, then it installs the open source drivers. Then, it automatically downloads the latest stable Linux kernel (3.12) unless you remove grep -v rc which will make it install the latest RC kernel (3.13-rc3?). It can be rerun as many times as you want, really. I designed it to be fault-proof to work on any machine. If you want HDMI audio and DPM enabled by default, use the RC kernels; but don't complain if RC kernels are unstable.

              Comment


              • #17
                If you think fglrx was installed, you might want to walk through exactly how you installed it.

                Here's how I did it:
                Become root
                Run fglrx-xxxxx.sh
                Choose the "Install" option (not the generate packages option)
                Finish the install
                Reboot

                It's easy to tell if it is installed and running: press ctrl+alt+f1 (then alt+f5 or f7 to get back to X)
                Using the open-source radeon driver, the virtual terminal displays at my native resolution (1600x1200) with very small text.
                Using fglrx, it's 640x480.
                --
                Also, I suggest not messing with beta drivers. They're a good way to mess things up.

                Comment


                • #18
                  Originally posted by A Laggy Grunt View Post
                  If you think fglrx was installed, you might want to walk through exactly how you installed it.

                  Here's how I did it:
                  Become root
                  Run fglrx-xxxxx.sh
                  Choose the "Install" option (not the generate packages option)
                  Finish the install
                  Reboot

                  It's easy to tell if it is installed and running: press ctrl+alt+f1 (then alt+f5 or f7 to get back to X)
                  Using the open-source radeon driver, the virtual terminal displays at my native resolution (1600x1200) with very small text.
                  Using fglrx, it's 640x480.
                  --
                  Also, I suggest not messing with beta drivers. They're a good way to mess things up.
                  There's a problem with that and RadeonSI. Only the latest Beta drivers are good drivers. The stable driver is much glitchier/unstable/lower-performing. You're pretty much stuck between a rock and a hard place.

                  Comment


                  • #19
                    To make sure fglrx is running, run: lsmod | grep fglrx and/or glxinfo | grep render

                    Use this guide to make sure you are removing fglrx correctly: http://wiki.cchtml.com/index.php/Ubu...talyst.2Ffglrx

                    I would do it this way: first, remove fglrx as the wiki says, and THEN add oibaf's repo, to make sure there is nothing wrong..

                    Comment


                    • #20
                      Originally posted by mmstick View Post
                      If you read what my script does, you'll know what it does. It first looks to see if you have an NVIDIA GPU or have fglrx installed. If you have fglrx installed the script exits with a message telling you to uninstall it if you want the latest and greatest foss. If you have an NVIDIA GPU it installs NVIDIA's proprietary graphics. Otherwise it then checks to see if you are running Ubuntu 12.04, and if so, it will add Pali's PPA for the latest open source drivers, else it will add Oibaf's PPA for the latest open source drivers, then it installs the open source drivers. Then, it automatically downloads the latest stable Linux kernel (3.12) unless you remove grep -v rc which will make it install the latest RC kernel (3.13-rc3?). It can be rerun as many times as you want, really. I designed it to be fault-proof to work on any machine. If you want HDMI audio and DPM enabled by default, use the RC kernels; but don't complain if RC kernels are unstable.
                      I glanced over the script and though I'm not too wise in the ways of BASH it seemed like it did what I have already done, mmstick. But I figured I'd give it a throw, so I saved it to a text file & made it executable and tried to run it, but kept getting errors.

                      $ sudo ./mmstick.sh
                      ./mmstick.sh: line 10: syntax error near unexpected token `fi'
                      ./mmstick.sh: line 10: ` fi'

                      I don't know enough about scripting to fix the error on my own. This is what I have:
                      Code:
                      #!/bin/bash
                      ## Install Latest Kernel and GPU Drivers
                      # Note: If you want to download RC kernels, edit kernelURL section below to remove the grep -v rc option.
                      if [ -n "$(lspci | grep NVIDIA)" ]
                         then
                            isNVIDIA=true
                         else if [ -n "$(lsmod | grep fglrx)" ]
                            echo "You are currently using Catalyst. Uninstall Catalyst (sudo apt-get remove fglrx) and re-run this script after rebooting if you want the latest kernel and open source graphics drivers."    
                            exit 0                                                                                                            
                         fi                                                                                                                   
                      fi
                      
                      ## Install GPU drivers
                      if [ "$isNVIDIA" == "true" ]
                         then
                            sudo apt-get install nvidia-current-updates nvidia-settings -y
                         else
                            if [ -n "$(cat /etc/lsb-release | grep precise)" ]
                               then
                                  sudo add-apt-repository -y ppa:pali/graphics-drivers -y
                               else
                                  sudo add-apt-repository -y ppa:oibaf/graphics-drivers -y
                            fi
                      
                            sudo apt-get update
                            sudo apt-get upgrade -y
                            sudo apt-get dist-upgrade -y
                      
                      fi
                      
                      ## Install Kernel
                      if ! [ "$isNVIDIA" == "true" ]
                        then
                            sudo apt-get install lynx -y # lynx must be installed
                      
                            cd /tmp
                            sudo rm *.deb
                      
                            # Stable Kernels Only
                            kernelURL=$(lynx -dump http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/ | grep -v rc | tail -1 | sed 's/^......//')
                      
                            echo "The latest kernel is $(echo $kernelURL | cut -d/ -f 6)."
                            echo "The currently installed kernel is $(uname -r)."
                      
                            if [ "$(uname -m)" == "x86_64" ]
                               then
                                  echo "Downloading the latest 64-bit kernel."
                                  wget $(lynx -dump -listonly -dont-wrap-pre $kernelURL | sed -n '16p' | sed 's/^......//')
                                  wget $(lynx -dump -listonly -dont-wrap-pre $kernelURL | sed -n '18p' | sed 's/^......//')
                                  wget $(lynx -dump -listonly -dont-wrap-pre $kernelURL | sed -n '19p' | sed 's/^......//')
                               else
                                  echo "Downloading the latest 32-bit kernel."
                                  wget $(lynx -dump -listonly -dont-wrap-pre $kernelURL | sed -n '17p' | sed 's/^......//')
                                  wget $(lynx -dump -listonly -dont-wrap-pre $kernelURL | sed -n '18p' | sed 's/^......//')
                                  wget $(lynx -dump -listonly -dont-wrap-pre $kernelURL | sed -n '20p' | sed 's/^......//')
                            fi
                      
                            echo "Installing Linux Kernel"
                            sudo dpkg -i linux*.deb
                            echo "Done. You may now reboot."
                      fi
                      I'll try it again if you can tell me what I have wrong. Anywho, tonight I'll either run that script or try AMD's fglrx stable, this time using their script rather than transmogrifying it in to a deb file. Man, the option of re-boxing the card and waiting until Tahr is looking more and more appealing.

                      Comment

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