I admit, I'm a doofus, I impulsively bought a "PowerColor" AMD/ATI Bonaire XT [Radeon HD 7790/8770] card for $80 or so after MIR without doing any research first knowing that all the boffins advise Linux users looking for high performance to shun ATI. I had almost always used onboard graphics before which was generally adequate for my use-case (2D, video playback). But I have an underutilized 6 core CPU and thought it might be fun to play around a real video card that was on the Passmark list of high performance ones, maybe play a few games.
Unfortunately, this card has been a nightmare. I booted to my normal distro, Debian testing, which had been using the radeon driver and got much worse performance than I'd had with my 5 year old integrated Radeon HD 3200 graphics, I couldn't even use my second monitor, even after screwing around with xrandr commands. 2D performance was dreadful, and apparently the proprietary fglrx driver is not available in Jessie at this time. No big deal, I figured, I had a few spare partition on my hard drive, I figured I'd install Kubuntu 13.10 on one and be good to go. No luck. I couldn't even get to X with the live image, just a black screen. So I installed without "trying" Kubuntu, rebooted, and got the same thing. Oh well, I started in recovery mode, installed a few packages, I forget exactly what, then was able to get to X using radeon, but with the same crummy performance issues I'd had in Debian, and without being able to enable my second monitor. (One of the stupid fantasies I'd had when I ordered this turkey was running a 3 monitor rig.) I shrugged my shoulder(s), figuring that the card was too new for radeon support, I thought I'd just install fglrx and wait until radeon support matured. Unfortunately fglrx was not much of an improvement. I tried both fglrx from the repository (2:13.101-0ubuntu3) and fglrx-updates (same number). I was able to get both monitors working (sort of) with amdcccle, except I couldn't access the rightmost 20mm of my right screen (1200x1920, rotated). But performance is dreadful. Moving a window around is blocky and slow, & desktop effects in KDE are disabled (XComposite and XDamage are not available, whatever that means). Those things worked find with my onboard graphics. Unity doesn't seem to be able to produce a desktop. I can't even enable compositing on good ol' reliable XFCE. 1080p video plays, but that was never an issue on a 6 core desktop anyway.
So any suggestions about what to do? Pull the card and throw it in a drawer for 6 months? Install Windoze on an extra partition and see what 3D is all about? Try a driver from outside the repository? I've seen articles about Gallium3d/radeonSI driver, but no guide to installing it on Saucy Salamander. It seems like a confusing morass with about 10 drivers, all of them being works in progress according to what I've read. But I'm willing to give it a throw if folks think that is a reasonable alternative, particularly if anyone can suggest a good place to start. I've been using Debian and Ubuntu as my OS for about 8 years, so I have basic computer skills though I'm out of my depth with high performance video card issues.
Unfortunately, this card has been a nightmare. I booted to my normal distro, Debian testing, which had been using the radeon driver and got much worse performance than I'd had with my 5 year old integrated Radeon HD 3200 graphics, I couldn't even use my second monitor, even after screwing around with xrandr commands. 2D performance was dreadful, and apparently the proprietary fglrx driver is not available in Jessie at this time. No big deal, I figured, I had a few spare partition on my hard drive, I figured I'd install Kubuntu 13.10 on one and be good to go. No luck. I couldn't even get to X with the live image, just a black screen. So I installed without "trying" Kubuntu, rebooted, and got the same thing. Oh well, I started in recovery mode, installed a few packages, I forget exactly what, then was able to get to X using radeon, but with the same crummy performance issues I'd had in Debian, and without being able to enable my second monitor. (One of the stupid fantasies I'd had when I ordered this turkey was running a 3 monitor rig.) I shrugged my shoulder(s), figuring that the card was too new for radeon support, I thought I'd just install fglrx and wait until radeon support matured. Unfortunately fglrx was not much of an improvement. I tried both fglrx from the repository (2:13.101-0ubuntu3) and fglrx-updates (same number). I was able to get both monitors working (sort of) with amdcccle, except I couldn't access the rightmost 20mm of my right screen (1200x1920, rotated). But performance is dreadful. Moving a window around is blocky and slow, & desktop effects in KDE are disabled (XComposite and XDamage are not available, whatever that means). Those things worked find with my onboard graphics. Unity doesn't seem to be able to produce a desktop. I can't even enable compositing on good ol' reliable XFCE. 1080p video plays, but that was never an issue on a 6 core desktop anyway.
So any suggestions about what to do? Pull the card and throw it in a drawer for 6 months? Install Windoze on an extra partition and see what 3D is all about? Try a driver from outside the repository? I've seen articles about Gallium3d/radeonSI driver, but no guide to installing it on Saucy Salamander. It seems like a confusing morass with about 10 drivers, all of them being works in progress according to what I've read. But I'm willing to give it a throw if folks think that is a reasonable alternative, particularly if anyone can suggest a good place to start. I've been using Debian and Ubuntu as my OS for about 8 years, so I have basic computer skills though I'm out of my depth with high performance video card issues.
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