Considering a new GPU soon. How's the 7700 series on Linux?

[Dandel]

Yep, I'm quite aware of what it's intended for. My issues with this card aren't with the performance, but rather with the Fglrx issues that I can't seem to escape from. The open source driver works relatively better (GNOME Shell is slow-ish, but other desktops are just fine), but obviously 3d is out of the question for a low-end card like this.

The gaming I do isn't high-end modern gaming like Battlefield 3. Whenever I do any gaming I usually lower the graphics settings anyway (less distractions). The 6450 just barely passes the mark for what I want to do; something like the 7750 I mentioned would very probably end up being overkill in itself. I didn't buy a 6450 expecting a 6850

To turn back to one of the older posts about my comparison to Windows 7: I'm not a Windows user, but I needed Windows 7 over the last few months for work-related things. Windows' graphics are silky smooth, stable, don't tear, and generally performed faster than Linux with Fglrx. Obviously, I didn't want to stick with Windows for the sake of a more stable desktop. This is why I'll be grabbing some NVIDIA card. Granted, Fglrx has improved a lot for me over the last 6 months, but not really worth messing with any more.

Edit for more stuff:




Ethics is fine, but Nouveau still exists with the NVIDIA driver. Sadly not receiving any official support, but it's arguably just as ethical as AMD. And, like I said in this post, Fglrx is just tiresome at this point. It's definitely improving, and it's much better than what people here tend to say, but it's still suboptimal compared to the competition. I'm not giving up on AMD; I'm just not going to be bothering with it on my main setup (I use some ancient card with the OSS drivers on another PC; works amazingly well for what it does).

My setup is new-ish, and not *that* great. Good enough aside from the 6450, though:

Phenom II x6 @ 2.9 ghz
8 GB DDR3 memory
Crappy generic 250w PSU (replacing that)
AMD 785G chipset

That system specification reveals a lot. I would say that the only issue is expecting reasonable performance out of a video card that uses a 64-bit memory bus. It's already been proven on windows ( where the drivers have heavy optimizations). Anyways, most game developers try to target cards that have at least a 128-bit memory bus, and then as an after thought they rework things for the lower end cards. Also, I do agree that replacing the power supply is a must. Personally i would look at FSP or seasonic for power supplies, and try to keep around 500w total.

Anyways, what determines 90% of the performance is the graphics fillrates.

Anyways, I went ahead and looked at the graphics cards more, and got two groups of cards to suggest based on the card having 128-bit memory bus as a feature.

For Nvidia Graphics: [1]
GeForce GT 430 or higher
GeForce GT 530 or higher
GeForce GT 630 or higher

For AMD [2]: (Dedicated cards only )
Radeon HD 5550 or higher
Radeon HD 6500 or higher
Radeon HD 7570 or higher

[1] Wikipedia: Comparision of Nvidia Graphics cards
[2]Wikipedia: Comparision of AMD Graphics cards

That Radeon HD6670 is too rich for my blood. Why it cost more than my last 2 PCs put together all by itself. Plus AMD sucks. Go Nvidia!

This PC:
HP a6712f, dual monitors: Dell SE19WFPv, acer AL1916 Dell MMS5650 5.1 surround with Audio Source front speakers, Antec Basiq PSU, Zotac GT520 gfx card, Dell mouse and keyboard - Not too shabby for $82 total

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3xi9lCmj-0

I only suggested the Radeon HD6670 since that was the mid range card that is reasonable. Pretty much I would have suggested any card that was Radeon HD*500 or higher, where the card had 128-bit memory bus. This means that a Radeon HD5550, Radeon HD6550, and similar cards would work well.

Do you mean AMD's race to the bottom? Even if there was only one chip manufacturer there would still be builder competition and seller competition. As far as I'm concerned there already is only one chip manufacturer now. I'd never buy AMD junk.

That is completely biased because you are forgetting a lot of things. AMD is trying to innovate in order to be competetive. It's important to not forget that for many years intel sabotaged sales for amd because of behind the scenes agreements. These agreements Intel had resulted in large anti-trust fines being levied against Intel in the EU. There was a long time where AMD actually performed a lot better than intel did, but could not compete because of these agreements.

Anyways, I only pick AMD/ATI since they offer the best features for the price generally.

[Paul Frederick]

Just the facts ma'am

What is it exactly about this driver, that is tiresome?? Does it work or not? It seems people have some old experiences and says its bad all the time. Let us get the facts instead of all that hand waving!

Personally I currently own a 8600 GT and the Nvidia driver (295.40) in Ubuntu 12.04 has some troubles with making X.org consume 100% CPU and freezing when playing Minecraft. It doesn't play nice with RandR (multimonitor setup). Some tweaks need to be made to xorg.conf to make the Limbo game work in a dual monitor setup. Otherwise it works OK for me. There you have it - that was not so hard...

I just tried ATI or AMD or whatever they're calling themselves today binary driver and it worked once, and exactly once. Then it didn't work again. I was like WTG AMD for bringing the Windows world to Linux. I like my computer to be predictable, not some random POS.

BTW Nvidia has it's own way of doing dual screen called TwinView. You enable it by running nvidia-settings. Nvidia doesn't really do xrandr. That may be why you are having some difficulties there.

http://www.nvidia.com/object/feature_twinview.html

[RussianNeuroMancer]

I just tried ATI or AMD or whatever they're calling themselves today binary driver and it worked once, and exactly once. Then it didn't work again.

Some logs or maybe link to bugreport?

[sloggerKhan]

I just got a 7770 not too long ago. Mine's an XFX.

On mine it works fine with a couple caveats.

Turn off the monitor auto off thing. There's a bug in mint that makes the cpu go crazy when the card turns off your monitor. I don't think it's related to the fglrx driver exactly.

The other bug I have is that print screen takes screenshots from hours ago. I think that is an fglrx bug, I'm not sure.

XvBA supposedly works for some stuff, but I'm not really sure. My CPU is powerful enough for it not to matter, and I think it might silently fall back to normal vid overlay when not in use. Have the patched mplayer and vlc which I don't remember about.

It's fine for nexuiz and Bastion, the only 2 games I've tried it with so far. I've found high quality stable settings at 120fps limited for Nexuiz. My unigine benchmarks are okay. Only one of them get down to 20-30 fps. Oddly, they don't make the fan go crazy like Nexuiz, even though the card seems to struggle more.

With my card I also haven't figured out how to control the fan, it spins up to max too quickly. Sure, temps never go above 62C, but it also seems to hit max fan at 60C. If anyone knows how to back it off a little, I'd appreciate.


In general, though, the card is fine. I think people act like the fglrx driver is worse than it is. Really I've got 4 mostly minor problems and 2 of them are not with the card, but actually bugs in other software, I think.

[Paul Frederick]

Bug report?

Some logs or maybe link to bugreport?

How could I file a bug report? What am I going to say your driver fscking sucks it worked once and disappeared. I pulled the card and went back to my on board. It is better anyways.

[RussianNeuroMancer]

How could I file a bug report?

You may boot into recovery mode or use LiveCD to get access to logs. There is also /usr/share/fglrx/atigetsysteminfo.sh utility that may help gather all needed information next time.
Without logs there is no one reason to blame fglrx devs, because problem may be just not in fglrx.

[Paul Frederick]

What are you babbling about?

You may boot into recovery mode or use LiveCD to get access to logs. There is also /usr/share/fglrx/atigetsysteminfo.sh utility that may help gather all needed information next time.
Without logs there is no one reason to blame fglrx devs, because problem may be just not in fglrx.

Why would I boot off a CD? The machine booted fine just the video driver was gone. I can run Linux without X Window. But like you say, because problem may be just not in fglrx, anything is possible. Just many things are highly unlikely.

[Dandel]

Why would I boot off a CD? The machine booted fine just the video driver was gone. I can run Linux without X Window. But like you say, because problem may be just not in fglrx, anything is possible. Just many things are highly unlikely.

Booting off a liveCD is to give access to an environment that is easier for the less than adept average user.


Anyways, can you please provide some system information? This should help with figuring out how to get a proper bug report to the right party. I have never had a system suddenly have the video driver disappear. I belive the appropriate cause is when there was a system update, and the driver package failed to install.

Anyways, a good solution is to try the following steps:

1. Check to see if the radeon driver ( open source) or fglrx ( closed source) driver is loaded.
2. create a backup of "/etc/X11/xorg.conf" and then erase this file
3. Now it's time to reconfigure the driver.
   • If the open source driver is loaded: Most distributions should autoconfigure the xserver now. However, if this is not the case, look into the distributions documentation on reconfiguring the xserver.
   • If fglrx is loaded, simply rerun the following command as root: "aticonfig --initial -f"
   • if neither driver is loaded, and the video card is an ati/amd card. The best solution is to reconfigure the Xserver to use vesa drivers, and proceed to reinstall the closed source drivers after verifying that the kernel is supported.

[AnonymousCoward]

In general, though, the card is fine. I think people act like the fglrx driver is worse than it is. Really I've got 4 mostly minor problems and 2 of them are not with the card, but actually bugs in other software, I think.

for that CPU 100% at turned off monitor are two workarounds. first force Vsync in catalyst constrol center. second is force full screen redraw in compiz config manager. there is some quirk in vsync when it begin redraw thousand times per second which generate 100%.

XvBA works fine for me with PPA XMBC and 2D version of unity. there are some issue when you use XBMC and compiz. there is one utility to control fan and clock speed on this forum. EDIT http://phoronix.com/forums/showthrea...ocking-Utility

[Paul Frederick]

Let me see here

Booting off a liveCD is to give access to an environment that is easier for the less than adept average user.


Anyways, can you please provide some system information? This should help with figuring out how to get a proper bug report to the right party. I have never had a system suddenly have the video driver disappear. I belive the appropriate cause is when there was a system update, and the driver package failed to install.

Anyways, a good solution is to try the following steps:

1. Check to see if the radeon driver ( open source) or fglrx ( closed source) driver is loaded.
2. create a backup of "/etc/X11/xorg.conf" and then erase this file
3. Now it's time to reconfigure the driver.
   • If the open source driver is loaded: Most distributions should autoconfigure the xserver now. However, if this is not the case, look into the distributions documentation on reconfiguring the xserver.
   • If fglrx is loaded, simply rerun the following command as root: "aticonfig --initial -f"
   • if neither driver is loaded, and the video card is an ati/amd card. The best solution is to reconfigure the Xserver to use vesa drivers, and proceed to reinstall the closed source drivers after verifying that the kernel is supported.

Perhaps you missed the part where I said it worked once? There was no system update that could have affected it either. I was already running a custom kernel that my distribution could not touch. I needed it for other hardware to function on that machine. When it worked I benchmarked it and the ATI card wasn't any better than what that system has on board. So when I ran that PC again and the binary driver didn't even load what was my incentive to fix it at that point? The fix for me was to pull the card. Problem solved.

The easiest method that yields the best results is always the correct thing to do. That is a universal truth.

I don't have a lot of experience with ATI, but what I do I have to put into the negative category. I've used Nvidia on Linux ever since I got my first MX200 board. It hasn't all been rosy either, but then again Nvidia never promised me a rose garden. Nvidia has just delivered consistently. To me consistency is everything when it comes to computers, or I'd run Windows!

Which the magical disappearing ATI driver was starting to make me feel like I was doing. It had to go.