Open-Source ATI R600/700 3D Driver Almost Working

[nanonyme]

It's a 4850, I'm using Debian's packages, tried both the radeon and the radeonhd drivers, with DRI on and both EXA and XAA.

xserver-xorg 1:7.4+3
xserver-xorg-video-radeon 1:6.12.2-2
xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd 1.2.5-1
linux-image-2.6.30-1-686 2.6.30-1

Do note that there is no XAA for r6xx/r7xx cards, only EXA.

[bridgman]

3D is great, but I would settle for some good 2D. Neither the fglrx driver or the radeonhd driver give usable performance in 2D yet. I have little hope for fglrx, even the catalyst driver for Windows is terrible. Try dragging a window around with show contents turned on, it's slower than it was a decade ago!

torham, can you please start another thread and pastebin your xorg log, conf and dmesg output ? It sounds as if acceleration isn't enabled on your system for some reason.

As a quick check, see if xvinfo finds textured video adapters.

[agd5f]

That sounds like a pretty cool state to be in.

I guess anyone with GDB debugging experience could start hammer on those bugs without knowing anything about graphics?

Yes, more or less. In addition, there is a programming guide, shader ISA documentation, and register specs available for download:

http://www.x.org/docs/AMD/

So with GDB and specs you can get a general idea of what's going on in the mesa code by just tracing the code. The redbook demos are very simple.

[RoboJ1M]

Sooo, pretty soon I'll have a 100% open source OS, including WiFi.

Coolness.

On fglrx: Seems to all work fine for me, except maximizing windows with compiz has a 1-2 second lag on it (so I turn compiz off, 'ray)

System:

Phenom II X3 720 BE
Biostar TA790GX AM2+ board
4GiB DD2-533
Integrated Radeon 3300
1440 x 900 monitor
3 x 500GiB HDD
Ubuntu 9.04 32bit.

Don't know why maximizing windows has such bad latency, everything else is pretty sharp.

bridgman: You're the man now, dog!

Regards,

J1M.

[d2kx]

It's a 4850, I'm using Debian's packages, tried both the radeon and the radeonhd drivers, with DRI on and both EXA and XAA.

xserver-xorg 1:7.4+3
xserver-xorg-video-radeon 1:6.12.2-2
xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd 1.2.5-1
linux-image-2.6.30-1-686 2.6.30-1

Debian has removed the firmware out of the Linux kernel since 2.6.30. I assume you are using Debian/sid. Try installing the "firmware-linux" package and reboot.

[JeanPaul145]

Sooo, pretty soon I'll have a 100% open source OS, including WiFi.

Coolness.

On fglrx: Seems to all work fine for me, except maximizing windows with compiz has a 1-2 second lag on it (so I turn compiz off, 'ray)

System:

Phenom II X3 720 BE
Biostar TA790GX AM2+ board
4GiB DD2-533
Integrated Radeon 3300
1440 x 900 monitor
3 x 500GiB HDD
Ubuntu 9.04 32bit.

Don't know why maximizing windows has such bad latency, everything else is pretty sharp.

bridgman: You're the man now, dog!

Regards,

J1M.

I have a 1-2 second lag with unminimization in gnome, as in: minimize a window, then focus on it again. Maximization and restoring works fine here. Happens only when using compositing (in gnome I use compiz as compositing window manager).

The funny thing is, I also get that lag when using KDE's KWin. when I enable the KWin plugin for performance tracking, a clear spike to the maximum of the scale is noticeable (I assume that cpu usage is being tracked).

It's a damn shame too, because this means that the fault lies with fglrx. I think that if this issue were to be fixed in Catalyst 9.6 that it certainly would make the wait for FOSS radeon(hd) 3D support for the R600/R700 cards a bit less painful.

[bridgman]

The delay resulted from an xserver patch being backed out to fix a corruption issue on Intel HW AFAIK - reapplying the patch seems to make the delay go away. My understanding is that this is an xserver issue not a driver issue; you hear similar complaints from people with different hardware and drivers as well.

[Fran]

My understanding is that this is an xserver issue not a driver issue; you hear similar complaints from people with different hardware and drivers as well.

But then why does it not happen with radeon/radeonhd/intel? The thing that surprised me the most when switching from fglrx to radeon was the great performance with composite. That includes resizing/maximizing (no noticeable lag).

[bridgman]

The reports I have seen indicated a similar delay with the open source driver when running compositing. All the reports saying there was no delay with the open source drivers were on 6xx/7xx where the lack of 3D support prevents the use of GL-based compositing.

I have also seen a number of posts from Intel users discussing the tradeoffs associated with the patch; screen corruption vs delays.

Are you seeing something different, and if so which GPU are you using ?

[legume]

The reports I have seen indicated a similar delay with the open source driver when running compositing

When I had a R500 about a year ago, the maximise delay did not happen with OSS drivers + compiz if EXA was enabled. It did happen with OSS + compiz if XAA was used.