"Ask ATI" dev thread

[forum1793]

HDMI Graphics delays starting or stopping X

With Gigabyte GA-MA78GM-S2H and with monitor connected via hdmi to the onboard 780g, it always takes a while for bios or boot up to appear on monitor. During this delay the screen is blue. The duration of the delays is not constant.

Then when starting and more commonly when stopping X there is a similar delay. I have a 12' long hdmi cable. I have not yet tried to see if this exists using rgb cable.

What is reason for these delays?

Are there things I can do to change this?

[gsmd]

I think it's worth creating a separate thread on 780g. forum1793, I've got a question for you there.

[forum1793]

With Gigabyte GA-MA78GM-S2H and with monitor connected via hdmi to the onboard 780g, it always takes a while for bios or boot up to appear on monitor. During this delay the screen is blue. The duration of the delays is not constant.

Then when starting and more commonly when stopping X there is a similar delay. I have a 12' long hdmi cable. I have not yet tried to see if this exists using rgb cable.

What is reason for these delays?

Are there things I can do to change this?

Any thoughts on these delays?

[bridgman]

1. Do you see the delays when using a different monitor on VGA or DVI ?

2. It sounds like you are getting a normal boot sequence (with boot messages on the display), just starting after a delay. Is this correcdt, or are you only seeing info on the screen once the kernel is loaded ?

Put differently, what is the first thing you see on the screen :

- bios messages ?
- console messages from text/vesa driver ?
- desktop startup stuff from x driver ?

[forum1793]

1. Do you see the delays when using a different monitor on VGA or DVI ?

I don't remember and will have to try again in near future.

Put differently, what is the first thing you see on the screen :

- bios messages ?
- console messages from text/vesa driver ?
- desktop startup stuff from x driver ?

The delay is of random duration when bios starts and when X starts AND stops. The computer is doing its regular stuff, the screen is just not showing it. Sometimes on booting, the screen comes up fast enough to see the bios messages. Other times it does not become visible until waiting for the grub menu. Once it is up in text mode (before X but after grub) there are no noticeable delays. But when starting AND stopping X there are delays again. During these delays I can type commands and they will be carried out, I just can't see them.

I think the issue is probably hardware related because it happens before linux even loads. It's like the computer is trying out rgb, dvi, and hdmi to see a response. Eventually it figures it out and sets it. I find the random durations to be odd and this was why I pointed out I had a 12' HDMI cable. Are there different qualities or types of HDMI cable that impact this?

I'll try out the rgb. I eventually bought a 12' rgb cable as well. I might even try my shorter one. Come to think of it I do have shorter hdmi cable I can try as well.

FWIW I'm up to BIOS F4

[bridgman]

Hmm. Have to admit my first thought is that the graphics hardware is coming up OK but your display is taking a while to sync to the signal. Might mean the wrong timing is being used, not sure.

Testing with a shorter/different cable would be interesting, but first test IMO would be with a different display on VGA or DVI connector.

[forum1793]

Tested with same monitor but shorter (5 feet vs 12 feet) hdmi cable. No difference. Same delays in monitor showing bios or when switching into X.

Tested with same monitor (32" vizio LCD tv) but using vga (aka d-sub or rgb). This basically eliminated the delays. I can also see one more video mode when you right click on screen and try to change screen size. Also the whole screen fits on the monitor whereas with hdmi the visible area was smaller than the device window, i.e. there were icons to the left of what I could see as well as below.

Tested with different monitor (19" princeton) in vga. No apparent delays when booting (can see bios) and it found even more screens in X.

Tested again with this 19" monitor using dvi. Looked basically the same as vga. So, no apparent delays.

All of these tests using radeonhd but the delays were there with both radeonhd and fglrx.

These delays with hdmi must be hardware related, either with 780g or with TV. If you are going to use hdmi cable, at this time you will want to use fglrx and put up with the minor delays. Fglrx finds all of the video modes (or screen sizes).

[israel_miranda]

Reviving the thread

Hy devs, here I am asking for help with my problem.
Definitely there is some kernel option that kills fglrx with intel_agp
but I don't know which it is. Some few ppl got it working on intel agp chipsets.
I created this thread:

http://phoronix.com/forums/showthread.php?t=11822

But still got no directions on how to debug this problem.
I wanna help, if I can debug the problem and give you the information necessary to fix the bug would be nice.

Thanks in advance.

[Xaphir]

RPM Package Generation Broken in Fedora 7, 8, 9

Could we please see a fix for rpm package generation in the next ATI installer release? It would greatly facilitate beta testers working with ATI equipment. Eh, like me for instance.

Getting the packages built into discrete units is invaluable for x86_64 users who need to get the 64 drivers in, and then JUST the 386 lib part of the drivers for mesa, wine and opengl apps.

Yes Livna is great and all that, but there's really no substitute for having rpm's generated by the factory installer. You guys have the heads up on nvida in this regard, they've never done anything like this AFAIK.

Thanks to you guys for any consideration you can offer for the next ATI driver release in fixing this.

Best Regards

LX

[izual]

Are there any news regarding tcore, r6xx/r700 documents? I haven't heard anything for quite a while.