"Ask ATI" dev thread

[cruiseoveride]

I think you were being a little retarded when you bought an ATi card to use on Linux.

Its no mystery that ATi driver suck balls, be it Windows or Linux.

I still have to jump hoops to get my old 9700mobile drivers installed on XP. And thats how old now???

And how do you expect them to respond to your question? "It will be fixed in release X.y"? Its not like any of us would believe it anyway. They claim to fix the glxgears bug in every freakin release. So whats the use?

Nvidia and ATi drivers both suck to a degree on Linux. But like the saying goes, in the land of binary blobs, the Nvidia driver is king.

Buy an 8800GT or something. You wont be disappointed. You wont be frustrated. After all, it is 3D you want.

[bridgman]

Can you post your log please ?

I probably don't need to say this, but "boot to black screen" is not a bug, just perhaps the most common symptom that *something* (probably specific to a distro release and hardware configuration) has gone wrong.

[cruiseoveride]

Fresh install fedora 9 x86_64 with 8.12 -> blank screen
Fresh install ubuntu 8.04 x86 with 8.12 -> blank screen
Fresh install ubuntu 8.10 x86_64 wit 8.12 -> blank screen

I've also tried older drivers, 8.9 etc..

AMD 4200+ / Asus A8N-SLI Premium / Asus HD4870 TOP 512MB

The machine is still responsive though. But the keyboard does nothing. I can ssh into the box, and it shows X using 99% of the CPU. I can kill it. But the screen is still dead.

The Xorg.log is good. It shows fglrx loading and running fine, as well as the other modules.

I've also built X and the complete X toolchain by hand to debug it, the xserver seems to get stuck in some sort of read lock, but its at different positions each time, so i just said fuk it and put my Nvidia card back in.

Oh and if it matters, radeonhd works fine.

boot to blank screen = The biggest problem with ATi drivers.

And no, I'm not going to format this hard drive and install everything again just to get you some logs, I've spent enough time on this shit. You want logs, pay first.

[bridgman]

And no, I'm not going to format this hard drive and install everything again just to get you some logs, I've spent enough time on this shit. You want logs, pay first.

Just so it's clear, I'm not actually *collecting* these logs or anything, just offering to take a look to see if I can help folks with their systems.

[Maarte]

Can you post your log please ?

I probably don't need to say this, but "boot to black screen" is not a bug, just perhaps the most common symptom that *something* (probably specific to a distro release and hardware configuration) has gone wrong.

I'd love to but I get "The message you have entered is too short. Please lengthen your message to at least 10 characters." even though the post contains the log message pasted in. :/ I managed to post the last few lines.

===

(II) RADEONHD(0): EnableCRTC Successful
(II) RADEONHD(0): Calling EnableCRTCMemReq
(II) RADEONHD(0): EnableCRTCMemReq Successful
(II) RADEONHD(0): Calling SetPixelClock
(II) RADEONHD(0): SetPixelClock Successful
(II) RADEONHD(0): Calling SetPixelClock
(II) RADEONHD(0): SetPixelClock Successful
(II) RADEONHD(0): Query for Restore Registers: failed
(II) RADEONHD(0): Query for Restore Registers: failed

[bridgman]

I'd love to but I get "The message you have entered is too short. Please lengthen your message to at least 10 characters."

Ah yes, I had that problem too

The easiest thing is to use pastebin (I use pastebin.ca) and post a link.

BTW the log entries were from radeonhd but from your previous post I thought you were running the latest fglrx. Did you switch back to radeonhd after fglrx didn't work for you ?

[RealNC]

After battling with 9.1, I have another question: Why don't you sell ATI to someone who has a clue about writing drivers? No, no, I'm not joking. That would really help.

[Maarte]

Ah yes, I had that problem too

The easiest thing is to use pastebin (I use pastebin.ca) and post a link.

BTW the log entries were from radeonhd but from your previous post I thought you were running the latest fglrx. Did you switch back to radeonhd after fglrx didn't work for you ?

I had to switch back to radeonhd to get a working x session.

I'll try running the fglrx again and copying the logs from terminal, more than likely tomorrow. I've spent several hours back and forth trying to work this through, it's frustrating but I appreciate your efforts to help.

[enderandrew]

Reading through posts here, I can't believe how much flaming I see. I purchased Nvidia exclusively in the past because of their Linux drivers, but I see AMD's commitment to OSS, and so I just built a new rig with a Phenom II X4 940, a 790GX chipset, and a Radeon HD 4850 because I want to support AMD. I wasn't expecting much from the Linux drivers. I just hope I can get a decent working X session, video playback and composite effects. I do my gaming in Windows.

That being said, I'm curious about this Hybrid Crossfire feature I've read about. I can't find a list (including on Wikipedia or AMD's website) that says what video cards support this feature. AMD's website says I need a HD 3000 series card. Well, I bought a HD 4000 series card which is newer. So should I expect to be able to have Hybrid Crossfire support?

It would be nice to see up-to-date info on AMD's site.

Thanks for the work, and your commitment to improving your Linux drivers. I'm sorry that people feel the need to flame you for your efforts.

BTW, I'd love to see a Dragon Platform case badge. Do they exist, and can I get one somehow?

[cjr2k3]

HD4850 Working flawlessy since the day I bought it. Always with FGLRX.

Yesterday, I run the 9.1 ATI installer (sudo ./ati_xxxxxx_etc...) and it worked like a charm. Reboot and voil? 9.1 working without any itch.

Seriously, or I do have lots of luck with my Hardware/Software/Distro/whatever but I'm using ATI in Linux since 2004 and the only problem I had was the memory leak bug. I had my problems with some installs, but it was always my fault (Reading some foruns, using some scripts, etc) make things right.

I dont have any HD content to verify the problems with video playback, besides that everything is working with ATI and improving a lot (Get Crossfire for any OpenGL app out plz!! )