"Ask ATI" dev thread

[tapted]

Dear ATI Devs:
Why did you break glRender(GL_SELECT) in 7.12. I need it

Will it come back?

Some tests:

driver date   version   internal    GL_RENDER  GL_SELECT
2007-09-28	7.10	8.421.0.0	24ms	   44ms
2007-11-01	7.11	8.432.0.0	23ms	   44ms
2007-12-04	7.12	8.442.0.0	84ms	15345ms
2007-12-20	8.1	8.451.0.0	84ms	 4241ms
2007-01-22	8.2	8.453.0.0	81ms	 4176ms

This is affecting both Windows and Linux.

More info: http://www.it.usyd.edu.au/~tapted/slow_glselect.html

[tapted]

Dear ATI Devs:
Why did you break glRender(GL_SELECT) in 7.12?

Oops.. that should be glRenderMode ( GL_SELECT );

Although glRenderMode ( GL_RENDER ); is busted too -- performance has halved since 7.12.

[tsuru]

Oops.. that should be glRenderMode ( GL_SELECT );

Although glRenderMode ( GL_RENDER ); is busted too -- performance has halved since 7.12.

I filed a similar bug report @ the unofficial amd bugzilla: http://ati.cchtml.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1042 The root cause appears to be the same.

[djdoo]

I have something for the wish list which came out with the 8,1 and 8,2 drivers...

There is a new tool:

(II) fglrx(0): Loading PCS database from /etc/ati/amdpcsdb

Whenever you install a new driver version this tool is bringing your xorg.conf settings as it was with the previous driver and so you don't have to re-add options in your xorg.conf after the driver update!

That's good news, but unfortunately it has sideffects!
If you use aticonfig command to manage xorg.conf's options and then you edit xorg.conf by hand, all your changes will not take affect until you re-use aticonfig!!
That's really bad guys!

And so my wish is to either fix the new tool or create a graphical aticonfig tool to manage xorg.conf easily and safe!(I would prefer a combination of my 2 suggestions)

Thanks

Jim

[adurbin]

One GPU on the 3870x2 should be working in the latest fglrx driver, have you experienced something else?

I installed the latest fglrx but it tells me no devices detected.

[jchapman]

Below is a posting I made in reply to someone in a thread on the opensource driver forum. It occurred to me that I really wanted the proprietary people to hear it too, so here it is....

First of all I want to say that I do appreciate all the effort of the people doing the open source drivers, and I also do appreciate that AMD is trying to support linux. But I have to agree with the general thrust of the previous message. I just put together a home theater system based on an x2 5000+ and an ATI 690 based motherboard.

I have tried running both the open source and ATI drivers under Gutsy and neither presents anything like satisfactory results. Really bad video tearing, horrible pixelation when increasing window size for video and the whole screen flashing pink/green for a variable amount of time whenever I start a video. And even though my monitor identifies the signal as 1080P it only fills about 90% of the actual screen so text etc. looks horrible as the 1920x1080 image is scaled down into a display grid of about 1800x1000 physical pixels.

Not to mention the difficulty switching back and forth between trying out the open and proprietary drivers (no novice is going to get more than 5 seconds into that process before giving up.

So I switched to an old copy of Win2KSP4 I had. Video tearing gone. Pink/green flashing gone. Smooth interpolation when maxing the video window. Yayyyy!

But things are not perfect on the Windows side either. The problem of a 1080P image only filling 90% of the monitor still happens, and has been reported by more than a few others on the net. Plus there don't seem to be Catalyst drivers for Win2K for the 690/X1250 so I have no way of adjusting anything, in particular the antialiasing or making the display size fit the physical screen (I know, PowerStrip... that's my next try).

This is exactly the sort of experience that is going to drive users away from Linux and to windows. And given that the 90% screen reduction on windows I'm not all that happy with AMD/ATI on windows either - I mean the 690 has been out for a long time now....

I wanted to switch all our machines to the same OS and for that to be Linux but that isn't possible so after a few days time wasted I'm more or less forced back to Windows and am dubious about buying another AMD system/card for graphics since it doesn't seem to really work right even in Windows.

Anyway that's my rant...

[bridgman]

And a good rant it was too

OK, questions. Can I assume you are running with VideoOverlay off and TexturedVideo on, going through Xv ?

Are you running 32-bit or 64-bit OS ? TexturedVideo support on 690 is still a work in process, and today I think it's just enabled on 32-bit OSes. For a 64-bit OS going out through OpenGL seems to be your best bet, but that should change soon.

You will see ongoing improvements in the Catalyst releases, but Textured Video has also been added to the latest "radeon" driver (xf86-video-ati and might be worth a try. You'll need the latest source from git since this was only added in the last week or two.

Does your monitor support 1080 native vertical resolution ? I haven't looked real closely at the "90%" issues but at first glance it seemed to be related to having less than 1080 lines of native resolution on the display (eg 1680x1050 or 1280x1024).

Assuming that you have enough monitor resolution I might have to ask you to look at video playing on a newer flavour of Windows -- like it or not the development focus has been on Vista and (to a lesser extent) XP for quite a while.

[jchapman]

And a good rant it was too

OK, questions. Can I assume you are running with VideoOverlay off and TexturedVideo on, going through Xv ?

Are you running 32-bit or 64-bit OS ? TexturedVideo support on 690 is still a work in process, and today I think it's just enabled on 32-bit OSes. For a 64-bit OS going out through OpenGL seems to be your best bet, but that should change soon.

You will see ongoing improvements in the Catalyst releases, but Textured Video has also been added to the latest "radeon" driver (xf86-video-ati and might be worth a try. You'll need the latest source from git since this was only added in the last week or two.

Does your monitor support 1080 native vertical resolution ? I haven't looked real closely at the "90%" issues but at first glance it seemed to be related to having less than 1080 lines of native resolution on the display (eg 1680x1050 or 1280x1024).

Assuming that you have enough monitor resolution I might have to ask you to look at video playing on a newer flavour of Windows -- like it or not the development focus has been on Vista and (to a lesser extent) XP for quite a while.

Felt good too!

I cannot swear (should have taken notes I suppose) that I simultaneously had VideoOverlay off and TexturedVideo on but I"m reasonably sure... I'll have to reinstall to check that but iirc I had texturedvideo on and gloverlay on.

This was all 32bit - although I'd prefer to run 64bit I assumed things would be less stable on it.

The monitor manufacturer claims it is native 1080P (Viewsonic N4785P) (and if anyone can confirm either way I'd like to know) but even if it isn't I have seen the same complaint from several others running 1080P on other brands of large screen monitors.

I was able to tweak modelines enough to get it to almost fill the whole screen at 62Hz but got distracted by the video tearing and pink/green flashing problems so I gave up on the size as being as less important defect at the time.

Win 2K satisfies an awful lot of people because it does exactly what they want - there is nothing in XP or VIsta for them or me. But I know ATI is a business and cannot support old operating systems indefinitely. It's too bad because except for the image size the driver works quite well on 2K... enough so that it made me move to that from linux even though I'd rather be on Linux.

Just a final thought... it would be nice if it was a little simpler to switch between proprietary and open source drivers - on Gutsy that turned out to be a pita .

[jchapman]

oh and yes, it was Xv....

And a good rant it was too

OK, questions. Can I assume you are running with VideoOverlay off and TexturedVideo on, going through Xv ?

Are you running 32-bit or 64-bit OS ? TexturedVideo support on 690 is still a work in process, and today I think it's just enabled on 32-bit OSes. For a 64-bit OS going out through OpenGL seems to be your best bet, but that should change soon.

You will see ongoing improvements in the Catalyst releases, but Textured Video has also been added to the latest "radeon" driver (xf86-video-ati and might be worth a try. You'll need the latest source from git since this was only added in the last week or two.

Does your monitor support 1080 native vertical resolution ? I haven't looked real closely at the "90%" issues but at first glance it seemed to be related to having less than 1080 lines of native resolution on the display (eg 1680x1050 or 1280x1024).

Assuming that you have enough monitor resolution I might have to ask you to look at video playing on a newer flavour of Windows -- like it or not the development focus has been on Vista and (to a lesser extent) XP for quite a while.

[jchapman]

Sigh... must be having a meltdown today... I just rememebmred an additional bit of info on the issue of the image not occupying the full screen (Linux/W2K both)... one of the postings I had seen claimed that there was an overscan setting in the Catalyst driver (this was some version of Windows) and that it had a default setting that was high... once he turned that setting down the image went 1:1 filling the whole screen. Not having any access to Catalyst in Windows I hve no idea if this matches reality... it would make sense to mae if a CRT were being driven... but does overscan even make sense driving an LCD through HDMI?

And a good rant it was too

OK, questions. Can I assume you are running with VideoOverlay off and TexturedVideo on, going through Xv ?

Are you running 32-bit or 64-bit OS ? TexturedVideo support on 690 is still a work in process, and today I think it's just enabled on 32-bit OSes. For a 64-bit OS going out through OpenGL seems to be your best bet, but that should change soon.

You will see ongoing improvements in the Catalyst releases, but Textured Video has also been added to the latest "radeon" driver (xf86-video-ati and might be worth a try. You'll need the latest source from git since this was only added in the last week or two.

Does your monitor support 1080 native vertical resolution ? I haven't looked real closely at the "90%" issues but at first glance it seemed to be related to having less than 1080 lines of native resolution on the display (eg 1680x1050 or 1280x1024).

Assuming that you have enough monitor resolution I might have to ask you to look at video playing on a newer flavour of Windows -- like it or not the development focus has been on Vista and (to a lesser extent) XP for quite a while.