"Ask ATI" dev thread

[oleid]

Can't confirm

Hi!

Well, as you can imagine, I own an ATI card (X1950XT 512MB PCIe). I wouldn't bother going on rants here otherwise.

A bit more information would be useful. What distribution? What driver? What X-Version? Could you post your X-Configuration? Do you use compiz?

I'm using xserver-1.4 (xorg 7.3) on gentoo-amd64 using the latest ati-drivers (8.7) with gnome/metacity and everything works perfectly fine, no xv-tearing, I can even watch HDTV-resolutions without flickering or so and I've only a cheap X1050 256MB PCIe. Using compiz firefox is a bit slow and the rest highly depends on the settings in xorg.conf, as you have to activate non-default settings to get fast composite rendering.

PS:
All your analysis is good and fine. I respect that you're trying to achieve something. *But*, this is going on for *years* now.

In the last year __very__ much has changed. Therefor we should be grateful ;-)

Ciao,
Olaf

[bridgman]

In terms of "what were we doing all those years", we were addressing the consumer market with Windows and mostly just the 3D workstation market with Linux. 3D workstation users tended not to give a rat's rear end about Wine, video, browser scrolling speeds, non-commercial distros or any of the other things you mentioned.

We started moving to a common code base about 2 years ago so that we could start to improve things for Linux consumer users. The first visible change there was the new 3D code base last fall, and the transition is mostly finished -- I think everything except powerplay and crossfire have been fully enabled now. Some things (like video) can't be ported over because the Windows implementation is totally built around Windows infrastructure so new code is required in some places.

Last fall we also started to focus a bit more on consumer features like video. If you are seeing "tearing til your eyes hurt" that sounds wrong -- other than some vsync issues and Compiz compatibility I think the rest of the issues were nailed. Maybe I'm wrong -- I haven't played with video much myself. Vsync issues will result in some mild tearing during fast action sequences but AFAIK that's it. Are you seeing something worse and if so can you pls post a screen shot and/or file/update a bug in the Bugzilla system ?

[EagleDM]

I can totally relate and confirm what bridgman said:

" The current situation as I understand it is that NVidia drivers are relatively faster in a CPU-limited scenario while ATI drivers are faster in a GPU-limited scenario. That's what the benchmarks seem to say anyways -- and it fits the different hardware design approaches between the two companies."

I work for a hardware reviews site (www.maximopc.org) and after intensive testing I found out the following.

In situations where resolution is low (800x600 , 1024x768) same competing cards (4850 vs 9800gtx) the 9800gtx tends to lead in performance, but, as soon as you elevate Antialias + 1680x1050 or 1920x1200, ATi hardware tends to lead all the way.

This corroborates what bridgman says. Current ATI hardware seems more limited in software optimizacion when GPU is idling or not fully loaded vs NVIDIA but as soon as you up things, the GPU starts to push real power and this puts in evidence that 4850-4870 hardware is superior in Clock/Performance per watt than NVIDIAs current G92 and GT200.

I have faith that ATI will do great when all the new technolgy for linux arrives (TTM, DRI2, kernel modesetting) but I really miss PowerPlay.

Thank for your comments bridgman I appreciate having someone who actually "speaks" for his company on the linux world and don't worry, nvidia forums are equally brutal with the comments of "sucking, horror and fatal hangs", but nvidia guys take it with less humor than you.

[RealNC]

A bit more information would be useful. What distribution? What driver? What X-Version? Could you post your X-Configuration? Do you use compiz?

I'm using xserver-1.4 (xorg 7.3) on gentoo-amd64 using the latest ati-drivers (8.7) with gnome/metacity and everything works perfectly fine, no xv-tearing, I can even watch HDTV-resolutions without flickering or so and I've only a cheap X1050 256MB PCIe. Using compiz firefox is a bit slow and the rest highly depends on the settings in xorg.conf, as you have to activate non-default settings to get fast composite rendering.

The story is pretty much described in my post to the mplayer list about tearing: http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.v...yer.user/57297

I was on Gentoo AMD64, X.org 1.4.2 (7.3) and Catalyst 8.7 when I posted, but I was using an older X.org previously (I upgraded to see if I can fix the tearing.) I was using no compiz and no composite effects (fglrx tended to die on those). I'm on a Radeon X1950XT 512MB DDR3 PCIe (Sapphire). That's the R580 chip.

If you read there, someone suggested that I try the open source drivers (xf86-video-ati 6.9.0). So I did it. Guess what? It works much better. No crash when switching to framebuffer consoles. No screen corruption when watching fullscreen YouTube. The tearing is still there. But I have compiz-fusion running when those drivers! All effects, no crashes.

I'm not going back to fglrx. For me, the open source developers of xf86-video-ati have achieved in 1 month what ATI still hasn't achieved in several years.

I feel that my criticism is even more justified now.

[shishir]

shishir, this thread is really for accumulating "high level" questions for a Q&A article, not support issues. Can you take this to another thread please ? This sounds like more of an install issue than an XGL issue, so maybe start with OS, previous driver history, how you installed, whether you uninstalled previous driver etc...

I am sorry if this is not the place, but i have tried posting this all over this forum, with no answer having come my way. I even sent you a personal message.

I doubt that this is an install issue, as it seems to be an issue even when I didn't have any previous fglrx version installed. I have seen this problem after a fresh install of openSUSE 11.0,ubuntu 8.04. As you can see AIGLX works. Why is Xgl not working. Xorg logs are not very different for the two cases. Has anyone tested the latest drivers using Xgl?

Thanks,

NOTE: I am responding this late because I somehow did not get a notification for this post of yours, because of the way phoronix notification works.

[Nille]

Current ATI hardware seems more limited in software optimizacion when GPU is idling or not fully loaded vs NVIDIA but as soon as you up things, the GPU starts to push real power and this puts in evidence that 4850-4870 hardware is superior in Clock/Performance per watt than NVIDIAs current G92 and GT200.

Because most games are Optimized for Nvidia cards

[smlbstcbr]

I am sure you are trying to help, but I dont think it is working. As I said, when I posted the fglrxinfo output, I did want to point out the i am using Mesa 3d libs, hence, getting poor performance. I just want to know why that is happening. As for the whitelist, my driver is in the whitelist. The file(s) you are possibly talking about are modprobe.d/blackist or compiz-manager, openSUSE does not seem to have the whitelist file, but I am sure I am using the driver, as the module is loaded and the usage count is more than 0.

You are right when you say "you might not be the person to ask", well, unless you are an ATI/AMD dev, I dont think you are the person I am targetting the question at.

And that is exactly why I had posted such elaborate dumps so that a dev does not come out telling me things
I already know. Like Mesa 3D libs in use, instead of ATI libs. As I said in my previous post, I wanted to know why that was the case. I understand ati libs are not being used, but I want to know why that is the case. As I have the driver installed properly and the xorg.log does not have any significant difference for the two cases.

Try uninstalling the drivers (there is a how to in the AMD site) then reinstall the drivers, reboot (or load manually the module in the kernel, restart X) and type fglrx in the command line.
As for the video in fullscreen with compiz, there is an option in CCSM in the general options -> Undirect Fullscreen Windows must be enabled. This option should solve your fullscreen problems with video.

[shishir]

Try uninstalling the drivers (there is a how to in the AMD site) then reinstall the drivers, reboot (or load manually the module in the kernel, restart X) and type fglrx in the command line.
As for the video in fullscreen with compiz, there is an option in CCSM in the general options -> Undirect Fullscreen Windows must be enabled. This option should solve your fullscreen problems with video.

Thanks for responding.
As I said, this was a fresh install, so no need to reinstall the drivers. I am using YaST to setup the drivers for me. I have tried upgrading the drivers (by removing the SUSE installed drivers and generating the distro specific package, or by running the sh ati-driver-installer-<ver>.run, as root).

I make sure that there are no previous driver files remaining by: doing an "rm -rf" on the output of rpm -pql fglrx<ver>.rpm. So, I know for sure that there are no vestiges of the previous driver left.

The reason I am sure the installation is OK is, AIGLX works just fine. In the same way on two freshly installed OS'es on two Thinkpads, T60 (x1400), and T60p (FireGL v5250).

Compiz fullscreen is a problem that should automatically get fixed once I get over this hurdle. I never had to set that flag, though.

I think I know what the problem is, Xorg is trying to load libGLcore.so and hence, ends up using MESA-PROXY as GL provider.

Thanks a lot for tryin to help. I really appreciate this. Bridgman tells me that this is not the place to talk about the problem, I have posted this problem at the other thread as well, http://www.phoronix.com/forums/showt...page=3&p=40273.

[smlbstcbr]

Thanks for responding.
As I said, this was a fresh install, so no need to reinstall the drivers. I am using YaST to setup the drivers for me. I have tried upgrading the drivers (by removing the SUSE installed drivers and generating the distro specific package, or by running the sh ati-driver-installer-<ver>.run, as root).

I make sure that there are no previous driver files remaining by: doing an "rm -rf" on the output of rpm -pql fglrx<ver>.rpm. So, I know for sure that there are no vestiges of the previous driver left.

The reason I am sure the installation is OK is, AIGLX works just fine. In the same way on two freshly installed OS'es on two Thinkpads, T60 (x1400), and T60p (FireGL v5250).

Compiz fullscreen is a problem that should automatically get fixed once I get over this hurdle. I never had to set that flag, though.

I think I know what the problem is, Xorg is trying to load libGLcore.so and hence, ends up using MESA-PROXY as GL provider.

Thanks a lot for tryin to help. I really appreciate this. Bridgman tells me that this is not the place to talk about the problem, I have posted this problem at the other thread as well, http://www.phoronix.com/forums/showt...page=3&p=40273.

You are welcome.

[smlbstcbr]

Since this is an Ask ATi dev thread...

I want to ask users and devs (I expect to draw bridgman's attention) what is your impression of the ATi/AMD efforts with fglrx to this point.
I've read a lot in the forums and there are positive and negative (mostly) impressions of the development of the drivers. One issue, and I think most users are annoyed with, is: Are the bugs within fglrx a consecuence of the driver itself or is it highly related to the different Linux distributions and, in what extent has that been treated in the ATi Linux department?
Another issue I see is the lack of information about the different settings that one can actually use within the X configuration file. Many users expect to find this information along with the release info in the AMD website. I found the configuration options in the compiz forum (thanks djdoo). However, I believe that, in order to avoid potentially harmful misuse of the different options that one can write to the X conf. file, this should be very clearly specified with every release.