AMD Catalyst 8.5 For Linux

[bridgman]

What are the default settings used if the section device in xorg.conf is empty ?

The whole idea of leaving the section empty is to get away from fixed settings. The driver code looks at the connected displays, compares them to whatever you had last time you ran, and makes an educated guess about how you want the displays configured this time.

The simplest and most common example is that if you had the same displays hooked up to the same connectors as last time, then the displays should be configured in the same way as you last set them.

[jasa68]

Luckily to me the new 8.5 is the best working driver yet, videos seems to run smooth 720p ones too.
Using Fedora 9 (downgraded Xorg from guide) everything else works great exept there is small spike in game like Warsow.
Every time in game some new weapon is used it loads either sound or something to memory and makes small spike (really small but matters), never noticed that before.
Not sure if its cause im trying ext4 fs or pulseaudio delays a bit or then the last cause might be Catalyst AI, turned it on and havent bothered trying it off. =p

And yes, 3d is working better than before assuming those spikes are over, the overall performance is really great, cant hardly believe it how smooth it feels and fast too (compared to windows side). =)

Hope we get next driver with some better compatibility to bleeding edge software. =)

EDIT: Yes it seems that Catalyst AI indeed causes that spike, most likely when new animation comes it loads it into memory somehow, turning Catalyst AI off takes spikes away in Warsow but gaming doesnt really feel as good as having the feature on.

[Vighy]

Sounds like you should use Compiz then

I believe that refers to the framework version, not the detailed content of tabs & controls. Each of the components also has a (much larger) version number which gets bumped on every change but I don't think we display those externally.

What I've been told is that this is the amount of memory which is mapped into the CPU address space and can be drawn into directly by the CPU; the rest is only accessible to the acceleration hardware. Not 100% sure but this seems to make sense; typically the largest value you see mapped is 256K. Since all of the stuff you see on the screen is either drawn by the acceleration hardware or blitted to the screen by the acceleration hardware it probably doesn't matter what this value is set to, as long as it is big enough to hold the actual front buffer displayed on the screen.

ok i'm sorry but it's not true: as you can see where it says: video ram it says how much you have and not how much cpu mapped.

http://ati.cchtml.com/attachment.cgi?id=605

http://www.phoronix.net/image.php?id=amd_firegl_v8600&image=amd_v8600_fglrx

infact it show 1024MB for that card that's the firegl v8600 with 1GB of ram, while mine that should show 512MB it show 128MB.
On the unofficial bugzilla there's an open bug involving another HD2600 chip, but not M76.

http://ati.cchtml.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1037

Honestly, there seems to be a huge list of things which cause driver-to-driver handoffs to hang and nowhere near enough standards or infrastructure to make sure it succeeds. This seems to be the most system-specific and kernel-specific aspect of the whole X driver space and success seems to be based in part on making the same design assumptions as all of the OTHER driver bits which bang on the same hardware. The issue with atieventsd.sh is only one of maybe a hundred different things that can cause hangs when switching between drivers. One day kernel modesetting will fix most of these problems; in the meantime there's just a lot of testing and tweaking to keep all the different bits of a Linux system roughly in sync.

ok but the funny thing is that, after my added rule to authatieventsd.sh it's able to login and logout properly with slim. (you can get the lines of the rule here: http://ati.cchtml.com/show_bug.cgi?id=992#c36 ).
But as you could read there in the bugzilla, it still hangs if after a while i've logged in an worked for a bit of time, I try to logout, Xorg hangs.
It seems not modesetting related, because otherwise it should hang everytime, and i can sure you that it doesn't reach the moment to switch modesetting: it hangs before! so i think it's driver/xorg related.
to help you: xorg-server is 1.3.0.0-r5 from gentoo stock. and fglrx is 8.5

I really hope to NOT bother/annoy you, and to give you a hand to get rid of bugs/problems.

Thank's!

[marcobrancalion]

I tried the <TexturedXrender "off"> with the 8.5 drivers.... but the artifacts in the icons didn't go away.
I reverted, again, to release 8.4.

I'm really curious about what could ever cause that visual corruption.........

[metala]

I installed brand new Debian/lenny amd64. Updated the kernel package to 2.6.24-1, because there was no headers for 2.6.22 (some kbuild depends missing).

When I start the X with fglrx driver, system hangs. Blank/black screen. No ping from outside.
uname -a

Linux korpus 2.6.24-1-amd64 #1 SMP Sat May 10 09:28:10 UTC 2008 x86_64 GNU/Linux

xorg.conf (the buggy one, done by aticonfig --initial)

Section "ServerLayout"
        Identifier     "aticonfig-Layout[all]"
        Screen      0  "aticonfig-Screen[0]" 0 0
EndSection

Section "Files"
EndSection

Section "Module"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
        Identifier  "Generic Keyboard"
        Driver      "kbd"
        Option      "XkbRules" "xorg"
        Option      "XkbModel" "pc104"
        Option      "XkbLayout" "us"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
        Identifier  "Configured Mouse"
        Driver      "mouse"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
        Identifier   "Configured Monitor"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
        Identifier   "aticonfig-Monitor[0]"
        Option      "VendorName" "ATI Proprietary Driver"
        Option      "ModelName" "Generic Autodetecting Monitor"
        Option      "DPMS" "true"
EndSection

Section "Device"
        Identifier  "Configured Video Device"
EndSection

Section "Device"
        Identifier  "aticonfig-Device[0]"
        Driver      "fglrx"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
        Identifier "Default Screen"
        Monitor    "Configured Monitor"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
        Identifier "aticonfig-Screen[0]"
        Device     "aticonfig-Device[0]"
        Monitor    "aticonfig-Monitor[0]"
        DefaultDepth     24
        SubSection "Display"
                Viewport   0 0
                Depth     24
        EndSubSection
EndSection

Xorg.0.log.old

//Too long and cannot post it :(

I'm currently using radeon driver to write this post.
Any help is appreciated..

Specs:
CPU: Intel E6750
MB: Asus P5K (1006 BIOS version) (P35 Chipset + ICH9)
VC: Sapphire 2600 XT 256MB GDDR3

Thanks in advance.

[djdoo]

I tried the <TexturedXrender "off"> with the 8.5 drivers.... but the artifacts in the icons didn't go away.
I reverted, again, to release 8.4.

I'm really curious about what could ever cause that visual corruption.........

After the change you must give this!!! As root always...
aticonfig --input=/etc/X11/xorg.conf --tls=1

In order for amdpcsdb to record your change
Do it and the problems will be gone...

[marcobrancalion]

After the change you must give this!!! As root always...
aticonfig --input=/etc/X11/xorg.conf --tls=1

In order for amdpcsdb to record your change
Do it and the problems will be gone...

I already have:
<Option "UseFastTLS" "1">

.... and i strongly believe that the command you wrote only adds this option (that is already set).

...... Doesn't it ?........


Thanks anyway.

[djdoo]

I already have:
<Option "UseFastTLS" "1">

.... and i strongly believe that the command you wrote only adds this option (that is already set).

...... Doesn't it ?........


Thanks anyway.

Man it doesn't matter!
It is not the option the point!
It is the usage of aticonfig tool to refresh the amdpcsdb file!!

If you don't add something via aticonfig whatever you do by hand at xorg.conf it will completely ignored!

[marcobrancalion]

It is the usage of aticonfig tool to refresh the amdpcsdb file!!

If you don't add something via aticonfig whatever you do by hand at xorg.conf it will completely ignored!

You were right.
I installed the 8.5 drivers, set to "off" the TexturedXrender option, and then ran "aticonfig --input=/etc/X11/xorg.conf --tls=1".

I saw that the /etc/ati/amdpcsdb was updated, this way.
In fact, i had never cared about that file.........


Icons don't get corrupted anymore. 3D and 2D speeds seem not to have worsened..........



Is that TexturedXrender really useful, in the end? (if it worked with the new drivers.....)


Many thanks for help. Bye.

[djdoo]

You were right.
I installed the 8.5 drivers, set to "off" the TexturedXrender option, and then ran "aticonfig --input=/etc/X11/xorg.conf --tls=1".

I saw that the /etc/ati/amdpcsdb was updated, this way.
In fact, i had never cared about that file.........


Icons don't get corrupted anymore. 3D and 2D speeds seem not to have worsened..........



Is that TexturedXrender really useful, in the end? (if it worked with the new drivers.....)


Many thanks for help. Bye.

Well 2D-3D speed must be the expected to be now and believe me especially for 2D it is much better than with 8.4 generally not only under Compiz!

Now about TexturedXrender, maybe it didn't work even for the previous drivers and perhaps at 8.5 it starts to do something but it is not ready yet? Who knows...
One is for sure it causes great troubles now...