Which Linux Graphics Driver Bugs Do You Hate?

[Ant P.]

Something seemed odd about your numbers. The result is right but...

25 watts = 25 watt-hours per hour.
25 watt-hours per hour = .025 kWh usage in an hour.
.025 kWh x 12 cents = 0.3 cents per hour (or 0.003 dollars/hour)
16 hours a day x 365 = 5840
5840 hours x 0.3 cents per hour = 17.52 per year.
17.52 per year divided by 12 months = $1.46 a month.

Things like that catch my eye. It's what happens when your father is an accountant

Heh, I was about to ask how the US gets electricity 200 times cheaper than the UK...

VerizonMath strikes again.

[Aradreth]

I have a 8400M GS and 8800GTX and have only had one problem the nvidia driver (I think it is due to the nvidia driver at least...) when using suspend2disk (never get my screen back) which is mildly annoying. Although I do wish I had a intel card instead of the nvidia card in the lappy though. (Longer battery life...)

[deanjo]

yes, US-pricing... We pay about 0.25? per kWh here in Germany. In other words: those 25W are close to 1? _per Week_ or about 36? per Year. From that money I can eat for 2-3 Weeks or buy a new graphics card every 2 years.

The other changes I currently plan for my PC would save 25W (+12,5W for the old card), but those "great innovative GPU makers" manage to reduce this to those 12,5W in best case; several cards have even much more...

Actually it the average Canadian rate in Canadian dollars. Here it's actually 8 cents/kWh. Going @ US prices with the exchange rate that would be about 6.5 cents /kWh.

[some-guy]

Well, it was compiz not redrawing properly, but autostarting 'nvidia-settings -a InitialPixmapPlacement=1' fixed it

[jhansonxi]

My nVidia GeForce 7300GT works without problems on Ubuntu 8.04.2 (Hardy Heron) x86_64 with the closed-source 173.14.12 driver. I'm using dual-head without Compiz. UT2004, Doom3, and Quake4 all perform flawlessly at 1280x1024. My Asus M3A78-EM motherboard uses the 780G with (HD 3200) integrated video. It also worked without problems using fglrx but I don't use it because the second port doesn't support analog monitors.

My Toshiba M35X-S114 laptop has the 855GME chipset which had very broken video support in Hardy. With Intrepid (8.10) it's stable.

I have a couple of boards with the Intel 875P AGP chipset (82875P) that when coupled with PowerColor HD2600 cards are completely unstable. As soon as I try anything that uses OpenGL the system freezes within a few seconds. No keyboard lights flashing panic, no kernel messages on a serial console, nothing. This occurs with the fglrx default driver in Hardy and anything newer. Others with a similar setup have found that increasing the AGP aperture size to match the card's memory can make it work but my cards are 512MB and the BIOS maxes out at 256MB.

[TheK]

Actually it the average Canadian rate in Canadian dollars. Here it's actually 8 cents/kWh. Going @ US prices with the exchange rate that would be about 6.5 cents /kWh.

..no wonder, that ATI and nVidia don't care for power consumption :/

So I guess, I can be happy, that "only" 1/3 of the next PC's idle power will go to the GPU.. If they'd at least make a slower (no, not the 9400 GT, then I can stay with my current one) GPU with those old "low" values of 15/45W...

OK, back on topic: I want VDPAU on PureVideo Generation 1 ;p

[domicius]

Not too much to complain about except for one that I'm not really sure where it lies because I've experienced it with open source and proprietary driver for my ATI Mobility Radeon X1300. Maybe somebody here knows something about it because I don't know even to whom I should report it.

The bug I'm talking about is not being able to keep the system running for more than 10 days (of uptime) with periodic suspends to RAM and resumes from suspend. What I'm saying is that after an x number of days (really can't say how many days but I've never seen an uptime value of 10 days) of using laptop and constantly using suspend to RAM, once it just doesn't wake up and I have to shut it down hard.

What may be related is that during any resume it often goes back to suspend while trying to resume. I lift the lid of a suspended laptop and I see it resuming but when it should have resumed it has in fact gone back to suspend to RAM. Simply trying to resume it once again is successful in probably 99.99% cases - I might be wrong but I think it never did this twice in a row, although it happens almost every other time I try to resume it from suspend. Meaning: at least once a day which is rather annoying.

I'm running Debian unstable always with the latest fgrlx driver and this is the only bug that doesn't allow me to say I have a stable system. Yes, even though it's Debian "unstable", it's almost rock solid except for this annoying bug.

[nightalon]

Compiz Composite Problem

I hope no one has posted this one so far, but I really don't have time to read the whole thread...sorry...please don't flame me.

Having to reboot or restart X to change monitor setups is a pain, but I'm guessing new revisions of Xorg and RandR will help resolve this.


However, using Compiz full time, (which I think is akin to using the 2D and 3D acceleration features in OS X and Vista) one notices that 3D bits are not morphed and modified with the Compiz animation using the ATI and Intel drivers.


NVidia drivers do not seem to have this issue.


ATI 3D acceleration just flickers in Compiz, and using composite/redirection moves the background, but not the 3D accelerated frame. Hence Compiz and Google Earth don't work together.

Intel 3D acceleration (12 months ago anyway) didn't have the flicker problem, but it did have the issue where the 3D zone wasn't morphed with the rest of the desktop.

Of course the open source NVidia drivers (though maybe not Nouveau) don't have 3D acceleration, and Google Earth simply crashes with the open source ati driver. Annoying. Ditto for hi-res video and Compiz sumultaneously.


My experiences stem from using the latest ATI and NVidia binary drivers as of 3 days ago, and whatever the 8.10 open source driver packages are. Of course multi-desktop setups seem to work a lot better with these open source drivers. That is, of course, understandable.


Point of information: given the redraw issues, when a program is locked up, for example, the technology behind Compiz-less Metacity in Ubuntu seems to be a lot like XP's rendering system, while Compiz seems to be a lot like Vista's rendering system. Mac's rendering system seems to accel at 2D acceleration and doesn't have the redraw problems. I have no idea if Mac's window acceleration are somehow also done in 3D. (as 3D textures)

Enlighten me if I am grossly misinformed!

My experiences are with NVidia Quadro NVS110M, NVidia GeForce 9800GTX, Intel GMA950, and ATI Radeon Mobility X1400. Maybe my experience doesn't suffice.

[Saist]

wanted to bring up something that crossed my mind after chewing out the ArchLinux guys on another site.

How many times have you come across a bug and tried to do something about it? I mean beyond just making a forum post somewhere and complaining about it? How many times have you stepped back and actually LOOKED to see if a Vendor has a support method to connect with other users and developers?

The thing is, ATi's linked to a bug reporting system for literal years now : http://ati.cchtml.com/ : and it's linked right from the driver download page. The actual driver develoeprs also are known to browse the bugs, and I'm aware of various readme's included in driver releases referring back issues in the bug reports.

While I see that some people here have filed grievances with the ATi drivers, such as the inability to install, or encountering black screens, I'm not seeing corresponding bug reports actually... you know... FILED.

By comparison, in the whole issue of "Nvidia doesn't have an open-source strategy" there is no way there to connect with the developers or file bugs, so maybe many of the people who have had problems with ATi and use Nvidia cards think that lacking such a feedback mechanism is well.. normal.

***

Basically, I would encourage readers of this thread then: if you have a bug with an ATi card using FGLRX, FILE A BUG REPORT.

If you happen to have an Nvidia card... um... I dunno? Company hasn't responded well to letters or common sense? Anybody got a baseball bat handy?

[deanjo]

By comparison, in the whole issue of "Nvidia doesn't have an open-source strategy" there is no way there to connect with the developers or file bugs, so maybe many of the people who have had problems with ATi and use Nvidia cards think that lacking such a feedback mechanism is well.. normal. ?

I really wish people would read the README (or even what is plainly printed on the driver download page)

If you have any questions or problems, please check the NVIDIA Linux discussion forum. If you don't find an answer to your question there, you can send email (in English) to [email protected].