AMD Catalyst 9.3 Brings OpenGL Composite Support [Archive]

phoronix

03-27-2009, 02:00 PM

Phoronix: AMD Catalyst 9.3 Brings OpenGL Composite Support

While the Catalyst driver for Windows was released a number of days ago, the Catalyst Linux driver was missing. It has, however, been released today. AMD's Linux engineers ended up delaying the Catalyst 9.3 release so they could spend additional time tuning this driver, since it will be the last release that supports the R300 through R500 series as the support is being dropped. The significant feature that was pushed back into the Catalyst 9.3 Linux driver is improved Composite support.

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=13632

Qaridarium

03-27-2009, 02:18 PM

Hurray! good work michael!

Chewi

03-27-2009, 02:22 PM

I was really looking forward to this and it did look great too until...

While there are some nice improvements in this Linux driver release, what it continues to lack is support for the Linux 2.6.29 kernel...

ARRGH!! That's what I wanted more than anything else. No wireless for another month. Gah.

Qaridarium

03-27-2009, 02:26 PM

http://support.amd.com/us/gpudownload/linux/Pages/radeon_linux.aspx?type=2.4.1&product=2.4.1.3.38&lang=English

"ATI Catalyst™ 9.2 Proprietary Linux x86 Display Driver 79.4MB 9.2 "

no 9.3 to download :-(

Qaridarium

03-27-2009, 02:27 PM

I was really looking forward to this and it did look great too until...

ARRGH!! That's what I wanted more than anything else. No wireless for another month. Gah.

be cool if you use kanotix's installer 2.6.29 works becourse there is a hack!

hobbes

03-27-2009, 02:35 PM

For almost a full year now I have been using the opensouce driver (Radeon) but for the sake of those users who still use Catalyst AMD/ATI should have at least have added support to xserver 1.6 and 2.6.29 Linux Kernel.

IT would give them sometime until - hopefully - the Radeon opensource driver gets Galium/DRI2 support.

LordLethis

03-27-2009, 02:42 PM

I was really looking forward to this and it did look great too until...

ARRGH!! That's what I wanted more than anything else. No wireless for another month. Gah.

You might want to give compat-wireless (http://linuxwireless.org/en/users/Download#Wheretodownload) a shot. You'll have to compile it yourself, but I think that's much more convenient than no wireless. :-)

As for the new catalyst driver: I'm glad my laptop features an integrated intel card besides its FireGL, so I'm able to switch the AMD chip off (switchable graphics *cough*), which gets better performance :eek: (that was with 9.2 - with the lack of kernel and X support, I won't even bother trying 9.3) and lower power consumption...

RealNC

03-27-2009, 02:50 PM

Good news. But the users of "deprecated" hardware are gonna get pissed. Big time :D As composite improves over time, they'll be stuck with 9.3 lol.

But anyway, who cares about them. I have a new card so I'm fine. :P

sundown

03-27-2009, 02:52 PM

Kano

03-27-2009, 03:16 PM

cjr2k3

03-27-2009, 03:38 PM

Everything working fine here!

Now I can play games while having composite effects!!!

kkkk

03-27-2009, 03:54 PM

I was really looking forward to this and it did look great too until...

ARRGH!! That's what I wanted more than anything else. No wireless for another month. Gah.

compat-wireless ?

miles

03-27-2009, 04:20 PM

http://www2.ati.com/drivers/linux/ati-driver-installer-9-3-x86.x86_64.run

Did not test much yet, but with every fglrx driver tested so far it is impossible to playback a video with 1280x536 res without a green bar below. No problem with ati oss driver. Card used: HD 3450.

I'm not sure we're talking about the same thing, but aren't you seeing the green bar at the bottom of the video that's expected when the height isn't a mutiple of 16 (536:16=33,5 here).

If so, it's normal, and also shows up with NVidia proprietary drivers, whatever the OS. Depending on the player there might be a hack to aleviate that, but encoding a video with a height that's not a multiple of 16 is a sign of bad encoding with most codecs (some codecs says a multiple of 8 is ok, but I wouldn't say they never showed that problem).

Why it wouldn't show with the ati opensource drivers is unexpected (unless you use another player, or unless the difference in hw acceleration play a part), but that would be a reason to buy ATI ;) or not, just dump badly encoded video, they don't deserve any better.

Kano

03-27-2009, 04:30 PM

You can be sure it is not shown with Nvidia here. My 8800 GTS 512 (G92) shows it correctly with xv and vdpau!

Mez'

03-27-2009, 04:44 PM

I watched both videos on the article and I'm a bit confused. On my mobile X700, which sadly won't be supported anymore by Catalysts, dragging wobbly windows have always been displayed the way it is shown in the 9.3 video, for more than 2 years now. No rendering issues or whatever. So, maybe the article should be more specific.

In fact, the 9.2 video looks a lot more like the issues I get when the open ati driver is used.

Kano

03-27-2009, 04:47 PM

Up to R500 there is a hardware support for xv, but R600+ it is pure software. So you can not really compare it.

RealNC

03-27-2009, 04:51 PM

I don't think glxgears uses xv ;)

Mez'

03-27-2009, 04:54 PM

Up to R500 there is a hardware support for xv, but R600+ it is pure software. So you can not really compare it.
Then, the article should be more specific, as I said. Because that detail isn't written anywhere in the article. Thus, how am I supposed to know about that detail?

Anyway, thanks for the information, I'm not confused anymore. ;)

h3xis

03-27-2009, 05:00 PM

I just installed and tested this release and I have the same OpenGL behavior as the other releases. The YouTube video in the article shows that moving a window around containing OpenGL will do what it's supposed to, but mine doesn't. It gives the same behavior as before. Is anyone else having this happen?

rafi

03-27-2009, 05:14 PM

The driver seemed promising but like the previous release, powerplay is broken for my x1600 mobility. Too bad. I'll have to use catalyst 9.1 for the rest of my life :(
Why did you break something so important? Could you release a "9-3.5" driver please :(
/* wanna die */

cruiseoveride

03-27-2009, 05:19 PM

Does anyone know how to properly uninstall the Nvidia driver and install the ATi Catalyst?

Kano

03-27-2009, 05:21 PM

Sure, run

nvidia-installer --uninstall
dpkg --purge nvidia-dkms

and then reset your xorg.conf, on current debian/ubuntu:

rm -f /etc/X11/xorg.conf*
dpkg-reconfigure -phigh xserver-xorg

Then you can poweroff and exchange the cards (if you used my install script for nvidia thats all you need).

DarkFoss

03-27-2009, 05:53 PM

Woot small gain in fps in UT2K4..best thing about this driver is getting rid of the black border due to underscan.. The slider's working here just like in windows.

mewtwo

03-27-2009, 06:07 PM

be cool if you use kanotix's installer 2.6.29 works becourse there is a hack!

Where to get this one? Will it also work with Debian/Sidux?

Chewi

03-27-2009, 06:19 PM

be cool if you use kanotix's installer 2.6.29 works becourse there is a hack!
It's more of a Debian patch than a Kanotix patch and I couldn't find it at first but I got there eventually. Works nicely on Gentoo. Many thanks.

LordLethis, thanks for the tip but I'm good now. :)

mitrol

03-27-2009, 06:20 PM

Mobility Radeon X1600
openSUSE 11.1 KDE4

Installed 9.3, now system freezes every time I resize a window playing a video whith composite enabled.

Going back to fglrx 8.11, since from 8.12 to 9.3 I also get a garbled screen every time I logout.

No luck also with opensourece drivers, X also freezes when using radeonhd with EXA enabled.

Boerkel

03-27-2009, 06:48 PM

Works perfect for me on my Mobility Radeon HD 2600. Now the only thing left for me is xv without tearing. Everything else works perfect. Thanks for this great release!

Fixxer_Linux

03-27-2009, 07:03 PM

The horrible thing is that the xorg-server package on gentoo is still marked unstable "~amd64".
I'm just stucked @ 8.10 ati drivers as newer ones require xorg-server 1.5...

Come on gentoo maintainers. I know you are working hard on stabilizing xorg-server 1.5, but I'd like so much test those new drivers...
:(

That'll come soon I hope. Sooner than UT3 anyway !

Bridgman : say "Thanks a lot" to AMD dev team for this great release !
:D

RealNC

03-27-2009, 07:08 PM

So what's if it's ~arch? Will it eat your dog and kill your chicken?

Fixxer_Linux

03-27-2009, 07:15 PM

I tried to unmask the xorg-server package, which just pulled more ~amd64 dependant packages.
I didn't want then to unmask all those packages, as I imagined it could seriously damage the stability of my system.

I'm perhaps wrong, but as I'm just a simple user, I'd rather wait for stable versions rather than jumping to early in testing branch and having some unsolvable problems.

But perhaps do you still have your dog and your chicken ?

RealNC

03-27-2009, 07:19 PM

Yes, they're still alive and kicking. For over a year.

For help, read this: http://blogs.gentoo.org/remi/2009/02/25/help-needed-to-stabilize-xorg-server-1-5

rotarychainsaw

03-27-2009, 07:23 PM

Still as buggy as ever. I love that glxgears is flicker free under compiz, but google earth segfaults 15 seconds in. XV still locks the box hard if I try to resize a window, and the XV overlay is still the wrong size for the player window. Fullscreen games with compiz and the unredirect option are worse than 9.2, because they are not being redirected... More testing to come.

BlackStar

03-27-2009, 07:24 PM

Didn't manage to install this on ArchLinux. The driver would always complain that the kernel module was incompatible (wrong version). Reinstalled 9.4RC1 which work more or less fine.

Fixxer_Linux

03-27-2009, 07:28 PM

Thanks for that link, but I remember I already had it read.

Sincerelly, I don't understand everything on that link.
They say that I could get now a 1.5.3 server up and running and being not so unstable as I imagined?
They also give a little wiki on how to achieve this, but too quick for me : how can I merge a x11.stable.list? where can I find that?
What special information will I find reading the stabilisation bug they are talking about?

You know, I really don't think I have the knowledge to help in any way. I'd rather wait for the moment of the portage will be marked as stable.
I think any earlier move from my side will only make lose time for answering my questions on Gentoo forums.

RealNC

03-27-2009, 07:31 PM

If you wait for stable, you will face the problems when it happens. It's better to face those problems now.

I slightly suspect that you're using the wrong distro. If you don't know what package.keywords is, or don't know what "a bug" on the tracker is, you shouldn't be using Gentoo in the first place :p

ljones

03-27-2009, 07:59 PM

Just downloaded and tried this driver. Odd thing is that (unless I'm still using the older 9.2) the new 9.3 driver seems to be no different! I don't see any speed increases in 3D nor in rendering (I'm trying KDE 4 here, and rendering - for example - with 'wobbly windows' with the 9.2 driver - was fine) .

Edit Video can still be problematic -- depends on the player. KDE 4's dragon player dies a lot x.x but playing with the command line version of mplayer (under slamd64 12.2), packages (.tgz) found here - http://www.amigib.nazwa.pl/linuks/slamd64_12.2/ (for mplayer and its deps) video seems to play ok and go to fullscreen and back without a crash by doing this:

mplayer myvideo.mpg -vo gl

Haven't tried it with anything but MPEG 2 videos so far (namely a brief test video I recorded from a freeview transport stream; that's digital TV, btw).

ljones

dcarpenter85

03-27-2009, 08:21 PM

Melcar

03-27-2009, 08:26 PM

Video playback is still a headache with this revision, but it really depends on the player you're using. Totem + Gstreamer + XV is horrible; choppy playback, off-center videos (window), and kills X if you switch to fullscreen mode. VLC works fine as far as I can tell, and so does mplayer. The no blinking thing with opengl is with both games and videos, which is nice for those that like using opengl instead of Xv for their video playback. Oh, and attempting to manually resize a widowed video will kill X as well (moving it is no problem).
Compiz resizing is weird. As soon as I installed the driver I was excited that windows resized smooth as silk, but then when I restarted the machine windows resizing was laggy again; and now as I type this resizing is butter smooth again. Go figure.

Am I missing something here? Just installed this on a fresh install of Ubuntu 8.10 and I am not getting any opengl composite support. Its almost like I am using the 9.2 driver still... no change at all.

You must be blind then.

http://img18.imageshack.us/img18/4575/screenshotpti.th.png (http://img18.imageshack.us/my.php?image=screenshotpti.png)
http://img18.imageshack.us/img18/screenshotpti.png/1/w1680.png (http://g.imageshack.us/img18/screenshotpti.png/1/)
http://img11.imageshack.us/img11/4048/screenshot1lzg.th.png (http://img11.imageshack.us/my.php?image=screenshot1lzg.png)
http://img11.imageshack.us/img11/screenshot1lzg.png/1/w1680.png (http://g.imageshack.us/img11/screenshot1lzg.png/1/)

energyman

03-27-2009, 08:43 PM

ut2004 works flawless with kde4.2.67 and effects turned on
resizing windows without 'content' is fast
xv does not lock up the box when resizing the output window, but with xine it is still a bit buggy. No problem with mplayer or tvtime
bookmarks pop up instantly.

everything is fine.

Saist

03-27-2009, 08:44 PM

In Catalyst 9.3 are also a variety of fixes in this release and minor additions like enabling RandR 1.2 and CrossFire on dual-GPU graphics cards.

Part of me hoped that meant Crossfire support had finally been extended beyond RadeonHD 4x00 series cards... but it doesn't look like it.

Granted, I'm not actually aware of anybody running Crossfire x1x00 series cards due to the problems of finding a master card, and actually getting a Crossfire capable motherboard back when the x1800's and x1900's were on the market...

h3xis

03-27-2009, 08:57 PM

Am I missing something here? Just installed this on a fresh install of Ubuntu 8.10 and I am not getting any opengl composite support. Its almost like I am using the 9.2 driver still... no change at all.

Same with me. I'm running compiz on Debian Squeeze with kernel 2.6.28.7 and I see no noticeable difference. glxgears still stays in place when I drag the window.

homerhomer

03-27-2009, 09:17 PM

With this new driver, suspend shuts down and my lights do a quick flash and then they stay on. :(

I have to go back to 9.1 release.

Lame

Thingy

03-27-2009, 09:55 PM

Compositing and GL apps seems to work perfectly here now, so definitely an improvement there. :) Resizing windows is still laggy though. For a while I thought video + composite was fixed, but seems I still get system freezes occasionally when playing video and switching them to fullscreen. I suppose I'll have to continue turning KDEs compositing off before watching videos. Still, glad to notice an improvement in this release.

I'm on OpenSUSE 11.1, kernel 2.6.28.8 (no patches), glibc-2.9, xorg 7.4, KDE 4.2.1, Qt 4.5
Sapphire Radeon 3870 - 512MB

bridgman

03-27-2009, 10:23 PM

Thingy

03-27-2009, 10:40 PM

krazy

03-27-2009, 10:56 PM

So is this redirected direct rendering available in the ubuntu jaunty 9-4 driver?

bridgman

03-27-2009, 10:58 PM

I don't believe so. Most of the code is probably there, but I think it came too late for the Ubuntu driver.

krazy

03-27-2009, 11:12 PM

I don't believe so. Most of the code is probably there, but I think it came too late for the Ubuntu driver.
Thanks for the clarification. I'll just have to wait for the next official driver release for 2.6.29 support then.

Thingy

03-27-2009, 11:17 PM

@bridgeman: Ok, followup to the above. (Didn't wait 'til tomorrow)
Not sure if this is helpful at all.
I found the option. I set "UnredirectFullscreen=off" in the [Composite] section of kwinrc and did a little testing with mplayer.
With this option the system will freeze when I go to fullscreen. 5 out of 6 times I'd get an unresized frame from the video with the rest of the screen blank, 1 out of the 6 tries I got a fullscreen frame. The mouse pointer still moved in 4 out of those tries, but everything else is unresponsive.

When I remove the option. That is, with unredirect turned on, the results look slightly different. Now the freezes lead to a black screen. Only one of the times still showed the mouse pointer. With unredirect on I could go to fullscreen a couple of times without freezing, so seems it happens a little less frequently. (Though there were a limited number of tries of course, small sampling of data.) Once it actually froze on going from fullscreen and back to desktop.

My harddrive was thrashing pretty badly after the last reboot, so I stopped the "tests".

Are there logs somewhere that could be of use and which survive the reboot?

dcarpenter85

03-27-2009, 11:32 PM

Thingy, does KWin have an option to unredirect fullscreen windows ? If it does, and if the option is enabled, can you try turning it off (ie *don't* unredirect fullscreen windows) to see if that eliminates the freeze ?

For anyone who is *not* seeing OpenGL output composited, can you please reply back to the list with some info about your graphics chip/card/bus ?

Radeon 9800XT AGP card

fgl_glxgears crashes my system with no error message, just black screen and im forced to do a hard restart. glxgears works but output is not composited. Video playback with VideoOverlay on and opengloverlay off is black, and obviously not composited. This really sucks since this is the last proprietary driver for my card, and it doesn't even work correctly. Guess ill keep my eyes peeled for dri2 and gallium3d in the open source driver.

GreatWalrus

03-28-2009, 12:13 AM

I feel like those of us with cards <Radeon 2000 are in something similar to the "digital transition" phase going on around the world, except this time our graphics cards are becoming obsolete instead of antennas. Where's my upgrade coupons, AMD? :D

Anyways, neat comparison with the composite support, it looks so much better now.

TheK

03-28-2009, 01:40 AM

ut2004 works flawless with kde4.2.67 and effects turned on

So the "transparent splashscreen and then crazy cursor"-bug is gone? Interesting, it still exists in "9.4beta"...

Another bug I'd really really love to get fixed soon is the support for about *any* tv-app without fighting with xorg.conf (which didn't even help me, so I have to use xawtv in a 300*200 window without XV)

mukiex

03-28-2009, 02:25 AM

I'm using KDE in Ubuntu 8.10, is anyone else here getting the "black flicker" bug where a quick black flicker shows up every few seconds and your system pauses (hangs?) while it's there?

FunkyRider

03-28-2009, 04:06 AM

Just switched to nvidia 2 weeks ago. Sorry ATI, you are too late.

pchev

03-28-2009, 04:40 AM

For me this release is about perfect, it solve the last few bug I have until now, I have activated again Kwin composition by default. Congratulation AMD!

Using: Ubuntu 8.10, KDE 4.2.1, Radeon 3850.

Bug solved:
- resizing window with Kwin is now smooth.
- no more flicker in windowed OpenGL application with Kwin. GoogleEarth run perfect.
- no more black window in Wine OpenGL application. I can get SketchUp running with Wine 1.1.17

Zhick

03-28-2009, 04:42 AM

Another bug I'd really really love to get fixed soon is the support for about *any* tv-app without fighting with xorg.conf (which didn't even help me, so I have to use xawtv in a 300*200 window without XV)
Kaffeine works fine (or atleast worked fine the last time I tried) if you don't use Xv. But I guess OpenGl is a viable option now even with compositing enabled.
The problem with tv+Xv is that fglrx horribly crashes the Xserver whenever any Xine-based media-player tries to play back an interlaced video (Bug) (http://ati.cchtml.com/show_bug.cgi?id=938). This can be worked around by enabling deinterlacing sometimes (in Kaffeine this worked for me for a few channels, but not all).

spoilerhead

03-28-2009, 05:13 AM

really the best fglrx release ever
everything works quite fine (radeon hd4870, ubuntu8.10x64, gnome+compiz)

energyman

03-28-2009, 05:22 AM

@Thingy if your mouse still moves you should be able to do sysrq-key dance. e-i-u-b that should reduce the 'trashing'.
@Thek I am using tvtime. No 'fighting' with xorg.conf. xawtv stopped working for me a long time ago :(

mudd1

03-28-2009, 06:32 AM

Wow, glxgears now doesn't flicker so badly anymore. Instead it just totally messes up my screen, with parts of windows all over the place and only killing X helps. Never seen anything like it. Video's unchanged: xv is out of place and sometimes crashes X. Somehow my amazement over this release damped down quite quickly. Too bad no one at ATI cares to look at their Linux bug tracker, otherwise I'd complain where this belongs.

RealNC

03-28-2009, 07:14 AM

Somehow it seems that Catalyst starts working for me again while at the same time it stops working for other people every 3 or 4 releases :D

bridgman

03-28-2009, 07:31 AM

Video playback with VideoOverlay on and opengloverlay off is black, and obviously not composited.

Video output through the overlay can not be composited, since it bypasses the frame buffer completely. Can you try with VideoOverlay off and TexturedVideo on ?

The black image is because Compiz over-writes the keying colour which would have otherwise made the video overlay pop up in that area. Video processing via the overlay doesn't fit with composited desktops, that's why we dropped it in later cards..

RealNC

03-28-2009, 07:35 AM

@bridgman
I see people here claiming that window resizes with composite active work for them now while others (including me) are still getting the 1FPS performance while resizing. And still others claim it sometimes works and sometimes doesn't.

If possible, can you ask around if this was actually supposed to be addressed at all with 9.3?

amaguran

03-28-2009, 10:30 AM

I've just upgraded to 9.3 and I cannot launch CCC. It crashes the system with a black screen. I cannot switch to console - just hard reset.
The performance seems similar to 9.2. I'm running Ubuntu 8.10 on HD2600 Mobility.

dcarpenter85

03-28-2009, 11:39 AM

Video output through the overlay can not be composited, since it bypasses the frame buffer completely. Can you try with VideoOverlay off and TexturedVideo on ?

The black image is because Compiz over-writes the keying colour which would have otherwise made the video overlay pop up in that area. Video processing via the overlay doesn't fit with composited desktops, that's why we dropped it in later cards..

I will try this fix, but it still doesn't explain why open gl is not being composited.

dcarpenter85

03-28-2009, 11:51 AM

I just tried TexturedVideo on, and after opening a video my screen turns black and my system locks up forcing me to do a hard reboot. This is the same behavior I observed when trying to run glxgears or fgl_glxgears. Something is not right with this driver. Whenever I install catalyst drivers on linux I always follow wiki.cchtml.com just to make sure I install correctly. Is compositing supposed to work with the 9800 series cards or not?

Here is a system log output for when the crash occurs.

Mar 28 12:06:03 ubuntu kernel: [ 1175.021244] [fglrx] It's not necessary to adjust system aperture on this ASIC
Mar 28 12:06:04 ubuntu gdm[6655]: WARNING: gdm_slave_xioerror_handler: Fatal X error - Restarting :0
Mar 28 12:06:04 ubuntu kernel: [ 1175.815930] compiz.real[6881]: segfault at 5411 ip 08055c8c sp bfa46e50 error 4 in compiz.real[8048000+34000]
Mar 28 12:06:04 ubuntu console-kit-daemon[5025]: GLib-GObject-WARNING: instance of invalid non-instantiatable type `(null)'
Mar 28 12:06:04 ubuntu console-kit-daemon[5025]: GLib-GObject-CRITICAL: g_signal_emit_valist: assertion `G_TYPE_CHECK_INSTANCE (instance)' failed
Mar 28 12:06:04 ubuntu console-kit-daemon[5025]: GLib-GObject-CRITICAL: g_object_unref: assertion `G_IS_OBJECT (object)' failed
Mar 28 12:06:05 ubuntu acpid: client connected from 7097[0:0]
Mar 28 12:06:06 ubuntu kernel: [ 1177.515009] [fglrx] AGP detected, AgpState = 0x1f004a1b (hardware caps of chipset)
Mar 28 12:06:06 ubuntu kernel: [ 1177.515020] [fglrx] [agp] enabling AGP with mode=0x1f004b1a
Mar 28 12:06:06 ubuntu kernel: [ 1177.515026] agpgart-intel 0000:00:00.0: AGP 3.0 bridge
Mar 28 12:06:06 ubuntu kernel: [ 1177.515059] agpgart-intel 0000:00:00.0: putting AGP V3 device into 8x mode
Mar 28 12:06:06 ubuntu kernel: [ 1177.515111] fglrx_pci 0000:01:00.0: putting AGP V3 device into 8x mode
Mar 28 12:06:06 ubuntu kernel: [ 1177.515166] [fglrx] AGP enabled, AgpCommand = 0x1f004312 (selected caps)
Mar 28 12:06:08 ubuntu kernel: [ 1180.145469] [fglrx] Setup AGP aperture
Mar 28 12:06:08 ubuntu kernel: [ 1180.145749] [fglrx] GART Table is not in FRAME_BUFFER range
Mar 28 12:06:08 ubuntu kernel: [ 1180.151111] [fglrx] Firegl kernel thread PID: 7107
Mar 28 12:06:08 ubuntu kernel: [ 1180.153342] [fglrx] Reserved FB block: Shared offset:0, size:40000

Heiko

03-28-2009, 12:13 PM

For my HD3450 + HD3200 hybrid crossfire machine, with two screens connected to the HD3450 (a lcd monitor and a tv, not able to drag windows between them, so separate desktops), this is the first driver since 8.9 that allows me to change underscan/overscan/screensize options for my tv, without booting in a black screen afterwards!!!

With the 9.2 release I couldn't play some dvd's (image was all blocky, very strange, even for different episodes of Heroes on a single dvd, the first episode worked fine, the second didn't...). This seems to be fixed in 9.3 again.

I don't use desktop effects, but on my other pc (has an HD4870) I tried whether it works with OpenGL compositing. Glxgears behaves very nicely like shown on the video of the news article.

There are still a few problems though:

Can't switch user on my HD3450+HD3200 box with two monitors, the screens turn black and the only option left is reset.
Can't turn desktop effects on on my HD3450+HD3200 box with two monitors, the screens turn black in this case as well... reset only option.
Glxgears gives an error message when the program ends. I have seen this error message many many times in many different driver releases. With some driver releases its there, with some others it isn't. Not sure whether it does harm... but it doesn't look nice.

Would be great if these were fixed, I really would like to use some degree of desktop effects, but at the moment I can't because my HD3450+HD3200 machine won't work anymore then.

glock24

03-28-2009, 01:48 PM

I was expecting support for the 2.6.9 kernel, but I was disappointed.

dcarpenter85

03-28-2009, 06:11 PM

I was expecting support for the 2.6.9 kernel, but I was disappointed.

I expected a working driver for my card since it is the last release supporting legacy hardware, but I was disappointed...

Moronix

03-28-2009, 06:32 PM

Does this support Fedora 10 ?

rolz

03-28-2009, 06:33 PM

not happy about dropped support.

energyman

03-28-2009, 09:52 PM

hm, is it possible that there are some AA related improvements? I am not sure but it seems like vegastrike looks a lot better - it might be wishfull thinking, so ....

bridgman

03-28-2009, 10:37 PM

Moronix; does not work with F10 AFAIK.

storma

03-28-2009, 11:10 PM

Overall it seems like a good release but it has introduced graphical corruption in Savage 2.

Nille

03-29-2009, 12:09 AM

Vla-do

03-29-2009, 05:46 AM

For me the new driver does not work (as promised in the article).

My chipset is "ATI Technologies Inc RS485 [Radeon Xpress 1100 IGP]".
The system is Ubuntu Linux 8.10 / amd64 / Gnome with compiz.

Has anyone had success with this or a similar configuration?

Moving a glxgears window looks like in the first movie.
Apparently the driver is not released yet - I hope this will be fixed before the last official release for my system!

storma

03-29-2009, 06:24 AM

check to make sure direct rendering is enabled.

glxinfo |grep direct

if not, unset LIBGL_ALWAYS_INDIRECT.

Vla-do

03-29-2009, 07:35 AM

Thanks for the quick reply!

glxinfo says "direct rendering: yes"

Like people from some previous posts I also cannot launch amdcccle any more: "Segmentation fault".

3D performance is good, though: > 600 FPS in glxgears (> 1000 without compiz), smooth Google Earth (if I disable the 3D desktop with "metacity --replace" to avoid flickering).

check to make sure direct rendering is enabled.

glxinfo |grep direct

Suggestions anyone? :confused:

sreyan

03-29-2009, 08:45 AM

RealNC

03-29-2009, 10:27 AM

Is in CCC vsync set to always on ? I have the same issue. but if i turn it off it works like a charm.

Nope. And I don't think VSync has anything to do with window resizing or even composite in general.

nico342

03-29-2009, 02:14 PM

On my side version 9.3 works almost same as the previous one. I'm not using Compiz, so I don't worrie about Composite. But I'm still getting video tearings. The only solution that I found was to enable vsync to always on in AMDCCCLE. It works fine when enabled, but with higher bitrate it slowing down my videos in XBMC , got frame drop.
Is someone has an idea how to rid tearings without using vsync ?

logic

03-30-2009, 11:06 AM

FYI: A Fedora 10 package of 9.3 made it's way into the rpmfusion-nonfree-updates-testing repository (http://download1.rpmfusion.org/nonfree/fedora/updates/testing/10/) yesterday.

Mr_Ed

03-30-2009, 05:26 PM

Thingy, does KWin have an option to unredirect fullscreen windows ? If it does, and if the option is enabled, can you try turning it off (ie *don't* unredirect fullscreen windows) to see if that eliminates the freeze ?

For anyone who is *not* seeing OpenGL output composited, can you please reply back to the list with some info about your graphics chip/card/bus ?

(--) PCI:*(0@1:0:0) ATI Technologies Inc RV350 AR [Radeon 9600] rev 0, Mem @ 0xd0000000/0, 0xff820000/0, I/O @ 0x00009800/0, BIOS @ 0x????????/131072
(--) PCI: (0@1:0:1) ATI Technologies Inc RV350 AR [Radeon 9600] (Secondary) rev 0, Mem @ 0xe0000000/0, 0xff830000/0

fglrxinfo
display: :0.0 screen: 0
OpenGL vendor string: ATI Technologies Inc.
OpenGL renderer string: ATI RADEON 9600 Series
OpenGL version string: 2.1.8543 Release

NO COMPOSITE OPENGL WHATEVER HERE

Mr_Ed

03-30-2009, 05:28 PM

Radeon 9800XT AGP card

fgl_glxgears crashes my system with no error message, just black screen and im forced to do a hard restart. glxgears works but output is not composited. Video playback with VideoOverlay on and opengloverlay off is black, and obviously not composited. This really sucks since this is the last proprietary driver for my card, and it doesn't even work correctly. Guess ill keep my eyes peeled for dri2 and gallium3d in the open source driver.

Exactly the same issues here on my 9600 XT

Mr_Ed

03-30-2009, 05:35 PM

I expected a working driver for my card since it is the last release supporting legacy hardware, but I was disappointed...

You are not the only one :mad:

Mr_Ed

03-30-2009, 05:36 PM

(EE) fglrx(0): Failed to allocate dynamic shared buffer!
(EE) fglrx(0): Failed to allocate dynamic shared buffer!
(EE) fglrx(0): Failed to allocate dynamic shared buffer!

FunkyRider

03-30-2009, 06:04 PM

When will you learn? Why do you think suddenly they will release a driver and 'fix every thing'?

Please, for god's sake, get rid of your cards and switch to something works, or just wait for a year till OSS catches up.

charlie

03-30-2009, 06:22 PM

Please, for [profainity] get rid of your cards and switch to something works, or just wait for a year till OSS catches up.

Do not use the Lord's name in vain.

wfeltmate

03-30-2009, 06:28 PM

I was about to commend FunkyRider for saying what needs to be said, but then I saw charlie's response and was just stunned to see someone take the time to write that here.

btw charlie, who is to say FunkyRider is christian and believes in your god, and not just using a very common expression?

lbnbfhytoydkdd

03-30-2009, 07:36 PM

linuxhansl

03-30-2009, 09:25 PM

This release hard-locks my system when X starts up. All I see is a black screen with a frozen waiting cursor in the center.
This is a plain 64bit openSUSE 11.1 kernel with a 4850 card and an AMD Phenom X4 processor. Any ideas on what I can do? The 9.2 release worked fine.

I have exactly the same issue on a 32bit Fedora 10, Intel Core Duo 2 and a 3xxx card.
I have a custom kernel so I cannot (easily) use the RPMFusion fglrx packageds.
I did look at their source RPM and applied the same fixes. That worked fine for 9.2, but with 9.3 I get exactly the problem described above.

DarkFoss

03-31-2009, 12:40 AM

I had to go back to the 9.2's had alot of issues running EverQuest with wine..missing faces, armor textures..ran slower too..with either wine 1.17 or 1.18.

duffster

03-31-2009, 03:16 AM

Do not use the Lord's name in vain.

He said "god", not "God". There is a world of difference...

This is a technical forum, so let's leave religious hang-ups at home.

bibi

03-31-2009, 03:57 AM

KDE4.2/radeon 4670

Tested yesterday, happy to see the under/overscaling option :).

Without 3d effects, everything is fine, but with 3d effects, i have tearings in my videos (xv), a lot of slowdown...

Bibi

cjr2k3

03-31-2009, 05:11 AM

I have a 4850 and works perfectly on my Ubuntu 64Bit. Not a single problem found yet. (I do play in Wine with composite enabled now)

pedepy

03-31-2009, 04:54 PM

"Expect compositing to improve in future releases" ....

Yeah this is *GREAT* unless you happene to have bought your ATI card a little over 18 months ago...........

Also, does it still kill your computer to resize a window ? .. IMO they shouldve fixed 'window resizing' before introducing redirectered direct rendering ..............

tball

03-31-2009, 05:44 PM

lbnbfhytoydkdd

03-31-2009, 06:22 PM

Any ideas from the AMD/ATI developers here on my issue with the freeze upon X startup? Would be greatly appreciated.

rbmorse

04-01-2009, 12:21 AM

This is a technical forum, so let's leave religious hang-ups at home.

Amen to that, bro!

drankinatty

04-01-2009, 06:22 AM

Any ideas from the AMD/ATI developers here on my issue with the freeze upon X startup? Would be greatly appreciated.

I can confirm this behavior in the 9-3 (8.953) driver. I can run for a little bit, but if I start glxgears, there are NO gears in the windows and the FPS go into a death spiral:

1900 frames in 5.0 seconds = 380
200 frames in 5.0 seconds = 40
175 frames in 5.0 seconds = 35
100 frames in 5.0 seconds = 20

Then BAM my laptop is locked up tighter than a drum. (Toshiba P205D w/X1200 card and openSuSE 11.0) The 9-3 driver introduced a new error on my system:

(EE) fglrx(0): Failed to allocate dynamic shared buffer!

It might have been present in 9-2, but that driver would NOT even run on my laptop. Why you ask??, it would cause my laptop to reboot on xdm start. Damn frustrating.

After the latest borked 9-3 borked ATI driver for my hardware, I sadly now have a script that reverts to the 8-9 driver that still works flawlessly on my system. Why in the heck can't ATI get the problems fixed for the x1200-x1300 mobile radeon cards that were introduced with the release of the 8-10 driver??

Back to 8-9:

03:24 alchemy:~> glxgears
4944 frames in 5.0 seconds = 988.783 FPS
5041 frames in 5.0 seconds = 1008.174 FPS
5031 frames in 5.0 seconds = 1006.023 FPS
5032 frames in 5.0 seconds = 1006.366 FPS

Compiz works great - no stability problems at all. Guess were just screwed again for the time being....

Good luck to ATI with the 9-4 driver. Even a blind squirrel finds a nut every once in a while... Maybe it's ATI's turn?

I have loaded an run every fglrx driver since October 2007 - through the dark days of SONAME mismatches, etc.., but I am so put out with the last 6 ATI driver releases -- it's just a shame I can't rip the integrated card out of my laptop. I'd drop a $50 8600GT in there so fast it would make your head spin and all my video driver problems would be a thing of the past...

ATI just need to opensource the damn driver once and for all. I guarantee you all the driver bugs would be resolved in 30 days and people would no longer be scared to death to buy anything with an ATI card in it.

It simply makes no since at this point and this day and age.. It is becoming painfully obvious that ATI can't manage the driver anymore on outsourced tech support and developers -- what a shame..