Problem with Catalyst v8.6 and 8.7

[jupbell]

690G gigabyte GA-MA69G-S3H using the IGP

OpenGL renderer string: ATI Radeon X1200 Series
OpenGL version string: 2.1.7769 Release

-- UPDATE --

8.7 is buggy on my setup. Nothing is really new, as many people have said its been buggy.

I see this in dmesg: ( seen it before )

[fglrx] GART Table is not in FRAME_BUFFER range
[fglrx] Reserved FB block: Shared offset:0, size:1000000
[fglrx] Reserved FB block: Unshared offset:7ffb000, size:5000

Is it because I'm using the IGP?

Random and reproducible crashes ( either X crashes or machine reboots as if to save itself from overheating )

when using the following: ( these bugs are not new )

firefox2 + flashplayer

Stopping a DVD using xine ( usually crashed X only )

Games like Urban Terror always crashed. I have not tried it yet with 8.7

$>fgl_glxgears
Using GLX_SGIX_pbuffer
744 frames in 5.0 seconds = 148.800 FPS
1249 frames in 5.0 seconds = 249.800 FPS
1617 frames in 5.0 seconds = 323.400 FPS
1552 frames in 5.0 seconds = 310.400 FPS
1263 frames in 5.0 seconds = 252.600 FPS

I've been watching gkrellm when using firefox2 + flashplayer and there is some point where the CPUs getting maxed.

How much CPU is the IGP allowed to use and/or if something buggy happens in the driver, why is it allowed to max out a CPU?

I'm assuming my mobo has a failsafe that is saving it from damage.

I'm also assuming if I was using an actual video card, that this would be preventable and handled without crashing things. Could I need a BIOS update?

Its odd that the kernel allows any of this to happen, but I guess thats what this means

fglrx: module license 'Proprietary. (C) 2002 - ATI Technologies, Starnberg, GERMANY' taints kernel.

Peace y'all

[mega_mike]

8.7 performance on a Mobility Radeon x1400 is pretty good with one exception. After 6 hours of usage my CPU usage spikes to a constant 50% (gnome system monitor and xorg processes seem to be using most of the dual core cpu).

Attempting to restart x at this point results in a hard lock. Memory usage and swap usage are low.

[bridgman]

That sounds like what the open source devs are calling a "soft lock". On WindowsXP we have a feature called VPURecover which detects this condition and more-or-less invisibly recovers from it. Vista has the same capability built into the OS and driver model (I think the events are called TDR's). Linux doesn't have anything like that today but a number of people are working towards it.

[Melcar]

Some form of event logs for fglrx would be nice too, or something that tells us "yes, fglrx caused that massive system failure you just experienced" .

[bridgman]

Agreed. Short term priority is simply avoiding the massive system failures but I expect we will want to make the driver more chatty over time to help troubleshoot any remaining issues. So far as long as we can repro the problem in house we can usually fix it; the verbose logs start to become a big help for problems we can't repro in house where we need to rely on details from a customer system.

[leef]

That sounds like what the open source devs are calling a "soft lock". On WindowsXP we have a feature called VPURecover which detects this condition and more-or-less invisibly recovers from it. Vista has the same capability built into the OS and driver model (I think the events are called TDR's). Linux doesn't have anything like that today but a number of people are working towards it.

Does this raise more questions?

Should I understand this to mean there is a known "lock up" condition (generally - since XP, fglrx, and oss all are susceptible) with a known recovery method (at least on the XP side)?

I can imagine that video cards are so complicated that they can't be definitively controlled by programmers, and that implementing a watchdog 'recovery' process is easier than fixing the original problem. I'd prefer if the underlying problem were fixed, rather than adding an extra process and a system hiccup every 6 hours.

*Edit: removed accidental dig.

[forum1793]

8.7 is running like a champion on my setup

The big difference so far is logging in to XFCE is super fast again. Not 100% sure this is due to the new driver.

690G gigabyte GA-MA69G-S3H using the IGP
...
fgl_glrxgears runs fast.
1635 frames in 5.0 seconds = 327.000 FPS

Are you experiencing the problems in mythtv and wine like everyone else?

[mega_mike]

That sounds like what the open source devs are calling a "soft lock". On WindowsXP we have a feature called VPURecover which detects this condition and more-or-less invisibly recovers from it. Vista has the same capability built into the OS and driver model (I think the events are called TDR's). Linux doesn't have anything like that today but a number of people are working towards it.

Is there anything I can do to help identify the source of this cpu eating problem? My Xorg.0.log file shows no errors and I don't see anything out of the ordinary in the rest of the system logs.

I would like to provide more information but I need some clues on what to look for.

If this helps, this my xorg.conf
http://pastebin.com/m43808b77

This is the Xorg.0.log that corresponds to that xorg.conf
http://pastebin.com/m71bd6070

Also, in response to the question about issues with Wine. Wine did corrupt my display at couple versions back, but there have been a couple updates to Wine since then and I have experienced no issues at all (I am using the winehq repository)

*UPDATE*
Ok, I just triggered the system slowdown at 5 hours and 20 minutes of usage. I watched my idle processor usage go from 0 to 50 and then it stays there until I reboot . The only thing I noticed new in my Xorg.0.log file is following appended at the end:

SetGrabKeysState - disabled
SetGrabKeysState - enabled
SetClientVersion: 0 9
SetClientVersion: 0 9
SetClientVersion: 0 9
Got unexpected buttonTimer in state 0

[bridgman]

AFAIK every GPU brand sees this problem, which is why Vista took what was previously an ATI-only feature and generalized it across all GPU vendors. It was a much bigger issue in the AGP days, where we were all trying to run reliable systems over an inherently flaky foundation. I'm only guessing that this is the issue in your case, of course.

[Cyberdemon]

Here with my Sapphire Radeon 3650 512Mb DDR3... on Ubuntu 8.04 64 bits, same problems...
I've tested drivers from 8.3 to 8.7, latest ones (8.6 and 8.7)with crappy results (screen corruption issues and low perfomance).
8.3 to 8.5 works so well but after some minutes of playing (wine+wow, or Quake3, War$ow, etc...) freezes the screen and hang the system.

Screen tearing when playing videos makes me sick...

I have no problems in windows xp.
My system specs are:
AMD Athlon(tm) Dual Core Processor 4850e
ASUS M3A78-EH
4gb MDT DDR 800 for AMD
Sapphire Radeon HD 3650

It's very sad to pay for a full AMD computer to deal with this kind of problems...
This is my first and last one...

PS: Sorry for my english, I'm from Spain.