ATI Radeon HD 2400 XT

[sefnyn]

Dear Forum,

I have recently installed Debian lenny/testing and am having a DVD/video playback problem: the video "stutters" periodically. The time between "stutters" depends on what I'm doing. When I watch a DVD or video file, the video stutters every 30-60 seconds; when my kids play "Extreme Tux Racer" the video stutters more frequently. I should add that the audio also stutters along with the video.

I have tried two video drivers without success:
1. fglrx-driver (the Debian package)
2. Catalyst 8.8 (from the AMD web site)

Additional info about my system is below:
====================================
Phoronix Test Suite v1.2.2 (MALVIK)
System Information
====================================

Hardware:
Processor: Intel Core 2 Quad CPU Q6700 @ 2.66GHz (Total Cores: 4), Motherboard: Dell OptiPlex 755, Chipset: Intel 82Q35 Express DRAM Controller, System Memory: 3289MB, Disk Space: 1GB [not accurate], Graphics: ATI Radeon HD 2400 XT 256MB (650/500MHz), Screen Resolution: 1280x1024

Software:
OS: Debian testing, Kernel: 2.6.26-1-686 (i686), X.Org Server: 1.4.2, OpenGL: 2.1.7873 (fglrx), Compiler: GCC 4.3.1, File-System: ext2/ext3

As well, direct rendering is switched on.

I spoke to a colleague about this problem this morning and he thought I might not have the correct codecs installed. The codecs I'm using (libdvdcss2) have come from debian-multimedia.org. But I wonder if this really is the problem. Does "Extreme Tux Racer" require any codecs to work properly? I don't know.

Regards,
Nick

[legume]

Dear Forum,

I have recently installed Debian lenny/testing and am having a DVD/video playback problem: the video "stutters" periodically. The time between "stutters" depends on what I'm doing. When I watch a DVD or video file, the video stutters every 30-60 seconds; when my kids play "Extreme Tux Racer" the video stutters more frequently. I should add that the audio also stutters along with the video.

Kernel: 2.6.26-1-686

This may be the problem. Some have reported that they get stuttering with 2.6.26.x unless they use the kernel boot option nopat in their bootloader.

For me it doesn't help - I get stuttering with 2.6.26 and cat 8.8 that does not happen with an older kernel + 8.8.

[sefnyn]

Hi everybody,

I never did figure out how to switch on/off "pat" in my grub bootloader; I need more help there.

But... I managed to stop the stuttering by playing with the settings in the Catalyst Control Centre. I found I could control the stuttering with both Catalyst 8.8 and 8.9.

Cheers, Nick

[Kano]

Did you try to install fglrx 8-9 using

http://kanotix.com/files/install-fglrx-debian.sh

in vt1 run

sh install-fglrx-debian.sh -v 8-9

also you can try older drivers, maybe 8-5, the script is made for testing lots of different driver revisions easyly.

[sefnyn]

Thanks, Kano.
I tried running the script with 8-9 three times and 8-5 twice. I can get GDM to start in both cases but otherwise not great. My usual quick test is to run Extreme Tux Racer and see what happens. Black screen in both cases.

I tried to capture the script output and looked at it but found it difficult to interpret. I might be missing some sources in /etc/apt/sources.list. Is that possible? Also, what is the best way to capture shell script output? I did this:

sh install-fglrx-debian.sh -v 8-9 > 89out

Cheers,
Nick