Assorted performance issues with EAH4870X2

[ExecutorElassus]

So, the card is from Asus, and it's the first ATi card I've installed (previously was all nVidia; duh.), and I'm encountering a few performance issues. I ran the aticonfig script, and have a new xorg.conf as a result. Otherwise, it's a fresh install. Kernel is 2.6.26 (building against .27 apparently won't compile yet), driver is .532. Here's the rundown:

1) HiDef video playback is bad for some files. Particularly Matroska at 1080p: the video lags badly, and quickly falls well behind of audio (at least, it does playing with xine; playing with smplayer freezes the system hard).

2) If I use the digital output, the resolution appears to be the same, but it severely pixellated, to the point that fonts are unreadable, and the mouse looks like it's rendered in 8-bit. Using the DVI-to-VGA adapter appears to work.

3) Certain GTK apps (suck as firefox and Transmission) show a pale aqua/greenish color instead of what should be gray (such as the shading applied to alternating entries in Transmission, or shading on certain heading fields in firefox). Changing the color balance of the monitor does not fix the problem. Color balance appears to be correct, when - say - viewing pictures or movies.

4) If I try to play EVE-Online, I can play it with the "Premium Graphics" mode enabled (this is running it under wine; the cedega release is b0rked for other reasons), but I can only see the lighting channel (engine trails, lights in the hangar, etc.), and the starry background. No ships, no objects, nothing that would require applying texture maps to polygons (apparently). I still get about 100fps, though.

These are, I expect, several problems all happening concurrently: if someone can take a stab at fixing even one of them, I'd be grateful. Right now, my priority is fixing EVE and video playback (in that order): those were the two reasons I bought the card in the first place.

Thanks for the help!

EE

[Redeeman]

video playback has mostly nothing to do with your graphics card, the decoding fully happens on the cpu, and your cpu is probably too slow to decode 1080p fast enough.

[ExecutorElassus]

video playback has mostly nothing to do with your graphics card, the decoding fully happens on the cpu, and your cpu is probably too slow to decode 1080p fast enough.

Except that the cpu is a 6,4 (2x 3,2) GHz chip, and I can watch other files at 1080p no problem. Further, when playing the file in question, CPU load remains at about 50-65% on both cores.

I was under the impression that the Linux drivers had some issues with video playback, what with them not accelerating it properly or something. But perhaps I'm wrong?

Thanks,

EE

[Dandel]

I'd wait and try the 8.10 driver when that comes out, because it appears that the HD video playback will improve, because XvMC and UVD will be enabled.

[ExecutorElassus]

So, the 8.10 driver came out, and I installed it. In the meantime, I also changed the mobo (same brand, though, and largely the same hardware. I rebuilt the kernel anyway). Now, X won't even start, and the driver segfaults. Here's the code:

List of video drivers:
   fglrx
   nv
(WW) module ABI major version (4) doesn't match the server's version (2)

Backtrace:
0: X(xf86SigHandler+0x6a) [0x486b7a]
1: /lib/libc.so.6 [0x7fcfa722d5a0]
2: /usr/lib64/xorg/modules/drivers//fglrx_drv.so(atiddxProbeMain+0x87e) [0x7fcfa628bdbe]
3: X(DoConfigure+0x1d9) [0x478949]
4: X(InitOutput+0x866) [0x46b656]
5: X(main+0x2c6) [0x437256]
6: /lib/libc.so.6(__libc_start_main+0xf4) [0x7fcfa721a4a4]
7: X(FontFileCompleteXLFD+0x289) [0x4366f9]

Fatal server error:
Caught signal 11.  Server aborting

You can read about that on this thread.

So, the above problems are now moot, as I can't even get X to start.

Thanks,

EE

[Dandel]

You already fixed the issue on that other thread, so how did the issue originally brought up in this thread get fixed yet?

[ExecutorElassus]

Alas! The issue on that thread remains unresolved. I'll come back here and report about these issues when (if?) I ever get past that one.

[ExecutorElassus]

So, the other problem is now resolved, for reasons unknown (permissions? bad xorg.conf? who knows?).

Anyway, I'll try out the other issues here. video playback seems to work better (the video in question runs more or less fine, even when running a hash on a 74GB file in the background).

I haven't checked 2) or 4) yet, but 3) persists. This may have something to do with gtk settings, though. I'll check.

Thanks,

EE

[ExecutorElassus]

okay. Tried EVE. It's totally fried. Crashing, refusing to re-start without complete re-install, etc. i don't suppose you - or anybody else here - has managed to get EVE under wine working with this card, have you?

Thanks,

EE

[bridgman]

I didn't find a lot of useful information on this from Google but the best suggestions seemed to involve disabling a few options, presumably in Wine. The recommended ones seem to be : occlusion queries, NV_VAR and ARB_VBO.

Worth a try anyways.

Separately, a couple of posts are implying that the 64x64 issue (need to use Virtual if your monitor H & V resolutions are not multiples of 64) with certain games under Wine/Cedega but it's not clear if the users were running patched older drivers (which had that known problem) or are seeing it with current drivers.