weird green dots on desktop (with fglrx only)

[barc]

I have a strange problem. When using the 9.2, 9.3 or the Ubuntu Intrepid fglrx driver, I get small green lines/dots on the bottom right of my screen.
The only way to capture them is by shooting a photo, they are not displayed on a screenshot.

I use an ATI 4830 card and are currently on Crunchbang which bases on Ubuntu Intrepid.


the white and black things are traybar icons.


This does not(!) happen using windows or the radeonhd driver, so I suppose this is a fglrx bug? Is there anything I can do to get rid of those dots?

Thanks for your help, I really appreciate it!

my xorg.conf:

Section "ServerLayout"
	Identifier     "aticonfig Layout"
	Screen      0  "aticonfig-Screen[0]-0" 0 0
	Option         "AIGLX" "on"
EndSection

Section "Files"
EndSection

Section "Module"
    Load        "glx"
EndSection

Section "ServerFlags"
	Option	    "AIGLX" "on"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
	Identifier   "aticonfig-Monitor[0]-0"
	Option	    "VendorName" "ATI Proprietary Driver"
	Option	    "ModelName" "Generic Autodetecting Monitor"
	Option	    "DPMS" "true"
EndSection

Section "Device"
	Identifier  "aticonfig-Device[0]-0"
	Driver      "fglrx"
	BusID       "PCI:1:0:0"
    Option      "XAANoOffscreenPixmaps" "on"
    Option      "TexturedVideo" "on"
    Option      "VideoOverlay" "off"
    Option      "OpenGLOverlay" "off"
    Option      "Textured2D" "on"
    Option      "UseFastTLS" "1"
    Option      "BackingStore" "on"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
	Identifier "aticonfig-Screen[0]-0"
	Device     "aticonfig-Device[0]-0"
	Monitor    "aticonfig-Monitor[0]-0"
	DefaultDepth     24
	SubSection "Display"
		Viewport   0 0
		Depth     24
	EndSubSection
EndSection

Section "DRI"
    Group       "Video"
    Mode        0666
EndSection

Section "Extensions"
    Option      "RENDER" "Enable"
    Option      "DAMAGE" "Enable"
    Option      "Composite" "Enable"
EndSection

[grantek]

Those look exactly like the artifacts you get on Windows when a GPU (or its RAM) is overheating/overclocked too much (I've never seen them on Linux but I've never run an overclocked GPU on Linux). It might be a pure software bug, but it might also be a failing card that only gets pushed hard enough by the versions of fglrx you're using.

[barc]

Might be, but I can play games without problems under windows. I haven't seen them once there. The card is pretty new and could be faulty, but it sounds unlikely to me if its working fine under windows.

Those artifacts are not moving and appear only under X.

[tball]

Thanks for your help, I really appreciate it!

Could it be a failing powerplay? Mine says:

$ aticonfig --lsp
Error: POWERplay is not supported on your hardware.

Guess my laptop has a good heatsink (asus)

[barc]

$ aticonfig --lsp
Error: POWERplay is not supported on your hardware.

Guess mine says the same... I heart that the 48xx series has problems with powerplay which is not fully supported. Anything I could change about that?

[tball]

$ aticonfig --lsp
Error: POWERplay is not supported on your hardware.

Guess mine says the same... I heart that the 48xx series has problems with powerplay which is not fully supported. Anything I could change about that?

I have a 3650 though.
You could try and see if it is not supported by the drivers, which doesn't show weird dots.

[barc]

Sorry to dig this out again, but the problem remains. I tried the newest fglrx driver (9.8 if I remember correctly) without luck. This is really annoying me. Any ideas what to do?

[cutterjohn]

Some of the older catalysts, 9.2 or later IIRC had a screen corruption problem, but it was fixed in 9.4? 9.5?

Since 9.5? or 9.6? I've now gotten a new type of corruption where random rectangles (primarily on applications) will have black backgrounds which forcing a screen refresh "fixes". Dunno if that's a GNOME/GTK/X.org problem, a catalyst problem, or a combo of the two. (Other users have reported this as well, so it's not hw.)

[barc]

Thanks for the info, my problem remained the same throughout those driver versions.
The green dots change a bit when I reboot I believe, but are always in the bottom right corner of the screen on my desktop, no matter if I have an application open underneath them or not. They do not change when my system is running and don't show up on screenshots.
The only way to capture them is by photographing my monitor like I did.

I've never experienced anything like that.

[vigilantpa1adin]

I have been having the same exact problem.

The only circumstance that I can get them to disappear is when I move my mouse over the dots. Does anyone have a solution?