Getting 9.3 Legacy to work on newest release

[Melcar]

Ubuntu 9.10. I recently tried Fedora 12 and it works even better. My understanding is that everything necessary to have a proper driver is already available, just the actual work is what needs to be done.

[spinsane]

I'm still surprised that you're finding image quality worse with the open source drivers than with fglrx. AFAIK most people have opposite results. Are you sure you're using -vo xv with mplayer ? Do you have a compositor running ? I believe Ubuntu enables desktop effects (ie Compiz) by default if the driver supports it. If Preferences -> Appearance -> Desktop Effects isn't set to None, try it there.

Yep, I'm in xv. Not running a compositor, desktop effects are disabled. I'm quite savvy with mplayer (well, I don't compile svn releases every day like some people), having successfully manipulated it to run 1080p HD videos on this crappy video card without hiccups in windows, but I'm not having similar results under the open-source drivers.

Run hwinfo --gfxcard in the terminal to find out if this is also happening on xpress 1100. spinsane

Same output, for the most part.

Weird. I got a 200M on my laptop running radeon and it works fine. Videos have a high CPU usage, but I guess that's expected from an integrated graphics unit (but even with the CPU at 800MHz I rarely get dropped frames). 3D performance is not that great (last time I bothered to compare it was about 50% that of Windows performance in 3D), but things like Compiz and some open source games (and recently even some 3D games under WINE) run fairly well. 2D performance and video quality are actually much better than fglrx could ever give me, and since 2D rendering and videos are the main uses of this laptop for me the driver is "good enough".

interesting, in Ubuntu 9.10, I'm occasionally getting noticeable vsync lines. Window movements and transitions are a little on the choppy side.

I don't use this laptop too often at the moment, but I think I'll find some time to put another boot of linux on here. Probably Ubuntu 9.04, downgrade the kernel and X to compatible degrees, and then compare the difference.

[maciejus]

I'm not sure it this has already been answered as I didn't read the whole thread but if you still need a way to modify your catalyst for kernel 2.6.31 then you can find the details under the following link:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+s...er/+bug/394985
You need to apply this patch http://launchpadlibrarian.net/296988..._by_vpid.patch and all should be fine. I have patched catalyst 9.8 this way and it works just fine.

[spinsane]

I kind of doubt that will work.

The problem is that the recent versions of Kernel and Xorg were built without the support for 9.3 (as far as I can tell). So if I modify the 9.3 to ignore the kernel version, I'll get nothing but an explosion.

9.8 is a legacy driver, but it IS supported by the most recent kernel. The problem presented in that bug report occured because the fglrx installation scripts are dependent upon the version number of the kernel.

With 9.3, it isn't a simple issue of modifying the installation script of the fglrx. It is an issue of adding support to the newest kernel and compiling, and then changing fglrx installation scripts and probably a few configs for Xorg. So, I think, it is a slightly more complicated task that is most simply resolved switching to a linux operating system that does not require the latest xorg/kernel to run.

[bridgman]

I don't think 9.8 is a legacy driver.

[Kano]

No, ati has got the stupid idea that no driver updates after 9-3 are needed. win gets every 3 month driver updates for those cards.

[bridgman]

No, ati has got the stupid idea that no driver updates after 9-3 are needed.

No, we got the stupid idea that improving the open source drivers was a better use of time than making not-particularly-useful-for-Linux updates to 9.3 (see below).

win gets every 3 month driver updates for those cards.

... for the same OS and SP level that the earlier drivers supported.

If you want the same thing for Linux (ie without support for new kernel and X versions) I imagine we could do that but it didn't seem particularly useful. The open source drivers seemed to be a better place to put the effort.

[barkas]

No, ati has got the stupid idea that no driver updates after 9-3 are needed. win gets every 3 month driver updates for those cards.

Depends what you consider an update.
9.8 and 9.11 legacy are just respins of 9.3 + bug fixes.

[monraaf]

No, we got the stupid idea that improving the open source drivers was a better use

Actually that was not a stupid idea, it was probably the smartest thing ATI ever did

[Kano]

@bridgman

A win user does not know that the oss drivers have got NOT the same features as fglrx yet. Maybe in a year or so...