ATI Radeon HD 5450 On Linux

[madbiologist]

It seems every other day people switch from calling me pro-NVIDIA or pro-ATI

Sounds like you've forgotten to be pro-Intel

The Intel graphics fanboys are going to livid about this

[linfidel]

Hello, all,
Just joined phoronix - seems like a lot of knowledgeable people here, and I'm having a problem with my HD5450 that is beginning to drive me crazy, so maybe someone can give me hints on where to look.

I'm running Ubuntu Lucid 64-bit for my Desktop system - I have no problem upgrading to 10.10 if it will help, but I kind of like the idea of using the long term release. I mainly use it for web development, and web browsing, no games fancier than minesweeper or Freecell. I do like Compiz, for a couple of features, and I have two 19" LCDs. This all works very well, and the only complaint is the login prompt comes up on the wrong monitor, but I can live with that (and could probably fix it if not).

But there is a problem that bugs the hell out of me. Most of the time, right after the grub menu, the text screen gets screwed, so it only displays a single line at the top with colored pixels forming random patterns. The memory-test option causes a reboot, and the virtual terminals all have this same strange mode. I think the VTs are working, as I can see the patterns changing, but can read nothing. I can always get back to the graphics screen with Alt-F7 (or sometimes F8).

If I need to choose the recovery mode, that also does not display correctly.

I'm not sure what drivers are even active at this point. Any help on where to look, or even where not to look, would be appreciated.

[bridgman]

I'm not sure what drivers are even active at this point. Any help on where to look, or even where not to look, would be appreciated.

The X log (/var/log/Xorg.0.log) is a good place to start. You may find that your distro loads multiple drivers but as you get further in you should find that all of the messages come from a single graphics driver and that's the one you are running. The X log contains messages from the userspace X driver.

Another useful thing is to either run glxinfo and look at the first part of the output or run glxinfo | grep render to pick out the line with "renderer" information.

Final thing is to run dmesg, save the output in a file, then you can look at messages from the kernel driver. You get messages from a number of different drivers mixed together but the graphics messages will jump out after a while.

[linfidel]

The X log (/var/log/Xorg.0.log) is a good place to start. You may find that your distro loads multiple drivers but as you get further in you should find that all of the messages come from a single graphics driver and that's the one you are running. The X log contains messages from the userspace X driver.

Hmm, I would have thought that this problem would be prior to the X system even being loaded, since it first shows up right after the grub menu. In fact, I changed the boot option to delete "quiet", and even added "--verbose", and I can't read any of the output. Also, the failsafe boot doesn't work. Was I mistaken in my guess?

Another useful thing is to either run glxinfo and look at the first part of the output or run glxinfo | grep render to pick out the line with "renderer" information.

Only thing I see with "render" is:
direct rendering: No (LIBGL_ALWAYS_INDIRECT set),
and
OpenGL renderer string: ATI Radeon HD 5400 Series
Not sure what you mean for me to look for here.

Final thing is to run dmesg, save the output in a file, then you can look at messages from the kernel driver. You get messages from a number of different drivers mixed together but the graphics messages will jump out after a while.

I don't see much here, although I do see a message asking me to enable IOMMU (aperture memory hole) in my BIOS for something or other; I don't know that it has anything to do with my problem, but I'll do it; it uses 64 MB of my 4 GB, so I think I can spare it.

Thanks for the quick reply. Hopefully, I'll get this problem solved one way or another.

[bridgman]

Hmm, I would have thought that this problem would be prior to the X system even being loaded, since it first shows up right after the grub menu. In fact, I changed the boot option to delete "quiet", and even added "--verbose", and I can't read any of the output. Also, the failsafe boot doesn't work. Was I mistaken in my guess?

Yeah, sorry, I didn't write enough. X won't be up at the time the artifacts occur, but your choice of X driver will affect which driver *is* running at bootup - I think.

If you are running the open drivers then kms will have come up (modesetting code in the open source kernel graphics driver) and I *think* you will be running on "fb" devices created by the kms driver. If you are running the proprietary driver then that stack won't be running yet and you'll be running a different fb driver.

I don't know an easy way to tell what driver is running during bootup so I figured it would be easier as a first step to figure out what driver is running after boot and work backwards from there

[linfidel]

Yeah, sorry, I didn't write enough. X won't be up at the time the artifacts occur, but your choice of X driver will affect which driver *is* running at bootup - I think.

If you are running the open drivers then kms will have come up (modesetting code in the open source kernel graphics driver) and I *think* you will be running on "fb" devices created by the kms driver. If you are running the proprietary driver then that stack won't be running yet and you'll be running a different fb driver.

I don't know an easy way to tell what driver is running during bootup so I figured it would be easier as a first step to figure out what driver is running after boot and work backwards from there

The hardware drivers setup is confusing to me. Originally, I think I chose whatever the system recommended to me, and it worked, although I didn't realize for a while that there were things not working right.

So, using the GUI, I went to the System Menu, Administration, Hardware Drivers, and I disabled the driver there, rebooted, tried the memory test, and it rebooted, tried the recovery mode, got the garbage, hit Ctrl-alt-delete, and then it worked correctly all the way. Lots of text output, all the VTs working.

I went back to the Hardware Drivers, and now I get the confusing part: It says "Proprietary drivers are being used to make this computer work properly"

It lists ATI Fire GL, and has the "Activate" button enabled. next to the button, it says "A different version of this driver is in use".

My other Ubuntu system has an old NVidia card, and it always had only 2 choices - either use or not use the proprietary driver. This system seem to also have 2 choices, but they are use one or another proprietary drivers, and we'll leave it to you to figure out which is which.

Is this normal? Should I go deeper and remove all the ATI drivers? Everything seems to work the same as before, fwiw. I even still have the same Catalyst Control Center.

My motherboard came with ATI onboard, which I disabled. Maybe there are drivers left over from that?

[spinifex]

I have nothing positive to contribute to this thread. Just don't buy a 5450. They are a very low powered card. I purchased one and am very dissapointed with my purchase. It works, it just is a VERY low powered card.

Spend the extra on something with more power.

[DanL]

I have nothing ... to contribute to this thread.

Fixed for you (and I agree). Thanks for the pointless bump anyway.

[linfidel]

I have nothing positive to contribute to this thread. Just don't buy a 5450. They are a very low powered card. I purchased one and am very dissapointed with my purchase. It works, it just is a VERY low powered card.

Spend the extra on something with more power.

What's wrong with low power? Or do you own stock in the electric company?

Personally, I like the card I got - there's no fan, so it's quiet. Who wants to go deaf from all the loud fans on multiple computers? It cost me $35 - $40 after a rebate, has plenty of horsepower for what I need - running Compiz with Ubuntu.

After reinstalling Ubuntu, it works well now. May have been the installation, or may have been the fact that I switched from 64-bit to 32-bit, but everything works fine now.

People who make flat statements about how much power everyone needs without qualifying the application obviously don't understand value.

[madbiologist]

What's wrong with low power? Or do you own stock in the electric company?

Personally, I like the card I got - there's no fan, so it's quiet. Who wants to go deaf from all the loud fans on multiple computers? It cost me $35 - $40 after a rebate, has plenty of horsepower for what I need - running Compiz with Ubuntu.

After reinstalling Ubuntu, it works well now. May have been the installation, or may have been the fact that I switched from 64-bit to 32-bit, but everything works fine now.

People who make flat statements about how much power everyone needs without qualifying the application obviously don't understand value.

Exactly. I bought two of these cards because they are low powered. Being a non-powerful card also means that they literally use much less electrical power. In fact, I spent a little extra to get the PowerColor GoGreen version of the HD5450, which uses even less power than the normal version, mainly due to PowerColor replacing the voltage regulators with better ones. They accelerate Compiz on Ubuntu just fine, which is all I want. The CPUs on these PC's are going to be using enough power as it is, crunching almost 24/7 on BOINC projects and Folding@home.