ATI X1650pro VideoRam Problem?

[tinux]

Hello everyone ! I have a x1650pro ATI card, and if i dont set VideoRam to 393216 in xorg.conf, i get a blank screen when i startx (whatever WM i use). I have had this problem for some months, with different linux kernels/fglrx/Xorg versions. My question : Is it a knowm problem with the proprietary drivers ? Cause the onboard memory is supposed to have 512MB and the board is AGP (and not PCIE)... Or is my x1650 possibly defect ? Thanks in advance for your inputs. (appart from that, hardware acceleration works fine).

(II) Module fglrxdrm: vendor="FireGL - ATI Technologies Inc."
	compiled for 7.1.0, module version = 8.40.4
	ABI class: X.Org Server Extension, version 0.3
(II) fglrx(0): Video RAM override, using 393216 kB instead of 524288 kB
(**) fglrx(0): VideoRAM: 262144 kByte, Type: DDR2
(II) fglrx(0): PCIE card detected

[peol]

Have you checked your BIOS setup? Maybe there's any options on this?

Is it a genuine ATI card or is it some cheaper model? Some models come with not-so-great memory chips I'm afraid.

[tinux]

Hello Peol, thanks for your input.

Have you checked your BIOS setup? Maybe there's any options on this?

As far as i can see, the only options related to the GC are « AGP aperture » size (set to 256 but other values dont fix the problem) and "primary video controler" set to AGP.

Is it a genuine ATI card or is it some cheaper model? Some models come with not-so-great memory chips I'm afraid.

It is a HS X1650pro IceQ 512MB. Is there any tool which could help diagnose if this is a memory chip problem ?

[Alistair]

You need to set
AGP Aperture=512Mb
remove the videomem size in /etc/X11/xorg.conf
if you use a framebuffer on your console you may need to pass
videomem=512mb as a kernel boot parameter.
the AGP version of teh 1650pro works with older ATI drivers, but although it does indeed come up iwth DRI and acceleration with 8.41 -- It DOES NOT enable AGP modes
see bug 780 on unofficial ati linux bugs pages.

[Alistair]

Ohh -- post the content of /proc/mtrr
There are some ram combinations that dont map well

[tinux]

(sorry to moderators for having sent a billion times the same post... now i read the message displayed a couple of secs after "submit" ;-)

EDIT : oh... now this message goes through directly and i still can't see my answer to Alistair ?!

[tinux]

Ohh -- post the content of /proc/mtrr
There are some ram combinations that dont map well

Hello Alistair, and thanks for your input. If you're talking about the AGP aperture size i can set up in the bios of the motherboard, the highest value i can set is 256 (Dell dimension 8300). I've made the changes you suggested in grub.conf and kernel (removed fb support) :

# cat /boot/grub/grub.conf | grep -A 1 Trims
title Gentoo Trims
kernel (hd0,5)/boot/vmlinuz real_root=/dev/sda6 videomem=512mb

# grep CONFIG_FB /usr/src/linux/.config
# CONFIG_FB is not set

Also :

# cat /proc/mtrr
reg00: base=0x00000000 (   0MB), size=1024MB: write-back, count=1
reg01: base=0xe0000000 (3584MB), size= 256MB: write-combining, count=1

And i commented the "VideoRam" in my xorg.conf. X is still crashing (blank screen and PC almost frozen. Only option is to reboot with magik keys).

Attaching Xorg logs. The first one when i get a blank screen with no "VideoRam" entry in xorg.conf. The second one when i add "VideoRam 393216" in xorg.conf and X doesnt crash. I think 8.40.4 drivers are not supposed to work for my Xorg version, but the problem was exactly the same with older versions.
log -- X crash
log 2 -- X does not crash

[Michael]

(sorry to moderators for having sent a billion times the same post... now i read the message displayed a couple of secs after "submit" ;-)

EDIT : oh... now this message goes through directly and i still can't see my answer to Alistair ?!

Your posts should appear now that they have cleared the moderation queue.

[Alistair]

Hello Alistair, and thanks for your input. If you're talking about the AGP aperture size i can set up in the bios of the motherboard, the highest value i can set is 256 (Dell dimension 8300). I've made the changes you suggested in grub.conf and kernel (removed fb support) :

# cat /boot/grub/grub.conf | grep -A 1 Trims
title Gentoo Trims
kernel (hd0,5)/boot/vmlinuz real_root=/dev/sda6 videomem=512mb

# grep CONFIG_FB /usr/src/linux/.config
# CONFIG_FB is not set

Also :

# cat /proc/mtrr
reg00: base=0x00000000 (   0MB), size=1024MB: write-back, count=1
reg01: base=0xe0000000 (3584MB), size= 256MB: write-combining, count=1

And i commented the "VideoRam" in my xorg.conf. X is still crashing (blank screen and PC almost frozen. Only option is to reboot with magik keys).

Attaching Xorg logs. The first one when i get a blank screen with no "VideoRam" entry in xorg.conf. The second one when i add "VideoRam 393216" in xorg.conf and X doesnt crash. I think 8.40.4 drivers are not supposed to work for my Xorg version, but the problem was exactly the same with older versions.
log -- X crash
log 2 -- X does not crash

in your kernel boot option match the videomem= to the size of your agp gart (in your case 256mb) and set (under the fglrx device section of xorg.conf)
MaxGARTSize=256

Neither of your logs survived my oncall week from hell

Your mtrr list shows that you've pageallocated the mtrr for the gart to the card **above** the 3gb boundary -- how much ram in this lappy? If its less than 2Gb you might want to recompile with a different memory split option.

I had a heck of a time with my X1650Pro agp - the gart size and the mtrr, and xorg have to line up on memory allocation, or either X locks up or DRI doesnt fire ...

[tinux]

in your kernel boot option match the videomem= to the size of your agp gart (in your case 256mb) and set (under the fglrx device section of xorg.conf)
MaxGARTSize=256

Neither of your logs survived my oncall week from hell

Your mtrr list shows that you've pageallocated the mtrr for the gart to the card **above** the 3gb boundary -- how much ram in this lappy? If its less than 2Gb you might want to recompile with a different memory split option.

I had a heck of a time with my X1650Pro agp - the gart size and the mtrr, and xorg have to line up on memory allocation, or either X locks up or DRI doesnt fire ...

Thanks again for your help Alistair, i realy appreciate

I have 1GB RAM on my system. So, i have tried everything you suggested ! For the "memory split" kernel option, i had first to modify the /usr/src/linux/arch/i386/Kconfig file : Removed "if EMBEDDED" from the line

prompt "Memory split" if EMBEDDED

(That is for Gentoo-kernel-2.6.22-r8)

I was then abble to try : VMSPLIT_3G; VMSPLIT_3G_OPT; VMSPLIT_3G/1G and VMSPLIT_1G/3G, but none of them fixed the problem... Still have to try with VMSPLIT_{2G,2G_OPT,2G/2G} though (i'll post the results when it's done). I also added 'Option "MaxGARTSize" "256"' in the fglrx device section of xorg.log and changed the kermel boot parameter to videomem=256M.

For the log files, i forgot the time limit was 24hours on the server i chose. So... here are the files on a server with 30 days retention, just in case...
X crashes (no VideoRam entry in xorg.conf)
X does not crash (VideoRam 393216 in xorg.conf)