AMD 8.42.3 Driver Released -- The Baby Is Born!

[Neo4]

Commenting out type1 would not do anything with regards to the beryl/compiz situation. X will continue to load regardless if the module is present or not.

Regarding slow compiz, it is noticebly slower, but not incredibly slow (like 100-200fps in gears). Still in the thousands, but it takes a performance hit.

BruderB...ah...dual heads >_> Fun...

yeah but despite the litle fps slow the effects are very slow(and with some scratches for example when rotating the cube) and the firefox up/down browse my god!

just another question:

now that I have this very good shorg if I want to update my driver later after the update should i replace the new xorg with this old one?

thanks a lot for your help!

[EnderWiggin]

Michael,

Are you able to confirm some of the bugs/behaviors reported on this list with ATI/AMD? I am just curious if they are working on addressing for the next release?

Some of the examples that seem widespread include:
Slow scrolling, esp. in Firefox.
Slow FPS of compiz effects (maximize/minimize, cube rotate, etc.)
Corruption/screen artifacts over time, esp. surrounding the cursor

The three above seem widespread enough that they are not likely isolated configuration problems or specific to a board/chipset (as they have been reported from r300-r600 boards with a range of configs).

In general, compiz seems slower and more CPU intensive under AIGLX than it did under XGL. I know that when I was using XGL, I could drag a window around the screen and see virtually no hit to my CPU whereas under AIGLX I notice that a large portion of the CPU is dedicated to compiz effects. Are you able to confirm that ATI/AMD has delegated some of the AIGLX infrastructure to software instead of hardware rendering?

[givemesugarr]

should i replace the new xorg with this old one?

the config should not be touched after an update unless you encounter problems running xorg.

[BruderB]

Hej givemesugarr, Hej all,

OK, here we go....
First, to avoid hurting version-requirements, I switched to Debian Lenny which took me quite a lot of courage, because this box is my working-horse.... The Debian Linux once more didn't disappoint me (Thanks to all Debianies!!) and almost every application seems to be still running fine.
Here are my versions:

ii xserver-xorg 1:7.2-5 the X.Org X server

ii linux-image-2.6-686 2.6.22+10 Linux 2.6 image on Ppro/Celeron/PII/PIII/P4

With that, I have one little success that is quite important for making the problem at least workable: The system doesn't freeze any longer. Not that it brings up the X, but it stays stable!

I though about your words concerning my lcds having the possibility to modify the resolution. Well, I don't know for sure if my monitors use this feature but I'm very optimistic that they do: I didn't force any resolution in my xorg.conf using the vesa driver and the resolution was 1280x1024. The connectors are DVI on ATI-card-side as well as on monitor-side.

Because of your hint concerning AGP troubles with older versions, I will use 8.42.3 as one and only and only will talk about that one.

To talk about screen-effekss: No need for talking about compiz or any 3D-stuff until the dualhead system doesn't work properly.

Xinerama: Before trying to use both screens, I would be glad having one running. What I mean is: I think I have to do small steps....

My facts about the libGL.so – stuff:
nl-ws-boris:~# l /usr/lib/libGL*
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 26 2007-11-04 18:24 /usr/lib/libGL.so -> /usr/lib/xorg/libGL.so.1.2
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 26 2007-11-04 18:24 /usr/lib/libGL.so.1 -> /usr/lib/xorg/libGL.so.1.2
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 10 2007-11-04 18:24 /usr/lib/libGL.so.1.2 -> libGL.so.1
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 20 2007-11-02 13:28 /usr/lib/libGLU.so.1 -> libGLU.so.1.3.070001
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 523960 2007-08-28 12:41 /usr/lib/libGLU.so.1.3.070001

nl-ws-boris:~# locate libGL.so.1.2
/usr/lib/FGL.renamed.libGL.so.1.2
/usr/lib/fglrx/diversions/libGL.so.1.2
/usr/lib/libGL.so.1.2
/usr/lib/xorg/FGL.renamed.libGL.so.1.2
/usr/lib/xorg/libGL.so.1.2

So, I'm little confused about that. Can you give a mor detailed specification about what file is needed (date-/timestamp, size)?

OK, have to break here.
At last, I built a xorg.conf following your hints up to the AGP-stuff that I didn't include yet. But I tried my own xorg.conf with the AGP-speed reduced to 4x and get the same result with both files:
Fatal server error:
Caught signal 11. Server aborting
(I guess chrisr also wrote about this (page37?). By the way: Is there a way to search within a thread?)

I feel pain with this entry in syslog:
Nov 4 19:58:46 nl-ws-boris kernel: [fglrx] IRQ_MGR is disabled untill GART_CACHABLE memory will be implemented<6>[fglrx] Internal AGP support requested, but kernel AGP support active.

and this from Xorg.0.log:
(EE) fglrx(0): Failed to enable interrupts.

What do you think?

Thanks,

Boris

[givemesugarr]

My facts about the libGL.so – stuff:

this is the one that apps will use:

lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 26 2007-11-04 18:24 /usr/lib/libGL.so.1 -> /usr/lib/xorg/libGL.so.1.2

the needs are there. the timestamp and similar depend on your system or on the creation date of the ati-driver, but that isn't important.

So, I'm little confused about that. Can you give a mor detailed specification about what file is needed (date-/timestamp, size)?

maybe the differences in the paths vary on the linux distros used. and usually debian has a different version.
by the way, there wasn't a real need to upgrade debian. the driver should have worked also with the old one, but since you switched let's see that.

I though about your words concerning my lcds having the possibility to modify the resolution. Well, I don't know for sure if my monitors use this feature but I'm very optimistic that they do: I didn't force any resolution in my xorg.conf using the vesa driver and the resolution was 1280x1024. The connectors are DVI on ATI-card-side as well as on monitor-side.

take their manual and read where there's the dvi connection. from what you say they don't support modified resolution on dvi, since with vesa you're on 1280x1024. if i remember well vesa is 1024x768, but on this i might get wrong. anyway in the manual it's clearly said if the dvi supports different resolutions.

At last, I built a xorg.conf following your hints up to the AGP-stuff that I didn't include yet. But I tried my own xorg.conf with the AGP-speed reduced to 4x and get the same result with both files:
Fatal server error:
Caught signal 11. Server aborting
(I guess chrisr also wrote about this (page37?). By the way: Is there a way to search within a thread?)

what does /var/log/Xorg.0.log says?! it's pretty important to know what makes it go wrong.

and this from Xorg.0.log:
(EE) fglrx(0): Failed to enable interrupts.

only from this i don't understand what goes wrong. maybe from the entire log would be interesting.

however, this is very interesting:

Nov 4 19:58:46 nl-ws-boris kernel: [fglrx] IRQ_MGR is disabled untill GART_CACHABLE memory will be implemented<6>[fglrx] Internal AGP support requested, but kernel AGP support active.

you now have to remove agpgart from kernel. first go to device drivers->character device and then write down every modules that automatically selects it and remove every one of them. after you've removed the modules that require it, then agpgart should give you the possibility to remove agpgart. remove it, recompile the kernel reboot and retry to start xorg, with internal agpgart set to yes. that should fix the problem and let you start xorg.

[Octoguy]

Thank god this update's come out.

Can't wait to use Compiz.

[peper]

Does those drivers finally supports properly FC7 x86 and x86_64 ???

[happycampers]

xorg.conf for Neo4:... new xorg.conf:

Many thanks to givemesugar for posting the example xorg.conf. I had the corruption in the lower corner and around the mouse cursor and had about given up on this driver (actually, I had already reverted it), but I saw a couple of flags in the xorg posted for Neo4 that I had not tried and thought to give it one more shot. I grabbed the Server, Layout and Device flags from the post and have been working for 3 days now without screen corruption with AIGLX / Compositing on or off. I had tried many of the other xorg "fixes" to no effect. Thanks again!

[givemesugarr]

Thanks again!

mine xorg.conf is one generated with the first fglrx version i was using under suse 9.2, the first distro i was using some time ago. then i had it tuned over the time and now it has reached a good state. i still have to fix the fonts since on gentoo i dont't have most of them, but i don't really the time to do that.
since this xorg.conf works flawlessly with one of the worst ati boards it should work without any problems with other boards.
the settings there set everything to default standard values, so you might lose some performance but you'll have some extra stability.

[peper]

Anyone tested it under latest test release of Fedora 8? What about compatibility with FC7 both 32 and 64 bits?