"Ask ATI" dev thread

[DaedalusIcarus]

Nice to hear, now that's what I call quality support =P

(Oh, and thanks Black for the suggestion as well :] )

[smlbstcbr]

As I understand it, the reason for keeping aticonfig separate is that having a separate command line tool makes it easy for packagers to use it in scripts. I imagine there is a fair amount of common code but not 100% sure.



This referred to one poster asking users to post their own experiences with fglrx in this thread. I thought that could be done better in a different thread. The dev questions here are all fine so far, although "why do you guys suck so much ?" was only funny the first time

Another question, I hope it will fit on this thread.
What does fglrx so heavy. It is almost 60 MB, compared with the basic functionality driver (14 MB) and the Catalyst Suit offered for Windows (35 MB). CCCLE does not include the nice help page that comes with windows. And, as I undestand, both, windows and Linux driver have a common code. So, I may be a bit naive asking this, but where does the difference lies? and why is it getting heavier?

[gsmd]

Does fglrx driver anyhow influence hdmi sound output on 780g mobos? Asking as I'm having hard times getting sound out of hdmi and just thought whether this may be due to the fact that i don't have fglrx installed (framebuffer solely).
TIA.

[Kano]

Usually alsa driver is for sound not fglrx.

[gsmd]

Yeah, I know, that's alsa that i'm fighting now . But as sound + video goes through the same cable (and you can't get just sound w/o video over hdmi) i thought that probably fglrx has smth to do with that.

[bridgman]

My understanding is that the audio driver programs the actual HD audio hardware (the codec) but the graphics driver needs to enable the audio output onto the HDMI stream from the GPU, ie you need both.

The fglrx driver definitely contains code to enable the audio out.

If you look in the radeonhd repository you will see a branch containing a prototype patch to enable the "audio-on-HDMI" output on a 6xx GPU.

[gsmd]

Ok, thanks.
This means i need to stick to fglrx + X.org in order to get sound.

[gsmd]

Got the latest fglrx installed, ran aticonfig-initial, finally got video over hdmi on my 780g mobo and glxgears are rotating like mad. Now, it comes to vdr via xineliboutput. With vesa driver i get video (yet no sound by any means), with fglrx i get a Xorg crash after a frame or two shown on screen. Here's what xorg tells before it's dead:
--
Backtrace:
0: X(xf86SigHandler+0x6d) [0x47bfcd]
1: /lib/libc.so.6 [0x7f9fa87c6430]
2: /lib/libc.so.6(memcpy+0xd2) [0x7f9fa880b9a2]
3: /usr/lib64/xorg/modules//glesx.so [0x7f9fa37c4477]
4: /usr/lib64/xorg/modules//glesx.so [0x7f9fa38241af]
5: /usr/lib64/xorg/modules//glesx.so [0x7f9fa37fc6f6]
6: /usr/lib64/xorg/modules//glesx.so [0x7f9fa37fce24]
7: /usr/lib64/xorg/modules//glesx.so [0x7f9fa3775af7]
8: /usr/lib64/xorg/modules//amdxmm.so [0x7f9fa360f72e]
9: X [0x484b8e]
10: /usr/lib64/xorg/modules/extensions//libextmod.so [0x7f9fa82d687b]
11: X(Dispatch+0x1ca) [0x44ebca]
12: X(main+0x45b) [0x437d5b]
13: /lib/libc.so.6(__libc_start_main+0xf4) [0x7f9fa87b3b74]
14: X(FontFileCompleteXLFD+0x211) [0x437049]

Fatal server error:
Caught signal 11. Server aborting
--

Any ideas? Thanks.

[ivanovic]

Any ideas? Thanks.

Okay, that is simple: their Textured Video implementation is really borked for the xine backend. That is: When using DVB with Xv as output method, it will almost instantly crash all of Xorg resulting in a freeze of the system.

To not get this freeze either use the open drivers (if possible) or switch to the openGL backend for xine. This should work without too many problems, at least without crashes.

[forum1793]

I have a 780g hdmi mboard also, I think a gigabyte GA-MA78GM-S2H.

I eventually got sound through hdmi by upgrading to alsa 1.0.16. I can't remember if I had to have fglrx loaded. I also don't think it worked for me until I reached the 2.6.25 kernel. Using 2.6.25.11 now.

Catalyst 8.6 and 8.7 not working very well with my mboard. Went back to 8.5.

You have to enable ("m" to unmute) hdmi in alsa

alsamixer -c1

Sound is not always consistent. I can play a mp3 using xine from command line (have the sound option in ~./xine/config :

# device used for mono output
# string, default: default
audio.device.alsa_default_device:hw:1,0

# device used for stereo output
# string, default: plug:front:default
audio.device.alsa_front_device:hw:1,0

But if I start song and restart, sound sometimes gets redirected to front headphones.

Can't (yet) get sound via hdmi using gui of mplayer.
It sometimes works from command line if I have ~./mplayer/config as:

alang=eng      #Use English audio
#slang=eng      #Use English subtitles

#ao=alsa
ao=alsa:device=hw=1.0
#vo=x11
vo=gl

This has sometimes worked

mplayer -ao alsa:device=hw=1.0 /dev/dvd

I'm also running optical cable to receiver. This is working well.

See here

In xine, for time being change video to xshm to get past the xv problems. Although for whatever reasons, xv has started to work for me. Maybe due to changes in xorg.conf

Section "Device"
	Identifier  "aticonfig-Device[0]"
	Driver      "fglrx"
# === Video Overlay for the Xv extension ===
      Option "VideoOverlay" "off"
      Option "TexturedVideo" "on"
# === OpenGL Overlay ===
# Note: When OpenGL Overlay is enabled, Video Overlay
#       will be disabled automatically
      Option "OpenGLOverlay" "off"
# === Use internal AGP GART support? ===
# If OpenGL acceleration doesn't work, try using "yes" here
# and disable the kernel agpgart driver.
#      Option "UseInternalAGPGART" "no"
EndSection