Drivers for AMD (ATI) Radeon HD 5670 in Ubuntu 12.04 LTS (Precise Pangolin).

[RussianNeuroMancer]

Foolishly swayed by russianneuromancer

Asking for XBMC crash dump is not "fooling".

I had the same problem with the black screen

"Same problem with the black screen" doesn't mean same "problem with the motherboard" this topic about. At first I doesn't sure you follow installation guide.

switched back to the oss driver, which is quite difficult btw.

What exactly difficult in removing fglrx package for someone who know about recovery mode?

[barkas]

Asking for XBMC crash dump is not "fooling".
"Same problem with the black screen" doesn't mean same "problem with the motherboard" this topic about. At first I doesn't sure you follow installation guide.
What exactly difficult in removing fglrx package for someone who know about recovery mode?

I earn my money partly with linux, so, not that difficult, if you know where to look.
But it sure is strange that installing fglrx overwrites stuff of mesa and X and you have to repair that damage afterward.

You asked for a crashdump but I have none, so I decided to give it a try again. Sorry I can't send you my beautiful kernel panics while shutting down.

There is an installation guide? How nice. And here I thought you open jockey and click on "install" . Worked fine, too, except that it sometimes has to be reset by switching to console and back to graphics to get rid of a completely garbled screen and that it crashes on shutdown.

[RussianNeuroMancer]

But it sure is strange that installing fglrx overwrites stuff of mesa and X and you have to repair that damage afterward.

fglrx Ubuntu packages uses alternatives system.

You asked for a crashdump but I have none, so I decided to give it a try again. Sorry I can't send you my beautiful kernel panics while shutting down.
There is an installation guide? How nice. And here I thought you open jockey and click on "install" . Worked fine, too, except that it sometimes has to be reset by switching to console and back to graphics to get rid of a completely garbled screen and that it crashes on shutdown.

I also asking you check bugs with 12.6 release, not 12.4 Ubuntu stock driver (because there is a lot of kernel module crash, ASIC hang and graphics corruption fixes in 12.6 for wide range of hardware and software). If bugs still reproducibly with 12.6 release - posting bugs on forum doesn't get it magically fixed. You need to at least register it in bugtracker, with atigetsysteminfo.sh report and step-by-step how-to-reproduce-it guide, or contact with tech. support. And, just in case, don't forget to update BIOS too

[barkas]

Next month you'll tell me to update to 12.7 because 12.6 is crap.

I'm not ATIs unpaid beta tester. The GPU in question has been supported for years, if they haven't managed to produce a working driver yet, I don't believe one additional update will substantially change things. Next driver update for me may be with ubuntu 12.10. Certainly not sooner.

EDIT: I hope you know that the cchtml bugtracker is unofficial and not necessarily monitored by ati staff, as was made clear when the fglrx + gnome3 bugs were posted there. Additionally most bugs with that driver are of the trivial to find kind and should have been caught by inhouse beta testing, if there is such a thing.
Excuse me if I'm pissed off but I've been having those problems and the selfsame argument for going on 15 years now, first with the windows driver, now with windows and, worse, linux.

[RussianNeuroMancer]

Next month you'll tell me to update to 12.7 because 12.6 is crap.

I just tell you what I actually read and hear from people about 12.6 release.

I'm not ATIs unpaid beta tester. The GPU in question has been supported for years, if they haven't managed to produce a working driver yet

Doesn't work in your setup != doesn't work anywhere.

EDIT: I hope you know that the cchtml bugtracker is unofficial and not necessarily monitored by ati staff

Because of that I mention tech. support.

as was made clear when the fglrx + gnome3 bugs were posted there.

Gnome Shell topic was already discussed.

Additionally most bugs with that driver are of the trivial to find kind and should have been caught by inhouse beta testing, if there is such a thing.

For example you talk about some "trivial bugs" in this thread: screen is black on boot, kernel panic at shutdown, graphic corruption after VT switch, but I doesn't have this bugs (for obvious reason - different hardware). What make this bugs "trivial" if nobody properly report it?
Or topic starter issue, that probably related to motherboard BIOS bug (or even maybe hardware failure as Kep P. assume) but not fglrx bug.

Excuse me if I'm pissed off but I've been having those problems and the selfsame argument for going on 15 years now, first with the windows driver, now with windows and, worse, linux.

And you doesn't report bugs to vendor for all 15 years? If you doesn't report bugs, don't be surprised is your bugs doesn't get fixed. There is no AMD telepathists department.

[bridgman]

EDIT: I hope you know that the cchtml bugtracker is unofficial and not necessarily monitored by ati staff,

It's perfectly true to say "the tracker is... not necessarily monitored" because it's a meaningless statement, but in fact the tracker *is* monitored and bugs *are* fixed.

[Kano]

The 12-6 final driver has got a lower version number than the driver packaged in U 12.4. Not optimal to install somehow. Basically that driver should work with hd 5670, but it is a pretty buggy driver overall. The 12.6 legacy (why 12.6 not 12-6?) is better but would have got a even lower version number - correct name would have been 12-5. The 12-6 drivers are both crap when tested with xserver 1.12 - they both need libpciaccess hacks on debian or with u updated to 1.12 via ppa.

[barkas]

It's perfectly true to say "the tracker is... not necessarily monitored" because it's a meaningless statement, but in fact the tracker *is* monitored and bugs *are* fixed.

By the way, what should I expect when I write a support ticket at the AMD site? Should I get some answer? An automated email or something? A ticket number?

Because a ticket without number is completely useless.

[barkas]

The 12-6 final driver has got a lower version number than the driver packaged in U 12.4. Not optimal to install somehow. Basically that driver should work with hd 5670, but it is a pretty buggy driver overall. The 12.6 legacy (why 12.6 not 12-6?) is better but would have got a even lower version number - correct name would have been 12-5. The 12-6 drivers are both crap when tested with xserver 1.12 - they both need libpciaccess hacks on debian or with u updated to 1.12 via ppa.

I know from experience that if a driver is newer, that does not have to mean it is better.

EDIT: And that is exactly what I meant by a bug that is trivial to find. Reminds me of the time I beta tested Windows ME. I survived until the second beta, where the complete DNS resolving functionality was dead. No, I did not post that bug, they should have found it themselves. Never got a beta 3, go figure .

If those bugs crop up, it simply means you have a huge QA problem.

I realize AMD employees are not allowed to state that publicly though , but I expect them to know and to work at it.

[przemnet]

Hello Everyone!

Problem is SOLVED!

As per recommendation from fglrx bugtracker- BIOS upgrade on my motherboard (Gigabyte GA-MA69G-S3H) was the solution! I upgraded to the newest version which is F8E. I was able to install latest Catalyst 12.6 drivers succesfully.

I had problems with upgradeing BIOS from Windows XP and Windows 7, but upgrade directly from BIOS with Q FLASH worked perfectly! To do it, just download BIOS from Gigabyte site, extract the archive, copy BIOS file to USB stick, plug USB stick into computer, reboot system, hit "End" button during startup and select BIOS upgrade from HDD- you can find lots of videos on YouTube about that.

Many thanks for your help and support!

Looking forward,
Przemek.

P.S. I wanted to edit my initial post to put solution there (to avoid going through full discussion to search the answer), but I can not do it...