Ati frustration, HD 2600Pro

[lauri]

Hi all,

I bought myself Ati HD 2600Pro. At this point it makes me think it was a huge huge mistake. I have all those "issues" discussed here and everywhere else with fglrx. 3D performance is decent (loses only 1000FPS to my previous NVidia 6600GT card according to glxgears). If anyone has any answers to any of the following items it makes me pretty damn grateful

- XVideo does not work (picture is corrupted in xine)
- The whole machine "freezes" with kaffeine if output plugin is XVideo (xshm works fine). Also XVideo with opensource driver works well.
- Starting up multiple x-sessions locks up the machine
- how to monitor temperatures?

Rgrds,

//lauri

[ivanovic]

Hi all,

I bought myself Ati HD 2600Pro. At this point it makes me think it was a huge huge mistake. I have all those "issues" discussed here and everywhere else with fglrx. 3D performance is decent (loses only 1000FPS to my previous NVidia 6600GT card according to glxgears). If anyone has any answers to any of the following items it makes me pretty damn grateful

I will try to answer at least some of your questions.

- XVideo does not work (picture is corrupted in xine)

I'd say the answer is quite easy: There is no real XVideo support (the way it used to be for <r500 cards) for the r600 series neither in the fglrx nor in the open drivers. There is one alternative, no idea how well it does work: TexturedVideo. Search the forums a little for info about how to activate that. Beside this I would go for using openGL for videooutput, that is currently the best what you can get from the fglrx drivers.

- The whole machine "freezes" with kaffeine if output plugin is XVideo (xshm works fine). Also XVideo with opensource driver works well.

You really do suprise me that XVideo work with the open drivers with an r600 chip since radeon does not even support those cards and radeonhd has no 2D/3D/Video-acceleration implemented so far. So I would really be suprised if that was XVideo, it is more likely a fallback. Again: switch to opengl as video output and it should work as expected. You might have to start an app that uses opengl and kill ir directly afterwards since opengl seems not to work on the first try (at least not for me, i do always start glxinfo/glxgears once directly after starting the system to make sure that opengl in kaffeine will work, I am using a 3850 card, so basically r600 series, too).

- Starting up multiple x-sessions locks up the machine

No idea, never tried to run multiple x-sessions...

- how to monitor temperatures?

I think there is currently no support for monitoring temperatures and fan speeds of ati graphics cards. It would be great if AMD/ATI did release the specs about how to get that data so that support for the graphics cards can eventually be included in external tools and /or in lm-sensors.

I hope my answers do help at least a little.

[lauri]

Hi,
Thanks for the valuable pieces of info. I was sort of wrong with xvideo: the opensource driver I was referring to is fbdev, not ati or radeon. Opengl output driver works with xine but for some reason kaffeine cannot use that (so far, seems like resolvable problem to me .

[Kano]

You could try radeonhd driver - should be faster then fbdev.

[lauri]

Well, it is amazing (but off-topic, sorry about that) that xine can use opengl as output plugin but kaffeine cannot, fortunately xshm works. My machine freezes totally with torcs game, driver version is 8.44.3. Debugging is pretty difficult as there are no traces in any logs and the machine needs to be reset.

[lauri]

Sad... I can start the torcs game with its initial resolution (640x480) but if I try to change it the machine freezes.

[Kano]

Well I know already 2 people who sold that card to get another one from NV. Must be one of the worst supported cards when you want to use 3d apps...

[lauri]

Well I know already 2 people who sold that card to get another one from NV. Must be one of the worst supported cards when you want to use 3d apps...

Well, yeah. Makes me consider that option too . This is 3rd time I have tried to move over to ati from nvidia and I really thought that this time it would pay off. NVidia's driver (as closed as they are) just plain work. Obviously they are quite far from perfect but at least I do not remember them locking the machine constantly. Please call me stupid from now on ...

[lenrek]

... This is 3rd time I have tried to move over to ati from nvidia and I really thought that this time it would pay off. NVidia's driver (as closed as they are) just plain work. Obviously they are quite far from perfect but at least I do not remember them locking the machine constantly. Please call me stupid from now on ...

OK, you are stupid. (Just kidding)

Keep the card, AMD IS trying to improve the situation (at least, this is seems to be happenning, from what I understand), hence, there is still hope for the future.

Though, admittingly, I have decided not to buy any PC or laptop that uses ATI chip until there is a significant improvement to the current situation. Now, all my systems are using either NVidia or Intel.