ATI fglrx performance is crappy!
 

I finally got the fglrx drivers working from ATI on my Fedora Core 1 system for my new Radeon 9600 Pro and i'm not too impressed while playing UT2004. I think there might be a problem in the way in which either the driver is configured or with the driver itself. The output of fglrxinfo is:

[eric@gecko eric]$ fglrxinfo
display: :0.0 screen: 0
OpenGL vendor string: ATI Technologies Inc.
OpenGL renderer string: RADEON 9600 Generic
OpenGL version string: 1.3 (X4.3.0-3.7.6)

I see that other people get more specific info for the "render string" portion other than "generic". Is this possibly a driver problem? I see people saying not to use the latest drivers for Fedora. Or might it just be my configuration?

Any thoughts?

I'm also gettting crappy performance, less than 20FPS, and under Windows I get over 60FPS. I also have a 9600 Pro, albeit a mobility version. I'm using the 3.7.0 under Slacwkare 9.1, I'm gonna try installing the 3.7.6 later tonight, although I've heard other people, including yourself saying they still get crappy performance. Here's my fgrlxinfo output:

display: :0.0 screen: 0
OpenGL vendor string: ATI Technologies Inc.
OpenGL renderer string: MOBILITY RADEON 9600 x86/SSE2
OpenGL version string: 1.3 (X4.3.0-3.7.0)

Mine doesn't say generic, but something's still wrong. Could you try typing in glxgears, or fgl_glxgears and tell me what FPS you get. I get around 60 in each, but I think the reason for being so low is because when I setup fglrxconfig I told it to VSYNC.

for glxgears i get about 2400 fps and for fgl_gears i get 300-400 fps.

How fast is your processor?

I am already using version 3.7.6 of fglrx. :-/

I turned off VSYNC and I'm getting around the same score as you in glxgears and fgl_glxgears...

My processor is a Pentium M 1.5GHZ, the speed is roughly equivilant to a Pentium 4 2.4GHZ.

From what I've seen our speeds in glxgears and fgl_glxgears is pretty good, which leads me to wonder if the problem is with UT2004. I don't have any other games installed to test, but I'll test one soon. Do you have any other games you can try?

Well, looking back on some tests with different maps in unreal, it does seem to depend on the map. The small indoor ones perform quite well, while the large outdoor ones ones run quite sluggishly. I thought it just might be a loss as compared to windows where in windows it is using DX9 and linux is stuck to OpenGL. I guess it would be the game, but i expected to get quite good performance :-/ It's still better than my GeForce 2.

Talk about crap performance, I'm on a P4 2.8 with HT enabled running a 9800Pro and I'm pushing 20 FPS in UT2004. Is there some way to optimize my performance? I usually get around 50-60 in Winblows on the same settings.

glxgears gives me -
18352 frames in 5.0 seconds = 3670.400 FPS
21139 frames in 5.0 seconds = 4227.800 FPS
21119 frames in 5.0 seconds = 4223.800 FPS
20972 frames in 5.0 seconds = 4194.400 FPS
20405 frames in 5.0 seconds = 4081.000 FPS
21180 frames in 5.0 seconds = 4236.000 FPS
21095 frames in 5.0 seconds = 4219.000 FPS
21225 frames in 5.0 seconds = 4245.000 FPS
and
fgl_glxgears gives me this
3459 frames in 5.0 seconds = 691.800 FPS
4334 frames in 5.0 seconds = 866.800 FPS
4507 frames in 5.0 seconds = 901.400 FPS
4490 frames in 5.0 seconds = 898.000 FPS
4474 frames in 5.0 seconds = 894.800 FPS
4489 frames in 5.0 seconds = 897.800 FPS
4350 frames in 5.0 seconds = 870.000 FPS

So I dunno if it's my drivers or what as I have no frame of reference for these benches. All I know is I'm regularly dropping below 20 fps in UT2004 and that never happens in windows, I can crank AA to 6x and Aniso to 16 and it can get down to thirties but I never see 20's or worse like I do in Linux.

Yuck! Lets hope that maybe ATI will come out with a new version. This is pretty bad :-/

gaborn is UT2004 the only game that suffers that much of a performance hit, and have you tried any other games?

i know this wont help you... but i strongly advise against using ATI cards in linux if you are a gamer. Nvidia cards all the way here... btw i get about 25-30 fps with a geforce2 mx200 w/ 32mb of ram in UT2004 :cool:

I get 2216 in glxgears, and in fgl_glxgears i get 307-356. I have the newest ATI drivers 3.7.6, this is the first time i ever installed the ATI drivers out of the box, downloaded and installed it in RedHat linux 9, with the stock kernel it came with! Games emulated work (supposedly the old ones couldn't play emulated games for some reason) like Warcraft 3 and Steam works fine just a little sluggish here and ther, Enemy Terretory works fine, and I tried the UT2004 demo and I turned most of the features off and its not sluggish at all in big open areas.

I've got the same problems with 3.7.6 as you guys do. Here's what I'm running:

Athlon XP 2700+
MSI KT6V KT600 board
512 MB PC3200
Radeon 9800 Pro
Slackware 9.1

in fgl_glxgears I'm getting 737.800 and in glxgears I get 4673 (both of these in a window) and in UT2k4, I drop down into the 20fps range. It's retardulous! At least it doesn't crash anymore...

well since I con't go buying a 6800 Ultra right now I'm kinda stuck with my 9800 Pro ;). I don't have any other games for Linux actually just switched over to using Linux what would you suggest to check out? Also is there anything like in the driver or perhaps in fglrxgonfig that I should set? Like the advanced options should those be on or off? Uggh the performance really is just craptacular.

Your best option for UT2004 or any "UT2 engine" based game for that matter is version 3.2.8 .

...if they work for you.

Well I downloaded 3.2.8 and actually it isn't too bad. On my system, I'm getting 45-80 outdoors and 60-150 (fluctuating heavily) indoors. Beats the crap out of the 19 I bottomed out at with 3.7.6

You could try America's Army, it's free, as in beer.

The other big ones that run on linux I can think of off the top of my head are Return to Castle Wolfenstein and Neverwinter Nights.

Same here -->

1. Low FPS in UT2004:

OS: SuSE Linux 9.0, cpu - Athlon XP2400+, A7NX8
Platform: i386, 32-bit
Video: ATI Radeon 9800 Pro 128 Mb

fglrxinfo:
OpenGL vendor string: ATI Technologies Inc.
OpenGL renderer string: RADEON 9800 Pro Generic
OpenGL version string: 1.3 (X4.3.0-3.7.6)

glxgears (1024x768, 24-bit color, default window size):
22451 frames in 5.0 seconds = 4490.200 FPS

Problem:
FPS during online play: 20-74, changes constantly, hard to keep timings.

I have tested the game on Windows 2000, DirectX 9b (booted from another harddrive) and I got stable 84 FPS (capped by game servers) during any online play.

Single player shows 50-150 fps on linux and 150-400 fps under Windows (both 800x600x16), the game slows dows when an enemy is around (a close fight with 4-5 enemies cause FPS drop down to 18 which is unacceptable especially for Instagib) or near complex surfaces.

As a clan-member, I play a lot, fps=20 is not for me, I do not know what to do with linux and opengl libraries and ATI drivers to make them work faster, if you guys give me some idea what to tweak, I would greatly appreciate it. On the other hand I can always switch back to windows version just to play UT2K4 which sucks ars.

2. America's Army: 20FPS (1024x768x16, maximum quality), unable to play.

3. RTCW, Quake III, Enemy Territory run amazingly fast, I do not know how to check fps for them.

Get driver version 3.2.5 or 3.2.8 instead of 3.7.6, as the performance will pick up instantly.

Thanks, I'll publish the benchmarks after it's done.

Any thoughts about how the new drivers happen to be slower than 3.2.8 ?

Can you say "ATi driver bug"? ;) I knew you could...but more specifically, no, I've got no clue. Maybe the older driver optimized for UT2k4 but they forgot to include it in 3.7.6?

Does anyone know if 3.7.1 has that kind of slowness? I hate having to swap drivers out between 3.2.8 and 3.7.6 when I want to play a game in WineX, and I haven't been able to get UT2k4 to work right under WineX yet...

Here is fglrxinfo output:
OpenGL vendor string: ATI Technologies Inc.
OpenGL renderer string: Radeon 9800 Pro Athlon (3DNow!)
OpenGL version string: 1.3 (X4.3.0-3.2.8)

Here are the benchmarks (800x600x16):

glxgears (1024x728x24, default window size):
21856 frames in 5.0 seconds = 4371.200 FPS
21857 frames in 5.0 seconds = 4371.400 FPS
21859 frames in 5.0 seconds = 4371.800 FPS

UT2004:
Online play:
65-83 - heavy maps
81-83 - light maps.
Single-player:
130-450 - Gael

What else can I say? I feel almost happy. Thanks for a working solution derfunkenstein! Screw ATI programmers!

2400 fps for a 9600? that aint to great man, on my radeon 9800 pro, i get 4500 fps. on my Geforce 3 ti 200 i get 3000fps. i still get sluggish performance in ut 2004 with fglrx but it is definatly playable. I blame ATI and their shitty drivers. Nvidia rocks as far as drivers go.

hehe... i can help you with WineX.


Solution:
$ export LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib/libGL.so; WINEXVERSION game.exe

hehe.. hope this works for you guys.

Sweet. I'll see if I can get that working tonight when I get home from work. Thanks for the tip!

By the way, i went from 3.7.6 to 3.2.8 just like you said, and im getting about 50 fps more in ut 2004 :D but CS 1.6 via winex 3.3.1 is still the same old 50-70fps. what i do to start steam is to run this script when placed in the /program files/steam folder (I didnt write this, i simply edited it for 3.2.8 users (copy and paste this into a text editor and name it steam.sh or something)

#!/bin/sh
GAME_BINARY="STEAM.exe"
SUBDIR="."
WINE_NAMES="winex winex3 cvswinex wine"
#----------------------------------------
script=$0
count=0
while [ -L "$script" ]
do
script=`perl -e "print readlink(\"$script\"), \"\n\""`
count=`expr $count + 1`
if [ $count -gt 100 ]
then
echo "Too many symbolic links"
exit 1
fi
done
GAME_DIR=`dirname $script`
if [ -z "$WINE_EXEC" ]
then
WINE_EXEC=`type -p $WINE_NAMES | head -1 `
fi
if [ -e "$WINE_EXEC" ]
then
cd $GAME_DIR
cd $SUBDIR
export LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib/libGL.so; $WINE_EXEC $GAME_BINARY &
sleep 2
MyID=`pgrep wineserver`
renice 5 $MyID $* &&
xgamma -gamma 1.0 &> /dev/null
else
echo "Wine(X) not in your PATH"
exit 1
fi

>Does anyone know if 3.7.1 has that kind of slowness?

Don't even touch'em with a 10 foot pole, the module won't even compile on anything other than a P4, to remedy the situation, ATI disabled all CPU specific optimization when they released the 3.7.6 a couple weeks later.
That's how they fix things since they came out and claimed their "new improved seriousness about Linux" :rolleyes:

They basically released those drivers [...3.7.1 and .6 ] under pressure from the community holding'em up to their word of driver releases every 2 months ...see how that paid off :/

Radeons are really not nice cards to have if you use Linux exclusively and plan on doing any gaming.
To put things in perspective, a 9800 under Linux performs about as well as a 8500 under M$.

My ATi drivers doesn't work so well in UT2k4. Indoor maps works, but outdoor sucks.

Enemy Territory (which is great), works very nice, actually Counter-Strike trough WineX works much better than UT2k4.

So then... do you think 3.2.8 will work on X.org's X server?

If so, and there is a big boost in FPS.. I do it.

So that's why when I had 3.7.6 installed it said "Generic" and 3.2.8 says "3DNow!"...thanks for the clarification. :)

Really, they're a bitch to get set up, but i've had good stability since I installed 3.2.8. Faster than an 8500, but not as fast as Windows. I really hope ATI starts to devote more of their marketing--errrr...development-- staff to Linux support. Linux can be a great gaming OS between Linux-only stuff, open-source stuff, and WineX.

Wait a sec... My fglrxinfo gives me more then just "Generic" and I am using 3.7.6.
Here, Look!


jonathon@EvilOne:~$ fglrxinfo
display: :0.0 screen: 0
OpenGL vendor string: ATI Technologies Inc.
OpenGL renderer string: FIRE GL 9000 PRO DDR Athlon (3DNow!) (FireGL) (GNU_ICD)
OpenGL version string: 1.3 (X4.3.0-3.7.6)


But performence is lacking anyway.

Thats just because your a slacker :P its a shame i had to give up on slack when it was a bitch to get X running on my radeon.

X runs fine, thank you very much. No problems.

Slack Rocks... give it another chance.
:D

Well i couldnt really give it much of a chance due to the fact that LiLO plus X was screwy. therefor i could not go into windows either. i asked for help here at LQ but it seems it was too late. i might try slack on my secondary ocmputer which is running a nvidia geforce3 ti 500.

make a boot disk and reload lilo after you have a working system. Or try grub. Lilo kind of sucks, and is difficult to get working if you have another boot loader in the mbr. Slack's pretty much as "core" as linux gets, so if you got x working in another distro, you can problably figure it out with slack. A friend of mine was having trouble with lilo not overwritting the windows loader. He ended up placing a small os/2 partition at the beggining of the disk and placing the loader there. Windows could recognize the partition and the loader.

Also, someone mentioned before that they had hyper-threading enabled? It's my understanding that ht actually slows performance for games. Just what i've heard...