[SOLVED] ATI Radeon X700 DRI problem

astrogeek · 05-11-2010, 03:12 PM

I am setting up a system that I was recently given and am having some problems with the ATI card configuration/driver (I think).

THE SYSTEM

System is P4 3.0Ghz, 1GB RAM, 200GB SATA with new full install of Slackware 13, Fluxbox WM/DE.

Code:

lspci lines:
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc RV410 [Radeon X700 Pro (PCIE)]
01:00.1 Display controller: ATI Technologies Inc RV410 [Radeon X700 Pro (PCIE)] (Secondary)

I have read a lot of things that seem confusing to me, but I have set it up mostly with info from slackwiki.org, and after reading various threads here at LQ.

I am using an xorg.conf created with Xorg -configure, with the radeon driver and have added the DRI section and enabled options per the above URL.

THE SYMPTOMS

First, X starts and I can run glxgears and get a frame rate of 3100+.

But glxinfo seems incorrect:

Code:

glxinfo |grep -i render
GL_RENDERER: Mesa DRI R300 20060815 x86/MMX/SSE2 TCL

I see no "direct rendering: yes" as seems to be required (am I missing something?).

Most things seem to work such as video playback from DVD and Flash.

At boot the vesa modes do not work and I have to use vga=normal, which is no big problem, although a better framebuffer mode would be nice if possible.

But the first big problem I hit is running Blender. When it starts my screen goes blank with just the mouse cursor visible and moving. To get out of this I can kill X or ctl-alt-Fx to get a new login and kill the blender process. Oddly, I found I can also alt-F2 (Open a Run dialog in Fluxbox) which opens with a running Blender behind it - but any attempt to interact with the blender window reverts to the blank screen with mouse cursor.

I believe this to be due to the lack of DRI mostly because of a similar problem once encountered on another system - but am open to other suggestions.

But I think I need to better understand and configure the drivers for this video card before troubleshooting any applications.

So, I guess my questions would be:

1. Is the radeon driver the best choice for this card?
2. Are there advantages/disadvantages to using the ATI driver instead? (Is there a slackbuild for the proprietary driver?)
3. Can someone point me to any better sources of info for ATI cards/drivers used under Slackware?

As always, Thanks!

kingbeowulf · 05-11-2010, 03:37 PM

In my opinion, if you want to use the open source ATI drivers for hardware 3D, you will need to what until 2.6.32 or better for the fully functioning drm module. Check lsmod to make sure all the required modules are running. I was not ever able to get the VESA boot modes to work either.

You can try fglrx (see slackbuilds.org) but ATI has been dropping support for the older cards like a hot rock and many of the earlier Catalyst versions are very buggy under Linux.

See also
http://dri.freedesktop.org/wiki/ATIRadeon

adamk75 · 05-11-2010, 07:33 PM

A) Your drivers are setup properly. 'glxinfo', as packaged in Slackware 13.0, was a symlink to glinfo. This was bad packaging and has been fixed with an update. This is why you get no direct rendering line.

B) fglrx (the ATI proprietary driver) is not an option for your GPU.

C) The version of Mesa packaged in Slackware 13.0 had issues with blender on radeon cards. You can update to a newer version to resolve this problem.

Adam

astrogeek · 05-11-2010, 10:12 PM

I posted a reply earlier - but apparently not... so here goes once more...

@beowulf999
You confirmed most of what I had concluded, and I was resigned to waiting for Slackware 13.1 to be released to get the new kernel the easy way.

But in the mean time I pulled the card and set up X with the onboard Intel 910 chipset - and everything works really well - vesa FB, video and all the graphics I use including Blender. I was only using the ATI card because it was in the box and presumed to be a better card. But it is only better if it works!

So my solution for now is to simply use the onboard chip and get on with it! Given time and curiosity I may try the ATI card again when Slackware 13.1 is released, assuming I update to it soon. Thanks!

@adamk75
Thanks! That answers all my questions!

The missing "direct rendering" line was very confusing to me as I am not fluent in the language of graphics systems. Knowing this puts my mind at ease.

Your statement that fglrx is not an option confirms what I had generally concluded and saves further effort on that path.

And I was unaware of the Mesa problem - I assume that will be fixed in Slackware 13.1, along with the glxinfo problem.

So, as noted above, I am going to use the onboard Intel chips until such time as I install Slackware 13.1, and may have another look at the ATI card at that time.

Thanks to both of you for the responses.