Is there a fix for random freezing of games in Slack10 with ATi proprietry drivers?
 

Okay, I'm getting a little sick of the freezing now. However, it doesn't seem anyone has a fix for this problem.

Slackware 10 running on a 2.4.26 (stock version), running Fluxbox (stock version). I've installed ATi proprietry drivers (3.9.0), these run games fairly well (for my box anyway) but 3D games freeze randomly (UT original and Foobillard). I have a P4 1.3Ghz, Sapphire Radeon 9000.

So, what log files should I look at? The xorg log didn't see to have anything. I can probably get a freeze quite easily so if anyone wants any copys of logs I can probably get them - just ask!

Cheers

Steve

lots of games make illegal calls to radeon memory, notably games like KOTOR and Neverwinter Nights, causing quite a lock up. The only fix i found was to not use ati cards anymore. The lock-ups occur in both windows and linux. Put bluntly, ati drivers are next to useless

Dang, well thanks for your reply. I guess I could downgrade to a Nvidia Geforce 2 MX ... but that is one hellavu downgrade :(!

Cheers again

Steve

I have ATI cards in both my laptop and desktop computers, and I've never had problems with freezing on either (and I've played Knights of the Old Republic and Neverwinter Nights...the 2 games he mentioned...on both of them)

Hey SBing, I have had no problems with lock ups and I have a Radeon 9100. Could I suggest maby the latest drivers are leaning towards supporting better the 2.6.x kernels??

Maby you could try installing a newer one, 2.6.6 or 2.6.7 (source comes with slackware 10) that is if your happy compiling a kernel.

Or maby you could try the 3.7.6 driver??

Sorry these are really just a stabs in the dark.
:jawa:

Okay guys, thanks for your replys.

I've just popped back for lunch and will recompile my kernel later in the evening - I think the 2.6.7 kernel and the ATi drivers have a problem, but there is a thread covering that side of things -

I'll let you all know how it goes ;)

Steve

Drivers
 

Now, I don't have an ATI card, but according to the documentation the standard built-in XFree86/X.org radeon driver should be 3d accelerated for the 9000. I have heard somewhere that this driver is slower than ATI's driver, but it might still be faster than downgrading to an older card.

/Odie

Cheers for the ideas, tried both out.

Under 2.6.7 UT refused to run! Foobillard crashed in the same place (on player-win *rolls eyes*) so I really had to go back to 2.4.26

I installed the 3.7.6 drivers under 2.4.26, however they seemed to have the same problems, I didn't see any real differences to stability etc :(. Foobillard still crashed and UT still crashed in domination ... deathmatch seems to run fine so I think I'll stay there - UT Domination isn't fun anyway :)

Shame these didn't seem to fix it - oh well :(!

@OdieQ

Thanks for the comments, but to be honest, the stock Xorg drivers do not provide any real 3D graphics acceleration; I appreciate the Geforce 2 MX is one of the worst cards ever built for it's generation, but hopefully the nvidia drivers would provide SOME support in acceleration. I don't really play many games so I will consider downgrading (UT and Foobillard...I'm not really a gamer!)

Well, I'll come back to this thread if I find any magic solution, to any searchers / lurkers - sorry!

Steve

*is now jealous*

Hmm, well not really much of an update but I swapped my old Nvidia Geforce 2 MX back in, foobillard no longer crashes (yay!) and I get half the FPS in glxgears (woo!). Seems the ATi drivers are just plain bad, Nvidia's seem to work nicely, apart from the splash screen ...

Edit: Simply add: Option "NoLogo" "1"

However, UT just won't run :(, thread here for anyone following ;)

Steve

Well, it's done, the Nvidia card works beautifully - it may not run UT2k3 but UT classic is all I care about - no random crashes (yet!) in a very stable X environment

Love you Nvidia!

Steve

Just a thought, do you use apm ?

Just ran across this little howto at rage3d: ATI Radeon Linux How-To

Has some nice tips for installing the drivers on different distros, including Slack............

HTH :)

(As in Advanced Power Management?) No I don't; is that a good or a bad thing? :)

@thegeekster

Yeh, looking over those guides - pretty much exactly how I did it ;)

Steve

I would think it is more a bad thing under circonstances. I said that because I just configured a new kernel and saw some warning about unstability after enable or disable some apm features.