Anyone Running Integrated Radeon HD 3200? Good/Bad?
 

Hello,

I'm looking at motherboards, and am on an extremely extreme budget. I'm thinking about settling for integrated graphics for now, and found a good deal on a board with the AMD 780G chipset w/ Radeon HD 3200 integrated graphics.

I've searched the web a bit and didn't find anything to sate my curiosity. Is anyone running this chipset? If so, what works well and what doesn't? How is 3D acceleration? Has ATI gotten their act together yet when it comes to Linux?

Thanks for any input!

Drivers from ATI is pathetic in any OS. For reliability and stability use open source X11 drivers instead of using drivers from ATI. The Radeon HD 3000 IGP series works just fine in Linux only if you use the open source X11 drivers and you only use 2D acceleration. If you use the fglrx, stability and reliability is not good, but does provide support the features of the card and this includes hardware 3D acceleration.

If you care for eye candy effects that Compiz or Beryl provides and want to play 3D games, go with nVidia graphics.

I will be buying a 790GX/750SB such as GIGABYTE GA-MA790GP-UD4H for my next computer build because I do not care for 3D or eye candy as much as other users. The X11 driver that I might be using is radeonhd instead of radeon because the radeonhd supports console restore that radeon lacks for the R600 model. The following is the features that each Radeon model supports when using X11 open source driver.

http://www.x.org/wiki/RadeonFeature

I suggest use Gentoo or Arch as your Linux distribution instead of pre-compiled distributions like Fedora or Debian.

Thanks for the reply. I'm not terribly interested in desktop effects myself, but 3D acceleration has to work without much trouble, as I use Google Earth and a few OpenGL games often. I mean, is it bad enough to being near the point of unusable? Is there just minor tearing? Meh, I'll probably just play it safe and spend a little more for the nvidia chipset.

Also, out of curiosity, what makes you say I should use a non-precompiled distro? I know the advantages, but does this have something to do with graphics driver reliability? If I needed 3D acceleration, I couldn't compile those blobs even if I wanted.

'Sides, I love me some Debian. I've learned that when I can get a near-100% working and stable installation, I'm best off if I take it and run!

I am sure software 3D rendering works, but not hardware 3D rendering when using the X11 open source driver for the R600 Radeon model. ATI proprietary driver, fglrx, does support hardware 2D and 3D rendering at a cost of reliability and stability.

A lot people does not understand that RPM and DEB based distributions does not have any strict control how they are handled by the maintainer. You are at the mercy of the maintainer's own specifications. Using a distribution like Gentoo, it compiles to your specifications. You can include or remove a feature that an RPM or DEB maintainer left out or included. Using the SRC.RPM and similar files for DEB can be used, but it takes more work to customize this file. Gentoo has a way to set the USE flag that is for enabling and disabling features at the time of compiling. After you set the USE flag, compiling and installing is automatic for each program and driver version. What sets apart Gentoo from pre-compiled distribution is the ability to optimize the compiler to make the program more efficient. Gentoo's package management is very strict, so everything have a predictable installation method. Gentoo goes by stability and reliability instead of relying on the developer of a desire program.

I suggest try out Gentoo or other similar distributions before criticizing.

Thanks. I really, honestly wasn't trying to criticize. I'm familiar with the fact that compiling from source gives one the ability to set flags and optimize, and I think it's great. I've compiled various applications in the past without much trouble, but I don't think I'm hardcore enough for a full-blown Gentoo install.

back to the past?
 

I have a gigabyte with the ATI 780G (HD3200) integrated graphics chipset. Let me tell you that in Linux, there is no support for 3D with this SOB chipset. Even 2D support is troublesome.

So far, apparently only one driver, catalyst 8.5 can give decent 2d acceleration. And you need to use an older kernel than 2.6.26. The new driver versions give awful results (as far as I have read reports).

The open source driver(s) give worst results than the proprietary, in my system. Stay away from that SOB HD3200.

If I were you, I would give a try to the Nvidia chipsets.

Years ago, I used to have an Nvidia card running with Mandrake 8.1 and, well, it was just pretty nice!

Now, these new chipsets are supposed to be blindingly fast, but instead, the drivers give you so poor results that make you think as if your hardware was very, very old and slow stuff.

When I used Mandrake 8.1, I used it with ATI Radeon 64 VIVO (pre 7000 series) with out any problems. Back then I still did not care about 3D. For this card, 3D hardware acceleration was experimental. It worked more reliable compared to nVidia cards when rendering 3D visual effects in XMMS. Right now my ATI Radeon 64 VIVO has 3D hardware acceleration that is not experimental. When I tested with Sabayon, the ATI Radeon 64 VIVO was the most reliable when handling Compiz or Beryl effects using X11 open source driver. My GeForceFX and GeForceMX cards could not handle it reliable and it was using the nVidia proprietary driver.

I have reliability problems with the Radeon HD 3200 IGP from 780G using fglrx which is known when using fglrx. I have only tested with Sabayon 3.5 and 4 from a LIVE DVD disc. There is 2D and 3D support that works fine. I have not tested with the radeonhd or radeon X11 driver. When using ATI Radeon HD 3000 IGP, you have to use the latest drivers or else it will not work right and Phoronix have stated this too. Not a lot of distributions uses the latest drivers, so I suggest a distribution like Gentoo.

Again I think at this time the radeonhd X11 open source driver will be more reliable for R600 based models since it has console restore feature when switching from GUI to console and then console to GUI. Enable EXA for 2D acceleration if it is not enabled. 3D support will be rendered by software.

If installed Debian, you can install Gentoo. Just install through command line and do not install Gentoo using its GUI utilities.

Thanks! That's the information I needed. The HCLs can only tell you so much. I'm currently running a GeForce 2 GTS w/ 32 MB memory, and it's working pretty well, although there is (expectedly) some lag in newer apps.

I think I'll be sticking with Nvidia in that case!

Electro, I think you and I were typing at the same time and I didn't see your last post. The thing is, direct hardware acceleration has to work (reliably), because software acceleration is dreadfully slow for me.

Also, I've actually installed both Gentoo and Arch in the past, but never really did much with them. Sometimes there's an application I need pronto, and the idea of having to wait for compilation to complete and dealing with dependencies seems like a hassle. I know it's a convenience vs. speed or functionality trade-off. I'll likely give Gentoo another go one of these days when I have the time and inclination. I've always wanted to.

Gentoo has nothing to do with this issue. The propietary drivers for both nvidia and ati are closed source, and both come precompiled except for the glue layer, so I can't see your point. These drivers will work the same (and will have the same problems) under Gentoo and under any other distro. Gentoo is not specially stable either, it depends on who administer it. For a newcomer it will probably be anything but stable, while s/he experiments with fancy make.conf settings, ~arch and while s/he forgets to run etc-update and revdep-rebuild after each update.

I didn't see anyone criticizing your statement, he just asked "how gentoo will solve his problem", a fair question in my humble opinion. And the answer to that is that Gentoo is in no way related to the problem or its solution.

I can think a million reasons to switch to gentoo, and graphic card drivers are not one of them. Every distro under the sun can use the same drivers, all you need to do is to pick them from the ati or nvidia site, which is what Gentoo does as well (no one is allowed to repackage them and redistribute them anyway, so there's no other way really).




To the topic, and from my experience, I can only recommend nvidia, because I've had nothing but troubles with ati. For 2d ati might be ok, but if you need a stable 3d capable system then fglrx is just a joke. You have to cross your fingers each time you exit X because it likes to crash from time to time, and forget about xinerama, two must-have for me. Your mileage may vary. I can't use hard resets, I value my data.

The radeonhd drivers are promising, but they have been promising for a long time, and promising!=working

Thanks for the feedback, i92guboj. I knew this was the case a year or two ago, I just thought maybe things have gotten better. I think this definitely gets me off the fence. Nvidia it is.

I'm not sure what all the disappointment is with this chipset. I've been using it for a while and have no real problems. The fglrx driver mostly works OK and does 3D acceleration. Don't expect the performance to be as good as a separate video card with ddr3 ram, but it's OK. It plays older games.

I had some problems with getting sound out of the HDMI with kernel 2.6.26 but now using 2.6.27.15 with slackware 12.2 and it's working in xine. Audio has worked over optical output the whole time.

I haven't used nvidia cards in a while and can't comment. They always used to work OK for me.

I think the gigabit 780g board I have works OK. My only current complaint is with ntp not working (it used to with slack 12.1). I've lost time with this mboard from day 1. I lose about 5 minutes a day.

I'm using the system right now to type this while concurrently watching Kansas vs Mich State using mythtv.

Edit: by the way, the open source drivers are getting better but fglrx still outperforms them, although I haven't tried the mesa git.

Hey Forum, thanks for the info. Can you post which driver version fglrx you are using? How did you installed it? Could you post also your xorg.config file, plz? I am surprised that you get 3D support (are you using compiz)? Sorry for many questions, but I need to figure out how to get this SOB hd3200 chip working.
I am using the older kernel with the 8.5 driver installed. Works good for 2D, but no 3D support. The new kernel has problems with it: it gives me errors like this:

fglrx: failed to open DRM connection
fglrx: DRI initialization failed!

(and it is a pain to scroll in firefox)

The more details you give us, the better for all the people there out having problems. Be our hero ;-)

Paste /var/log/Xorg.0.log in pastebin.com and put a link to it here, so we can review it here.

The output of dmesg might be useful as well, so we can see if the driver echoes out any error.

fglrx can fail to use drm for a number of reasons, and it won't work at all with xinerama (in case you are using it).

here is the /var/log/Xorg.0.log link:

http://pastebin.com/f7ae930e5

and in short, the warnings in that file:

then the dmesg output link:

http://pastebin.com/f34b3185d

thanks for additional advice.