Anyone Running Integrated Radeon HD 3200? Good/Bad?

i92guboj · 03-28-2009, 05:50 PM

The fglrx module is not being loaded for some reason, what happens if you do "modprobe fglrx" as root?

Also, an unrelated but important note. The errors at the end of the dmesg output about your hard disk are very very ugly ones. I'd check your drive using smartmontools as soon as possible. But before that I'd do a backup just in case. Your HD might be about to die.

forum1793 · 03-28-2009, 09:22 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Maxei

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.

I'm using the 4th bios version. Can't remember how I did that so have not been able to update to the 5th. No floppy.

Note that I delete drm and agpart from the /lib/modules...directory. As I remember, if drm loads, fglrx doesn't work. This may or may not still be true.

I just upgraded to catalyst 9.3 today. Didn't notice any difference yet.

I think the compiz package is in the system but I don't think I use it.

I load fglrx simply by sh ati*run as root. This works in slackware. It did not work for me when I tried it in the past with ubuntu or mandriva. For those you probably have to load devel packages or at least kernel headers but I stopped using them.

I haven't changed my xorg.conf for some time so keep that in mind. It currently is:

Code:

Section "ServerLayout"
	Identifier     "Simple Layout"
	Screen      0  "aticonfig-Screen[0]" 0 0
	InputDevice    "Mouse1" "CorePointer"
	InputDevice    "Keyboard1" "CoreKeyboard"
EndSection

Section "Files"
#    ModulePath "/usr/lib/xorg/modules"
	RgbPath      "/usr/share/X11/rgb"
	FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/local/"
	FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/misc/"
	FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/OTF/"
	FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/TTF/"
	FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/Type1/"
	FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/CID/"
	FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/Speedo/"
	FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/75dpi/:unscaled"
	FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/100dpi/:unscaled"
	FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/75dpi/"
	FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/100dpi/"
	FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/cyrillic/"
EndSection

Section "Module"
# Note: dbe, type1, freetype, glx, and dri are loaded per default
	SubSection "extmod"
		Option	    "omit xfree86-dga"   # don't initialise the DGA extension
	EndSubSection
#Note Xorg.0.log says "extmod" loaded by default
#                     "record" loaded by default
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
	Identifier  "Keyboard1"
	Driver      "kbd"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
	Identifier  "Mouse1"
	Driver      "mouse"
	Option	    "Protocol" "Auto"
	Option      "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
 	Option	    "Device" "/dev/mouse"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
	Identifier   "aticonfig-Monitor[0]"
	Option	    "VendorName" "ATI Proprietary Driver"
	Option	    "ModelName" "Generic Autodetecting Monitor"
	Option	    "DPMS" "true"
EndSection

Section "Device"
	Identifier  "aticonfig-Device[0]"
	Driver      "fglrx"
        Option "VideoOverlay" "off"
        Option "OpenGLOverlay" "off"
        Option "TexturedVideo" "on"

# next three from phoronix person not sure if they work
	Option	    "XAANoOffscreenPixmaps" "on"

# xorg.log shows next two don't work
# 	Option	    "AccelMethod" "EXA"
# 	Option	    "ExaNoComposite" "false"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
	Identifier "aticonfig-Screen[0]"
	Device     "aticonfig-Device[0]"
	Monitor    "aticonfig-Monitor[0]"
	DefaultDepth     24
	SubSection "Display"
		Viewport   0 0
		Depth     24
	EndSubSection
EndSection

xorg.log is: paste.bin

Code:

bash-3.1# dmesg | grep -i fg
ACPI: MCFG 6FDE9A00, 003C (r1 GBT    GBTUACPI 42302E31 GBTU  1010101)
PCI: MCFG configuration 0: base e0000000 segment 0 buses 0 - 255
PCI: MCFG area at e0000000 reserved in E820
fglrx: module license 'Proprietary. (C) 2002 - ATI Technologies, Starnberg, GERMANY' taints kernel.
[fglrx] Maximum main memory to use for locked dma buffers: 1654 MBytes.
[fglrx]   vendor: 1002 device: 9610 count: 1
[fglrx] ioport: bar 1, base 0xee00, size: 0x100
[fglrx] Driver built-in PAT support is enabled successfully
[fglrx] module loaded - fglrx 8.59.2 [Mar 13 2009] with 1 minors
[fglrx] GART Table is not in FRAME_BUFFER range 
[fglrx] Firegl kernel thread PID: 2638
[fglrx] Gart USWC size:821 M.
[fglrx] Gart cacheable size:60 M.
[fglrx] Reserved FB block: Shared offset:0, size:1000000 
[fglrx] Reserved FB block: Unshared offset:fffc000, size:4000

I've thought 3D was working in fglrx since catalyst 8.3 as I was able to use it with return to castle wolfenstein as well as eduke32. Am I wrong?

Maxei · 03-30-2009, 05:48 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by forum1793

I'm using the 4th bios version. Can't remember how I did that so have not been able to update to the 5th. No floppy.

Note that I delete drm and agpart from the /lib/modules...directory. As I remember, if drm loads, fglrx doesn't work. This may or may not still be true.

I just upgraded to catalyst 9.3 today. Didn't notice any difference yet.

I think the compiz package is in the system but I don't think I use it.

I load fglrx simply by sh ati*run as root. This works in slackware. It did not work for me when I tried it in the past with ubuntu or mandriva. For those you probably have to load devel packages or at least kernel headers but I stopped using them.

I've thought 3D was working in fglrx since catalyst 8.3 as I was able to use it with return to castle wolfenstein as well as eduke32. Am I wrong?

thanks for the info. I am using now the 8.50.3 driver and believe me, there is no 3D support with that or older. If you can run compiz, then you're right.

I am sticking to the older kernel (2.6.18) with X.org (7.1.2.0) and this fglrx driver version. At least, there is no tear, no cpu abusive use by xorg. Will wait until catalyst 9.4 comes out and will give it a try.

Electro · 03-31-2009, 02:31 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by i92guboj

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

You missed my point like many others. I suggested Gentoo because it provides an easier way to install proprietary drivers. Other distributions have problems because the maintainers do not know what they are doing and they guess where certain files are placed. Gentoo forces the maintainer to know where files should be placed.

IMHO, ATI writes the worst drivers for their hardware compared to 3rd-party developers for any OS. Personally, I would use the open source drivers for ATI cards which are radeon and radeonhd because they are more reliable and stable. Then on the side, I would use fglrx. I have not used radeonhd as the driver, but I think it is more reliable and stable compared to fglrx.

i92guboj · 03-31-2009, 09:23 AM

I see now, thanks for the clarification. Indeed, tidiness is a valid reason to use Gentoo.

jman82s · 04-06-2009, 05:44 AM

@ Electro:

I thought perhaps that was what you were getting at, but wasn't 100% sure.

Thanks for the clarification!

forum1793 · 04-12-2009, 11:58 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Maxei

...If you can run compiz, then you're right.

I've tried slackware-current which uses kde-4.2, and compiz definitely works with catalyst 9.3. I don't care enough about compiz to try it in slackware 12.2 but there is no reason for it not to work. If compiz is on (slackware-current), then watching movies in xine, for example, causes movie to blink.

I suggest 3D is working with fglrx in hardware as I can play 3d games using opengl. I've tried running these with fglrx not loaded. In the latter case, when you run glxinfo you see the mesa lines and the games are much, much slower. Even sdlquake is too slow to run in opengl using mesa (or at least the mesa that comes with the distribution. I've heard the latest mesa gits are better). Yet this game has no problem using opengl if fglrx is loaded.