Hardware Trouble In multiple distros (grahcical,Ethernet)
 

Greetings, I have been having problem with my hardware for quite a while now and have been trying to figure it out on my own just by reading forms and such and I have found a few forms that helped but honestly most of them were complete idiots so I decided to make my own and explain in depth the problem. (excuse me if I make any grammar mistakes as I am Ukrainian.)

Warning: I apologize for this but I am going to go overboard with detail so If you are not someone that can sit through and read very long form then move on please.


I Will first start off with my current specifications:


1 8 gb ddr3 ram stick
amd radeon r9 380 asus strix model
amd fx 6300 6 core processor unlocked
gigabyte 970a-ud3p
500 watt evga Power supply

The Distrubutions I tried installing that all had the same problems were: Debian, Arch, Linux Mint, fedora, openSUES.

I am using Insigna 1217 Rev.A flat screen Television as my main display and it is connected via High-Definition Multimedia Interface cable. works fine on windows.

Ok now that that is settled here is the story:

I first installed linux mint on this machine and instantly when the machine booted up ( I use rufus to create the iso image also good to be noted) The mouse and keyboard both did not work. TO fix this problem I found that I needed to do the following in the Bios:


set EHCI_HANDOFF to Enabled
set XHCI_HANDOFF TO ENABLED
set Iommu = Enabled

Then in Grub (applies to every distro I used on this machine) :

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="amd_iommu=on iommu=pt"


After I applied these initial fixes the booting speed picked up very much and then the keyboard and mouse worked properly.

After this I then ran into the more serious problems that I see lots of other people have been having with this combo of graphics card and mobo:
There was screen teaaring inside discord, firefox, and opera but the desktop enviornments (I tried both XFCE and KDE Plasma) did not have any screen tearing problems. Only if I played game, or used extrernal application (something that did not come with the initial installation not the file manager applications or things like those) Then there were screen tearing problems. so you ask what did i do to try to fix these problems:

- Tried both free and non-free drivers (the non free were not really much use i found the free to work slightly better as most people know) using command
sudo mhwd -a pci nonfree 0300 -f (in arch)

- tried switching to compbiz and compton compositors (XFCE)
- Edited sudo leafpad /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/20-amdgpu.conf
to use:
Section "Device"
Identifier "AMD"
Driver "amdgpu"
Option "TearFree" "true"
EndSection

- added the parameters radeon.cik_support=0 amdgpu.cik_support=1 amdgpu.dpm=1 amdgpu.dc=1 to the GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX line in /etc/default/grub then ran update-grub and rebooted.
-disabled hardware accelaration in firefox (for browser specific problems)

- edited the sudo leafpad /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/20-amdgpu.conf
yet again to:

Section "Device"
Identifier "Radeon"
Driver "radeon"
Option "AccelMethod" "glamor"
Option "DRI" "3"
Option "TearFree" "on"
Option "ColorTiling" "on"
Option "ColorTiling2D" "on"
EndSection

and all of those options STILL did nothing and the screen still still stuttered and had tearing in browsers and discord. so this i am quite confused on as videos play fine and there is no tearing in them. Interestingly though, in firefox only, they will not play in full HD (in arch specifically)

The other problem I was having was (again in every distro i used) livestreams would stutter and also streaming average not live videos from youtube also would stutter (mostly just the sound not the actual video) so to try to fix THIS problem i tried the following:

changed the drivers from free to nonfree and then back again

and this did nothing, still the glitchy video playback in both opera and firefox.

I did go on amazon and look up my motherboard model and read a bunch of their comments and there were so many people saying that it was a terrible mobo for linux support but then there were some that were linux users who were quite happy. I am stumped by these problems and have not been able to fix them myself. sorry for the overly detailed form but it must be done in this situation.

EDIT: I know this was nothing to do with my internet as I have no problems with any of my cables or router or anything of the sort and the streaming works fine on windows

Member Response
 

Hi,

Welcome to LQ!

I would suggest trying a Live system to see if a newer kernel and drivers would help. A LiveCD/DVD/USB can be found at; Get Your ISO, LiveCD & Pocket OS

You should be able to select a current Live system from the link above and boot your system to see if that can help you too a solution.

Hope this helps.
Have fun & enjoy!
:hattip:

THank You for the advice on booting from a live USB. I had tried this in the past and forgot to mention it. I just tried again to just see what would happen. I used a live USB of manjaro (latest ISO version from their website) and burned it with rufus yet again. I ran the live USB on my machine and then tested out firefox, discord, opera and so on and the problems were exactly the same, and the video streaming waas much more glitchy than the installed OS on the hard drive (thhis is normal though I would think as it is a live image). So short answer was thank you but nothing changed.

I have had some 'worst-ever' type of hardware, and the way to sort such issues is this:

• Research and write down what drivers you need, boot parameters, etc.
• Build your own kernel for that board, compiling in Motherboard drivers
• Make sure to not compile 'generic' support. If generic support is found, it will be loaded first.
• Not every OS tolerates you doing this. Make sure you use one that does.

It may be smart to leave the distro kernel there, so the OS won't barf every time you update. Compile out historical items (e.g. vesa, frame buffer). You can actually get away with a video module. If you've used proprietary drivers in the past but not now, make sure to check they are thoroughly gone by checking Note what the symlinks point to; in Proprietary drivers, it's the proprietary version, in Mesa it's Mesa lib versions (libGL.so-1.2.0) and numbers close to that. Oh, and use a visible grub menu.

Boot parameters to compiled in modules still work. Optimize things like chipset, and video separately. Disk access is a good yardstick for m/b chip set speed. Don't use a test like firefox, which relies on the whole orchestra playing in tune.

As a newbie, I did this for 2 pieces of hardware that are in computer history as the least satisfying customer experience, and got a usable machine. Both companies got into difficulty & were bought over. I vaguely remember having to do text distribution installs, bit it was otherwise OK.

Hello. Thank You for this suggestion about building a custom kernel for my specific hardware. This seems quite tedious though and I would hope maybe before having to do this there would an easier fix to my problems. This will be my last resort.