Sorry I didn't get back to you yesterday (actually this morning). I was damn tired after everything.

And actually, that WAS one of the first things I tried, but for some reason, it didn't work for me, maybe martinman will have better luck.

I actually am using some of the options from that link you gave me for the options for the card already. I thought maybe that would help, but.... *sigh* a lot of my screensavers still suck.

Here's the device clip from my XF86Config that actually refers to the card:
As you can see, I disabled the page flip cuz I thought that may have something to do with the poor queality of the screensavers. Speaking of which, I haven't tried your suggestions yet as I just woke up a little bit ago and checked your post.

I'll report back in a little after trying them.
-TheDot

PS I took a look at the video timings how-to, just kinda skimmed through it, but bah, "my head hurts"

Hi martinman,

I don't think the difference between 4.3.0 and 4.2.0 is that big( I've used both). Probably just more supported hardware and some minor bugfixes... But downgrading IMHO should only be seen as a last option, if nothing else helps.

I suggest you try my radeon.o file first, I put it on my university webpage: http://studwww.rug.ac.be/~kavermei/radeon.o
Just put in /lib/modules/.../drm/ (maybe backup the old one ) and restart X

I hope it works with the Radeon 9xxx series, 'cos I have a 7xxx. If it doesn't, with 4.3.0 the only drivers I know of can be found at http://www.schneider-digital.de/html/download_ati.html but I don't know if your card is supported.
Otherwise downgrading to 4.2.0 to get the ATI drivers to work could be an option, or else wait till ATI releases their drivers for 4.3.0....

Hope this helps.

Hi TheDot,

you're right the X video timings howto is quite technical & formulas
BTW it's funny with this time difference don't you think. It's near bedtime for me now LoL

FYI here's my device section:

Option "AGPMode" "4"
Option "dpms" "on"
Identifier "Radeon"
Driver "radeon"
VendorName "ATI Technologies Inc"
BoardName "Radeon RV200 QW [Radeon 7500]"

as you can see I haven't tried AGPFastWrite yet myself, I'll put it "on" and see if I get the same problem as you, i'll report back then!

lol, the link you gave me just looks like a HUGE text file, like if you were looking at a korean site without the language packs installed...some words come across OK, but the rest is all bleh. I know theres some command you can put into the terminal to grab a file off the net, i just dont know what it is (rh9 btw)

*Interesting*: I manage to reproduce the flickering too: I use xscreensaver. When it runs normally, no problem. When I run the graphic hacks from the command line in windowed mode, no problem. But when I run them from the command-line in fullscreen-mode ("-root" option, actually it's run in my background with all the windows on top of it) it DOES flicker like you described. However I only get this problem with the GL ones.

So I guess it's difficult for the card to have a GL visual with non-GL windows on top, problems with overlay (Im just guessing here). But anyway when my xscreensaver first blanks the screen and then runs the GL program I have no problems...

Do you also use xscreensaver?

Hi martinman,

yeah I know the problem he thinks its a text file. It should work better by right-clicking and then selecting "Save link target as...". File length after download should be 132590 bytes.

FYI, the command line tool you refer to is 'wget', but the above should work just fine, I've encountered it many times as well.

there we go, wget was what i was looking for, thx

OK, got your file, changed around the xf86config, restarted X...

direct rendering: No

glxgears gives the same framerate (249.600 fps)

and of course, the games run like crap. and yes, load "dri" is in the config,even though it spits back:

You know, I tried using that with just a plain xinit (where I only had a white box with a bash script) and it ran smooth as hell, the Atunnel screensaver even let me see my FPS which was running at a constant 50FPS in full screen mode. But then I tried going back into kde, and guess what, the problem happened again, I believe something does have to do with the overlay like you were suggesting, so I took and used a few more options from XFree86's radeon page, so now my device section looks like this:

Section "Device"
Identifier "** ATI Radeon (generic) [radeon]"
Driver "radeon"
VideoRam 65536
Option "AGPMode" "4"
Option "AGPSize" "64"
Option "AGPFastWrite" "on"
# Option "EnablePageFlip" "on"
Option "SWcursor" "on"
Option "DDCMode" "on"
Option "VideoKey" "16"
# Insert Clocks lines here if appropriate
EndSection

If you notice, I even took your suggestion about the cursor. I'm not TOO familiar with how xscreensaver works, so when I was trying it, I just ran xscreensaver &, even with this, fullscreen ran fine, but as soon as I went back into kde and did a test on a fullscreen screensaver, bam, flickering all over again, but you are right, it is only with the GL screensavers (i found out more of the screensavers are GL-based even if they don't say it, using xscreensaver) and actually I've tried both with and without the fastwrite option, and no luck either way. Ok, I think that's the biggest combination sentence I've ever written in my life... phew... lol.

Also, in the above, VideoKey has to do with YUV overlay, so if I can dig up some info on it, I'll pass it on, but I have no idea how to use that option, I was actually making a guesstimation based on depths.

Again, I'm running out of ideas here.... Only thing I can think to play with now is that VideoKey option.

However, I do appreciate all the help you've given me with this.
Later,
TheDot

Hi TheDot,

You're welcome!

well I guess trying around a bit is indeed the best way to try and fix it... I'm running out of ideas too, really. Just some thoughts still:

However, the way overlay is being used may be different in KDE (I work on windowmaker, never used KDE) to tell you the truth I don't know the first thing about the technical details

Yep, their names don't all start with 'gl'

Me too, made no difference. I'll leave it on on my card (should be a little bit faster)

LoL Accelerate your grammar, use Linux!

I guess that YUV has something to do with video playback. I use the (excellent, but command-line) "mplayer" video player and it always outputs diagnostic messages with "YUV colorspace" and "using YUV for video overlay" etc. etc... However, again, my knowledge of this is only marginal so I can't assure it's got nothing to do with GL.

Good luck fiddling around!

Later,
nukkel

A couple of things, A) I think I found my signature quote, finally, lol. and B) Good luck to you too!

Later!

Hi martinman,

I'm kinda out of ideas here. Clearly this radeon.o doesn't do the trick though it worked for me... Maybe you'll have to wait till ATI releases drivers for 4.3.0 ?

Note, I think there are many other threads about your card in specific, with maybe more knowledgeable people...

Best of luck,
nukkel

yeah there are more threads featuring the 9x00's, but ive already been to those and even started two of my own...no luck, guess i'll just hafta wait

One thing I forgot to mention, is that I checked out a few other threads, and after learning how intensive Gnome and KDE are to system resources, I tried using a few other desktops for the screensavers, and didn't see the problem at all. It may not even be the intensity, but how KDE invokes screensavers compared to the other ones.

I dunno... *shrug* I have bigger fish to fry right now anyway.

So I'll catch ya later sometime.

ive moved one from this problem and decided to mount my 100gb ntfs drive! yay!

got it in flawlessly, excellent instuctions at the sf.net site