DRI, Rage M3, and general ATi issues...

cult hero · Last edited by cult hero on Thu Aug 12, 2004 4:09 am; edited 1 time in total

All righty, first let me explain the root of the problem. I just installed Gentoo on a laptop for a friend of mine. It's a Dell C600. Everything is pretty much running smooth. The problem is that while in X (KDE specifically) whenever he's listening to music and does much of anything (scroll through a webpage, reload it, etc.) music he's listening to (on JuK) will choke and hiccup. This thing had a 1GHz proc. Initially I thought this was a DMA issue, but DMA is enabled on the HD.

With that in mind I'm assuming the problem is video related as in, hardware acceleration isn't being used. I read the ATi FAQ located here:

http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/ati-faq.xml

However it wasn't very helpful in that it has instructions for XFree rather than x.org. One part in particular confused me:

kenthepostman · Posted: Thu Aug 12, 2004 4:00 am Post subject:

I believe you can only use either the kernel DRM module or emerge the separate module. From the ATI faq:

Important: Your kernel must have agpgart support and not have the DRM modules compiled in.

That is regarding xfree-drm.

Did you make sure to run the opengl-update command?? I believe if you use the kernel modules and xorg, it should be

cult hero · Posted: Thu Aug 12, 2004 4:09 am Post subject:

Yeah, I did the opengl-update. No dice.

And it didn't say to have DRM and AGP seperate, it just said not to compile the stuff in as in... keep it modular (which I did). I'll play with it more in a little while. Thanks though.
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blaster999 · Posted: Thu Aug 12, 2004 6:39 am Post subject:

What video card is it? Is it compatible with the official ATI drivers? If it is, then installing them would be a better idea. If it isn't, then I would recommend compiling DRI from cvs. It isn't complicated but can give good results. Or, you can compile the xorg with option VIDEO_CARDS="cardname" in your make.conf (ex. VIDEO_CARDS="radeon").

About the sound: is artsd running? It can make sound crappy. Disable sound system in KDE Control Center->Multimedia and see if it helps.
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cult hero · Posted: Thu Aug 12, 2004 7:01 am Post subject:

Bleh. I feel like an idiot. I typed out this post once and hit "preview" then closed the window. The video card is an ATi Rage Mobilty (M3). Do I need to specifically tell xorg to use that video card? (Doesn't it just use all of them by default?)

Anyway... I might try canning Arts because everything works otherwise.
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blaster999 · Posted: Thu Aug 12, 2004 8:22 am Post subject:

Oops, didn't notice the "Rage" in the topic, sorry :oops:

Then you have only 2 options: use xorg's Direct Rendering or DRI CVS (the same, but newer version, maybe faster and possibly less stable).

VIDEO_CARDS should be set to r128 if you want to use xorg's DRI. Notice that you may still need that kernel module made for your kernel for 3d to work - so IMO dri cvs is better.
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60s: sex, drugs, rock'n'roll
90s: sux, bugs, drag'n'drop
---
Some multimedia keys refuse to work? See my mini-howto:
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cult hero · Posted: Thu Aug 12, 2004 8:49 am Post subject:

So I *have* to include that little "VIDEO_CARDS" in there for DRI? I mean, the r128 driver already exists. I thought that worked kinda like the old ALSA thing where it only compiled the driver you needed rather than all of them.
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blaster999 · Posted: Thu Aug 12, 2004 9:50 am Post subject:

pactoo · Guru Joined: 18 Jul 2004 Posts: 553

First of all, try running arts in realtime mode (you need to set artswrapper setuid and enable "running arts in realtime mode" in kcontrol). That will most likely will make your sound rock solid, independent of other problems. If it is mostly for playback, try setting it even to halve duplex.

As for drm and x.org, I do have the same problem, however, nobody seems to know anyting. My thread:

https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=206375&highlight=

pactoo · Guru Joined: 18 Jul 2004 Posts: 553

Oh, and for: How do I tell if DRI/DRM is working?

"glxinfo" is your friend, just type it in your xterm and it will say something like "Direct Rendering: yes". Or not.

cult hero · Posted: Thu Aug 12, 2004 8:10 pm Post subject:

Thank you! I won't have access to that machine until tonight, but that bit of information should help out a lot. If I find anything that solves your problem I'll fire off a note.
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cult hero · Posted: Tue Aug 17, 2004 10:45 pm Post subject:

I've finally had time to look at the laptop and glxinfo is confirming that there is no direct rendering action going on. However I've tracked the problem down:

cult hero · Posted: Tue Aug 17, 2004 10:54 pm Post subject:

I compiled it in and no dice. dmesg returned this:

loxety · Posted: Thu Sep 02, 2004 8:11 am Post subject:

I have a dell c600 with ati m3.. xorg and a mostly monolithic kernel. Everything but hardware3d works. After updating the BIOS from A03 to A23 I saw a huge speedup, websites loaded faster, scrolling was way faster but still no hardware 3d.