Messed up fullscreen OpenGL on Radeon9100

Futt · n00b Joined: 13 Nov 2002 Posts: 28

Using gentoo-sources 2.4.20 and "ati-drivers" on my ATI Radeon 9100, I have problems with all fullscreen X games. The moment it switches to the fullscreen mode (any resolution) the display is garbled (random chunks of the rendered screen scattered about). It also appears to switch to a rather low resolution. My "Screen" section has entries for all the important resolutions, all in 24bpp.

Has anyone encountered this before, or know what the problem might be?

J.M.I.T. · Posted: Thu Aug 07, 2003 10:18 pm Post subject:

have you checked if your card is configured correctly? Does glxgears give you a reasonable score?

sputnik1969 · Posted: Fri Aug 08, 2003 3:51 am Post subject:

I've got the same problem (Radeon 8500) and the only solution seems to be, to disable the 640x480 in you XF86Config.
Since i canged my modes to

FRiO · n00b Joined: 30 Jun 2003 Posts: 45

I have the same issues with my R9000. My solution is to change the screen reso using ctrl-alt-+ or ctrl-alt-- before playing a game

.

Futt · n00b Joined: 13 Nov 2002 Posts: 28

Ah thanks for the tips, I'll go try that. And to J.M.I.T - yes it is configured properly, glxgears and glxinfo all give correct information and reasonable values, and all OpenGL games run smoothly with hardware acceleration if I launch them in windowed mode, or as FRiO suggested, change resolution with CTRL-ALT-[+|-] after launching the game.

I'll try removing 640x480 from my modes and see if that helps.

schutten · Posted: Fri Aug 08, 2003 4:08 pm Post subject:

Same problem here: 640x480 is a mess. I took it out of Xf86Config...

I am using a Radeon 9100 (=identical to 8500).

Futt · n00b Joined: 13 Nov 2002 Posts: 28

Well it does seem to work well for pure OpenGL games, but not for others. Another problem I've been having is some games tend to lock up hard after a few minutes - such as Vendetta and Quake 3 Arena. I remember seeing some posts about that earlier, but searching around for it I can't really seem to find any solution to this one...

schutten · Posted: Sun Aug 10, 2003 6:08 pm Post subject:

For Quake 3 based games (it should work for all, I am using only enemy territory) use: +set r_ext_compiled_vertex_array 0 as a setting on the command line.
This should solve problems with ATI cards.
This is somewhere in the "official" FAQ from ID sofware on enemy territory.

FRiO · n00b Joined: 30 Jun 2003 Posts: 45

Mmm. I've supported ATi as a company for a long time, but their abysmal Linux support has me smiling at nvidia again - dodgy benchmarks, business practises and all.

Come on ATi - you've (finally) got your Windows drivers sorted, why can't you do the same for Linux? Screwy reso changes aside, the constant xfree lockups that occur in most games after 30mins or so are simply appalling. Not good

.

Futt · n00b Joined: 13 Nov 2002 Posts: 28

I'd tend to agree with you there, FRiO... I've been messing around with my config a lot, and as the opensource drivers don't seem to quite support 3D in 9100 (and presumably newer) ATI cards, I sortof rely on the official ATI drivers. And they, quite frankly, suck...

Granted, ATI (and probably nVidia as well) have a less than brilliant track record when it comes to quality of drivers for any platform including Windows, so I guess we shouldn't whine too much.

I really hope they fix it though, as they are pretty much unusable as they are now. I don't have the worlds longest attention span when it comes to FPS games, but even I like to play a bit longer than a couple of minutes

Oh and thanks for the tip, schutten - will try that and see how it goes!

schutten · Posted: Tue Aug 12, 2003 5:00 am Post subject:

The opensource drivers (in xfree-drm) support upto the 8500 (so this includes the 9100; this is exactly the same chip as the 8500).
I have use the xfree-drm drivers with success (and also drivers that I downloaded myself from http://dri.sourceforge.net/ ; these are newer versions of the xfree-drm files).

Currently I am using the ati-drivers (2.9.12; there are newer ones available in portage, haven't used those). For the game I mostly use (enemy territory) the ati-drivers give me better performance/stability/visual quality, although the open source drivers do work for that game as well.

I will try the latest state of the open source drivers when I find some time to play around again...

Futt · n00b Joined: 13 Nov 2002 Posts: 28

I've tried ati-drivers version 2.9.12 and now 2.9.13-r1 (masked) and they both give pretty decent performance, but are prone to crashes and complete system lockups.

I also tried xfree-drm from portage but could not get 3D acceleration (the drivers loaded fine, but OpenGL was sluggish as hell and glxinfo told me no hardware acceleration was available).

schutten · Posted: Tue Aug 12, 2003 4:49 pm Post subject:

Hmm, the setup that I use is rock solid...
No crashes in regular use, and after using the workaround enemy territory is also very stable.

Did you try the xfree-drm guide at http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/dri-howto.xml ?

If glxinfo does not say: "direct rendering: Yes", then there is something wrong with the setup.

You can also have a look at this thread for more info: https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=46681