The Radeon HD 48xxx+ with Compiz state tracking thread.

[hurricane]

This thread is here, to track if and when that driver will finally support compositing, 3D, hardware-accelerated video, and the recent (>=2.6.29) kernel interface.
But mostly about getting the card to run with CompizFusion all day long, without crashing, or at all.

It’s not for older cards, that already work. It’s not for the Xorg (open source) driver. It’s just for the HD 48xx and newer series, with the fglrx driver.
But in case Xorg gets to a state that is better than fglrx in hardware acceleration, this thread will end with a comment, explaining this, and then be abandoned.

From my current knowledge of version 8.600 (the leaked version), I list here, what I know:
• The new kernel interface is not implemented
• Composite rendering does still not work. With Xinerama, it is completely blocked by the driver.
• The hardware video codec is very poor, and creates an extreme contrast of very pixellated images, and very little space between huge glowing black and white areas.
• The driver still crashes. A lot.
• Sometimes, you can get compositing to work. But then it’s a bug, race-condition dependent, and *will* lock up. Try to press the power button to shut your system down, as soon as you notice it! (<3 seconds) This can save your data and allow normal shutdown. Do not try to switch to the consoles!
• Without compositing, the driver seem to run fine. But it crashed anywhere between some hours and some minutes, every day I tested it.
• »amdxmm.so« crashes the driver on X start. Renaming it can help. But the missing file obviously just creates another problem.
• The VirtualBox kernel modules, when loaded at the same time as the driver, cause random crashes.
• The current driver right now is 8.612 (Catalyst 9.5). I could not test it yet, because I don’t want to go back to an older kernel.
• All in all, I can not recommend buying an ATi card, except if you really never want to do anything beyond the most basic uses. Which makes buying such a card pointless.

Please help updating any of this data, when you are here, and it changed. Because I will not check back here more often than once every 1-2 months.

Keywords: fglrx, ATi, AMD, Radeon, HD 4850, HD 4870, ati-drivers, catalyst, proprietary, newest, most recent, leaked, update, HOWTO, help, stable, compiz fusion, CompizFusion.

[kernelOfTruth]

what do you mean with

[hurricane]

Just as a general note:

This is no support thread for personal problems, bugs, or big discussions.
List the actual state, and new information, short and precise.

If you want help on a problem, that you could not solve, open a separate thread, and put the solution, in the most compact format, back in here.

Thank you.

[hurricane]

[kernelOfTruth]

[kernelOfTruth]

here's my xorg.conf, maybe you can get compositing to work with a similar config:

[snip]

discard the old config it leds pretty fast to hardlocks ... further down is a newer config which seems to work better (12+ hours and no hardlocks so far )
_________________
https://github.com/kernelOfTruth/ZFS-for-SystemRescueCD/tree/ZFS-for-SysRescCD-4.9.0
https://github.com/kernelOfTruth/pulseaudio-equalizer-ladspa

Hardcore Gentoo Linux user since 2004

[kernelOfTruth]

ok, today I tested it a little more intensive + compositing and it all of a sudden turned the screen black and hardlocked (also no reboot via magic sysrq key)

now I know what you mean

you could also try to use kde4.2 or kde4-9999 packages with compositing - they proved to be much more stable and tended to lock up way less than gnome + compiz
_________________
https://github.com/kernelOfTruth/ZFS-for-SystemRescueCD/tree/ZFS-for-SysRescCD-4.9.0
https://github.com/kernelOfTruth/pulseaudio-equalizer-ladspa

Hardcore Gentoo Linux user since 2004

[ssmaxss]

Ok. Status of my Radeon HD3650:
OSS drivers:

'+':
1) 2D works fast, EXA acceleration available. fglrx doesn't
2) Video plays fast, tear-free, Xv acceleration available. don't sure that there is tear-free video playback with compoziting and fglrx.
3) Compositing effects work with KDE 4.2.4's XRender based compoziting.
4) Works with latest X.org and kernel. fglrx doesn't
5) Everything is rock-solid, no crashes at all.

'-'
1) 3D support lacking right now, but looking at the state of <=r5xx cards and frequency of commits to r6xx-rewrite branch, I am sure there is no point in using fglrx for me. fglrx provides 3D accelration.

• All in all, I can not recommend buying any card other than ATi , except if you really need gaming right now and you are not satisfied with <=r5xx cards. Intel cards are slow, nvidia doesn't have normal linux drivers (==opensource) at all, which makes buying such a cards pointless.

[kernelOfTruth]

check this out: (more than 12 hours with compositing and zen-sources-2.6.30-zen1 with custom CFLAGS):