ATI drivers

masterluke · 1 Aug 2012 at 11:38

Hi - My trusty nvidia 8400gs just gave up the ghost and so I'm left with my onboard ati HD3000 on my ubuntu box. Upon restarting everything seemed to be working pretty well. The open source ati driver was autoloaded and appeared to be working ok. I decided that I should actually be using the binary ati driver (fglrx) as this was what I always did with zero issues on nvidia. BIG mistake. Firstly the "hardware drivers" section of ubuntu identified that other drivers were available, but were unable to install them. It failed telling me to look at /var/log/jockey.log which contains noting useful at all. I attempt to use synaptic to install the driver and it seems to go ok. I restart and it works - I have the catalyst control center so I guess it is working.

The problem is *everything* is horribly slow. The desktop effects are choppy and even sd video is full of tearing and unwatchable. I dont even bother trying 3d.

I have googled this problem and found loads of people with the same issue. Some are suggesting I turn off vsync in the control center and also in ccsm - which I dId and had no effect.

At this stage I have gone back to the open source driver, after having to google removal instructions and a fairly convoluted process.

So to summarise... ati's own linux driver is difficult to install, not working with a basic install of the most common linux desktop environment, and difficult to remove. All-in-all a total mess.

Did I do something wrong here or is this driver really as bad as the impression I have got? Is anyone using it without any problems? I would love to get some sort of hardware video decode (like vdpau on nvidia) working and i understand that the binary driver is the only way to do this. I just cant get the thing working.

SMN · 1 Aug 2012 at 11:42

Solution: get an Nvidia card

Sorry mate, i cant even begin to look into ATi drivers on Linux, they are awful.

FirebarUK · 1 Aug 2012 at 12:14

The open source driver should be quite good with the HD3000 no?

masterluke · 1 Aug 2012 at 12:21

Yes its very useable for general 2d use, but there is no hardware video decode as far as I can see. This is a pc by my plasma tv which I use a lot for 1080p video and so offloading video decode is really handy to keep the cpu usage down and the system quiet.

I guess I was expecting poor 3d out of the ati driver, but a useable desktop system with video decode. Maybe too much to ask.

Monkeynut · 1 Aug 2012 at 13:05

Run glxinfo, and turn your attention to the Mesa version. Also let us know your Ubuntu version (I'm assuming 12.04) as well as the OpenGL vender information, like this:

OpenGL vendor string: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc.
OpenGL renderer string: ATI Radeon HD 5700 Series
OpenGL version string: 4.2.11627 Compatibility Profile Context
OpenGL shading language version string: 4.20

masterluke · 1 Aug 2012 at 19:36

OpenGL vendor string: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc.
OpenGL renderer string: ATI Radeon 3000 Graphics
OpenGL version string: 3.3.11627 Compatibility Profile Context
OpenGL shading language version string: 3.30

..is this out of date?

This is the latest packaged version in the repository I think?

Am on fully updated 12.04 yes.

aln · 1 Aug 2012 at 23:34

Its possible the most up-to-date open drivers may have some kind of video decode like VDPAU, XvMC, or VA-API, but I wouldn't say anything is guaranteed at this point:-

http://www.x.org/wiki/RadeonFeature/

If none of the above work for your card, you should be able to use Textured Xv, which I believe should make a difference in CPU utilization during playback. I'd stick with the open driver if you can live with Xv until VDPAU support is complete.

With the blob, I'm not sure if your card is even supported in the newer blobs, but it looks like it's working from your OpenGL output, so I'm not sure what to tell you.

OhEsEcks · 2 Aug 2012 at 02:23

They stopped supporting pre-HD5000 series on the proprietary driver. Your only option for older stuff is to use the open source driver.

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=amd_catalyst_legacy2&num=1

Edit: Checking Phoronix, they released a 12.6 legacy version.

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTEzNDA

So I assume for everything pre-5 series, you want the legacy driver. I imagine if we see future HD8000 series of cards, 5 series will be relegated to the legacy driver and that will continue with other releases.

masterluke · 2 Aug 2012 at 11:01

Thanks for your help guys - I think I'll stick with the open driver for now while I convince the wife I need to buy a new (nvidia) card.

I do find it very annoying that I bought this motherboard in the last week and I have a choice between a (non functioning and unsupported) legacy ati driver OR a cut-down open source driver.