ati 9000 - tears and artifacts across the screen.. pls help!

taskara

This is the first time I've tried to get an ati card working - normally I use nvidia cards and I have hit a snag!

I am using xfree 4.3.0-r2 and xfree-drm and latest ati drivers 2.9.6.

Hardware is Dell Inspiron 8200 laptop with ATI 9000 video chipset.

I have the ati driver working, and glxgears results in about 2000fps.

HOWEVER, the annoying problem is that there are tears and artifacts across the screen, especially when I drag a window.

any thoughts? cheers!
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kha · n00b Joined: 19 Mar 2003 Posts: 41

I was a litttle bit afraid this would happen.
Th eproblem is that the "new ati drivers" are everything but "new ati drivers". They are in fact drivers meant to be used with a FireGL. Even though all R300 based card are quite simillar in design, they also have some differences, mainly the quality. It definitly looks like your video ram, or some of your buses can't handle the new drivers. It might be because your on board radeon was slown down in order to prevent excessive heating, it can also be because the video ram used is cheaper (ie slower). It can also be because Dell model was heavily modified.

My suggestion would be to go back to an older driver, you might damage your video card.

Kha
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taskara · Posted: Tue Apr 15, 2003 9:45 pm Post subject:

thanks.. that's a good suggestion.

will the older driver work with xfree 4.3?

thanks heaps! will try tonight..
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kha · n00b Joined: 19 Mar 2003 Posts: 41

<i>will the older driver work with xfree 4.3? </i>

It definitly shouldn't I am afraid. Depending on your kernel you should be able to get 3D acceleration through DRI or using the kernel radeon driver.
If you can afford to get sources from CVS and you are using a 2.4x kernel, just go for DRI/XFree drivers. You will get decent 3d acceleration (but not as good as the one you can expect from ATI drivers).
Some mobility models have trouble with DRI, my Radeon 7500c has trouble with KDE and any *dm. Runs fine with Window Maker and Fluxbox though.

Kha
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taskara · Posted: Wed Apr 16, 2003 3:51 am Post subject:

argh.. grrr.. so I"ll either have to stick with DRI or downgrade xfree BACK to 4.2 again, to use older drivers..

there is a reason I have always stuck to nVidia cards!!

thanks for your help..
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taskara · Posted: Wed Apr 16, 2003 12:38 pm Post subject:

HEY!

took your advice, downgraded to xfree 4.2, and older ati drivers.

X now comes up, BUT it comes up on half the screen! ?? it's not wrapped, just vertically shrunk.

any thoughts ?

thanks again
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kha · n00b Joined: 19 Mar 2003 Posts: 41

Of course since you downgraded your xfree you remade you XF86Config?

If you did not, I really suggest you do.
If you already did, here are a list of hint you can look for :
- If your kernel is 2.5.x don't look any further, you can't use ati drivers, you will have to go for kernel drivers and kernel drm

- If your kernel is 2.4.x try recompiling it putting DRM and RADEON as modules, then fecth xfree-drm and ati radeon driver. There are quite a lot of post on how to do this. a search on ATI configure and kernel should do the trick. Please note that turning off or on some AGP feature in the kernel can help too (sometime)

- If you use KDE 3, please note it is known to make strange uses of DRI. Try creating a new user and launch KDE with it. If there is no shrinking there, go for the kill on your .kde folder.

- try to lower the different parameter of your monitor, if you made a custom monitor configuration because you wanted a peculiar resolution at a peculiar refresh rate, that might be the cause.

- try different resolutions and turn DRI and GLX ON and OFF, see if that changes anything, try different color depth and launch twm as your window manager (100% eye candy free)

Here, normally something in this list should help you to solve your problem. Since you got a veteran ranking I passed on the details, do not hesitate to ask for them if you need them.

Keep us informed

Kha
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Digital is perfect, but humans keeps on being analogic.
Viagra Is A Great Reccursive Acronym (can't use it though :( )

taskara · Posted: Wed Apr 16, 2003 9:18 pm Post subject:

thanks... I did re-configure my XF86Config file, and it was xdm and fluxbox that were only showing half the screen

This is my first time with an ati card. needlesss to say I'll be sticking with nVidia in the future!

But still I have to get this working.

ok.. now I have gone BACK up to xfree 4.3, and emerged xfree-drm. BTW I'm using vanilla 2.4.20 sources, with intel agp driver built in.

do you know what module I have to load for xfree-drm? and does that go into my XF86Config file as