[opensuse] Video Regression from 11.1 to 12.3 with Radeon 7000
I've done a great deal of searching & I can't seem to find a useful solution. I finally got around to getting my old 11.1 install running on my Thinkpad A30p with Radeon Mobility 7000. With 12.3, The video performance is slow, and I can't get MPlayer to play a video at all. With 11.1, I can play an x264 480p video with no problem. The laptop has a Tualatin P3/1.2Ghz & 1GB RAM. I've found all kinds of suggestions, like turning off KMS or creating an xorg.conf file and changing accelmethod from EXA to XXA. Turning off DRI made no differnce. Nothing works. There seems to be a similar regression with uBuntu from 8.10 to 9.04 as well. I tried to copy the xorg.conf from 11.1 to 12.3 but it fails to load. Has anyone managed to get this video chip working properly with newer versions of oS? Thanx -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org
On 01/07/2014 07:48 PM, Larry Stotler wrote:
I've done a great deal of searching & I can't seem to find a useful solution.
I finally got around to getting my old 11.1 install running on my Thinkpad A30p with Radeon Mobility 7000. With 12.3, The video performance is slow, and I can't get MPlayer to play a video at all. With 11.1, I can play an x264 480p video with no problem. The laptop has a Tualatin P3/1.2Ghz & 1GB RAM.
I've found all kinds of suggestions, like turning off KMS or creating an xorg.conf file and changing accelmethod from EXA to XXA. Turning off DRI made no differnce.
Nothing works. There seems to be a similar regression with uBuntu from 8.10 to 9.04 as well.
I tried to copy the xorg.conf from 11.1 to 12.3 but it fails to load.
Has anyone managed to get this video chip working properly with newer versions of oS?
Thanx
Have you tried this repository: http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/X11:/XOrg/openSUSE_12.3/ The Xorg in there is much improved over the one that came with 12.3. The only oddity i've seen from it is some difficulty loading the binary blob that comes with the video card upon first boot. This is indicated by extremely laggy performance when dragging windows when you have the bling turned on (desltop effects in KDE4.). Only seems to happen after first boot, and or when there are major updates in that repository. Simply logging out and back in again fixes that. You have to allow vendor changes to get that repository to update your Xorg the first time you use it. It currently has: X.Org X Server 1.15.0 Release Date: 2013-12-27 Haven't used Mplayer but Kaffine and VLC work perfectly. -- Explain again the part about rm -rf / -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org
On 01/07/2014 09:48 PM, Larry Stotler wrote:
I've done a great deal of searching & I can't seem to find a useful solution.
I finally got around to getting my old 11.1 install running on my Thinkpad A30p with Radeon Mobility 7000. With 12.3, The video performance is slow, and I can't get MPlayer to play a video at all. With 11.1, I can play an x264 480p video with no problem. The laptop has a Tualatin P3/1.2Ghz & 1GB RAM.
I've found all kinds of suggestions, like turning off KMS or creating an xorg.conf file and changing accelmethod from EXA to XXA. Turning off DRI made no differnce.
Larry, As I mentioned in my quick reply to your last thread. I suspect the issue is due to the fglrx driver no longer being available for your card. It was in the 11.1 timeframe IIRC in the move from Xorg 7.2 to 7.3 where ATI dropped support for all 1600 (1800?) and earlier graphics cards. If you check on your 11.1 install (if you still have it available) I suspect your will find that your were using the proprietary ATI driver: [21:19 zephyr/home/david] # lsmod | grep fglrx fglrx 1818912 23 agpgart 50868 2 fglrx,ati_agp The difference between the fglrx driver and the standard radeon/radeonHD driver is "orders of magnitude" in performance. With the fglrx driver, kde+compiz would spin the cube like a top, without the fglrx driver, you could watch paint dry waiting for the cube to appear. If that is the issue, then the stock radeon (or radeonHD) will be your only option -- as well as the performance that comes with it. Search the archives here and on the factory list for 'fglrx' and you will find a dissertation on the Xorg versions as well as the date/time and models affected. I have a couple of laptops in that category with ATI Mobility chipsets: 01:05.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc RV350 [Mobility Radeon 9600 M10] The stock radeon driver gives decent performance, it is just a hell of a lot slower than with fglrx. -- David C. Rankin, J.D.,P.E. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org
On 01/12/2014 01:26 AM, David C. Rankin wrote:
On 01/07/2014 09:48 PM, Larry Stotler wrote:
I've done a great deal of searching & I can't seem to find a useful solution.
I finally got around to getting my old 11.1 install running on my Thinkpad A30p with Radeon Mobility 7000. With 12.3, The video performance is slow, and I can't get MPlayer to play a video at all. With 11.1, I can play an x264 480p video with no problem. The laptop has a Tualatin P3/1.2Ghz & 1GB RAM.
I've found all kinds of suggestions, like turning off KMS or creating an xorg.conf file and changing accelmethod from EXA to XXA. Turning off DRI made no differnce.
Larry,
As I mentioned in my quick reply to your last thread. I suspect the issue is due to the fglrx driver no longer being available for your card. It was in the 11.1 timeframe IIRC in the move from Xorg 7.2 to 7.3 where ATI dropped support for all 1600 (1800?) and earlier graphics cards. If you check on your 11.1 install (if you still have it available) I suspect your will find that your were using the proprietary ATI driver:
[21:19 zephyr/home/david] # lsmod | grep fglrx fglrx 1818912 23 agpgart 50868 2 fglrx,ati_agp
The difference between the fglrx driver and the standard radeon/radeonHD driver is "orders of magnitude" in performance. With the fglrx driver, kde+compiz would spin the cube like a top, without the fglrx driver, you could watch paint dry waiting for the cube to appear.
If that is the issue, then the stock radeon (or radeonHD) will be your only option -- as well as the performance that comes with it. Search the archives here and on the factory list for 'fglrx' and you will find a dissertation on the Xorg versions as well as the date/time and models affected.
I have a couple of laptops in that category with ATI Mobility chipsets:
01:05.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc RV350 [Mobility Radeon 9600 M10]
The stock radeon driver gives decent performance, it is just a hell of a lot slower than with fglrx.
As an alternate point of information, my older radeon X1400 (aka rv505) is supported by the community redeon driver as is the Mobility 7000 (ala rs250). I'm using the Xorg packages from http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/X11:/XOrg/openSUSE_12.3/ There are equivelent directories for 13.1, etc. It provides Xorg 7.6, as well a updated community drivers for ATI. This version supports the desktop cube switching mode very well without FGLRX. But I don't run compiz version of that. Wobbly windows also works. In fact I can run with most of the bling turned on without problems. So if you are running the stock xorg for your distro, you might want to try adding the above repository and setting vendor change on for that. -- Explain again the part about rm -rf / -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org
On Sun, Jan 12, 2014 at 4:26 AM, David C. Rankin
As I mentioned in my quick reply to your last thread. I suspect the issue is due to the fglrx driver no longer being available for your card. It was in the 11.1 timeframe IIRC in the move from Xorg 7.2 to 7.3 where ATI dropped support for all 1600 (1800?) and earlier graphics cards. If you check on your 11.1 install (if you still have it available) I suspect your will find that your were using the proprietary ATI driver: The stock radeon driver gives decent performance, it is just a hell of a lot slower than with fglrx.
Well, it seems that my 11.1 install is using the radeon driver. It has KDE 3.5.9 installed. The 12.3 install has TDE 3.5.12 installed. The only difference between the 2 installs is that on the 12.3 install the /home directory is encrypted. The 11.1 install won't decrypt the 12.3's /home directory so I can't check to see if that is part of the problem. After playing with the 11.1 install I can tell that it is somewhat faster, and scrolling in Firefox is smoother but still not fluid. I've tried disabling kms but that didn't help either. Oh well. Other than installing XP to see if its any better I guess I'm stuck with it. Thanx -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org
Larry Stotler wrote:
I've done a great deal of searching & I can't seem to find a useful solution.
I finally got around to getting my old 11.1 install running on my Thinkpad A30p with Radeon Mobility 7000. With 12.3, The video performance is slow, and I can't get MPlayer to play a video at all. With 11.1, I can play an x264 480p video with no problem. The laptop has a Tualatin P3/1.2Ghz & 1GB RAM.
I've found all kinds of suggestions, like turning off KMS or creating an xorg.conf file and changing accelmethod from EXA to XXA. Turning off DRI made no differnce.
Nothing works. There seems to be a similar regression with uBuntu from 8.10 to 9.04 as well.
I tried to copy the xorg.conf from 11.1 to 12.3 but it fails to load.
Has anyone managed to get this video chip working properly with newer versions of oS?
<and then>
Well, it seems that my 11.1 install is using the radeon driver. It has KDE 3.5.9 installed. The 12.3 install has TDE 3.5.12 installed. The only difference between the 2 installs is that on the 12.3 install the /home directory is encrypted. The 11.1 install won't decrypt the 12.3's /home directory so I can't check to see if that is part of the problem. After playing with the 11.1 install I can tell that it is somewhat faster, and scrolling in Firefox is smoother but still not fluid.
I've tried disabling kms but that didn't help either. Oh well. Other than installing XP to see if its any better I guess I'm stuck with it.
Thanx
Maybe not quite the same as your problem, but a lot of what you originally wrote sounds all too familiar to me and there might be a connection given the timeframe... I had a Mobility Radeon 9700 card on my old laptop, which is based off the desktop 9600 card that I also had installed on another machine. I installed every version of SUSE / openSUSE on these machines from the 9.x series onwards. In both cases, I could never get the ATI FGLRX driver to install (or even if apparently installed, to work), and then support was dropped for this generation of card anyway. In the old days, it wasn't important because the system functioned fine in 2D with whatever driver was default (software rendering? I've no idea now), with videos playing no problem and resource demands not high. Just no good for gaming or any rare 3D-centric apps Linux users of the time might have used (e.g. Google Earth). It was only around the start of the 11.x series that the free radeon driver started to become a bit capable, but there were a few glitches and strange things going on, and 3D wasn't really ready or working. At the point where KMS was introduced in the 11.x series, it all went tits up on both machines, I suffered constant freezes and other graphical issues using the radeon drivers and over the course of about 3 or 4 YEARS I tried everything I and others could think of, including what you list above. I sought help on forums, mailing lists, and contributed to existing bug reports as well as filing new ones, but got nowhere. On openSUSE Bugzilla, some reports still remain unanswered years on. If I didn't supply a bucket load of info or logs, the only responses would be 'can't help if you don't provide this or that', and if I did provide these things there would simply be silence. I knew this wasn't a faulty card since I could reproduce the same issues on an otherwise unrelated desktop and laptop, and I'd read occasional similar reports from others which never ultimately threw up any solutions. The AGP Radeon card I'd paid good money for and installed in the desktop was never really put to good use since it was effectively reduced to 2D only, but I was at least able to replace it years later, whereas on a laptop you're screwed. The only thing that kept the laptop usable over several years was putting a line in the 50-device.conf file as follows: Option "NoAccel" "true" ...which forces the card to avoid exploring the 3rd dimension, and made my laptop pretty hopeless for watching video or doing anything more than basic tasks. With each openSUSE release becoming more and more demanding resource-wise, by 12.3 it had become unusable without full radeon functionality and I had to finally abandon it. So depending what you need this machine for, if you can put up with an old 11.1 installation and run the security risks (especially if it's offline) I'd just stick with that. If you were hoping to install new versions of software on it I reckon your luck's out. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org
On 01/13/2014 04:45 PM, Larry Stotler wrote:
Well, it seems that my 11.1 install is using the radeon driver. It has KDE 3.5.9 installed. The 12.3 install has TDE 3.5.12 installed. The only difference between the 2 installs is that on the 12.3 install the /home directory is encrypted. The 11.1 install won't decrypt the 12.3's /home directory so I can't check to see if that is part of the problem. After playing with the 11.1 install I can tell that it is somewhat faster, and scrolling in Firefox is smoother but still not fluid.
I've tried disabling kms but that didn't help either. Oh well. Other than installing XP to see if its any better I guess I'm stuck with it.
I think you have narrowed down the issue to the encrypted home on 12.3. It isn't kde3. I've run every version of kde3 from SuSE 10 - present TDE (trinity) and it is just as fast and responsive today as it has been in the past (even better without the old bugs). I have never encrypted /home, but I can only imagine that would add overhead to IO, especially with regard to the kde system config cache. It may have trouble with incremental updates/refreshes with an encrypted home. You could try a clean rebuild of the cache (as is done when kde3 is updated) and see if that doesn't help with speed issues. In konsole/xterm just issue: $ kbuildsycoca --noincremental Give it 30-60 seconds and it will have built a clean configuration cache for kde3 instead of appending incremental updates as you change things. This can have a dramatic effect on performance. As for Firefox/Thunderbird, they have not worked smoothly since mozilla joined the version race and we rocketed from as stable/smooth ver. 3.6 to what? Version 26 now? On all my boxes, the mozilla apps are poor performers with scrolling pauses, typing 15 characters into an email that shows nothing for seconds then suddenly just appears, etc.... Don't get me wrong, I understand the enormous amount of new capability that has gone into the packages, but since I use virtually none of it, all I see is the sluggish response while it does all the neat stuff I don't need.... :p -- David C. Rankin, J.D.,P.E. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org
On 2014-01-07 22:48 (GMT-0500) Larry Stotler composed:
I've done a great deal of searching & I can't seem to find a useful solution.
I finally got around to getting my old 11.1 install running on my Thinkpad A30p with Radeon Mobility 7000. With 12.3, The video performance is slow, and I can't get MPlayer to play a video at all. With 11.1, I can play an x264 480p video with no problem. The laptop has a Tualatin P3/1.2Ghz & 1GB RAM.
I've found all kinds of suggestions, like turning off KMS or creating an xorg.conf file and changing accelmethod from EXA to XXA. Turning off DRI made no differnce.
Nothing works. There seems to be a similar regression with uBuntu from 8.10 to 9.04 as well.
I tried to copy the xorg.conf from 11.1 to 12.3 but it fails to load.
Understandable. SaX2 configured video for 11.1. SaX2 didn't exist in 12.3. Automagic is supposed to do 12.3 for most hardware and users. Everything in it unrelated to video would need to be deleted for an 11.1 file to have a decent chance of being useful in 12.3. What does Xorg.0.conf look like when X has been run without any configuration done via /etc/X11/xorg.conf*? Is it actually using the radeon driver, or rather vesa or fbdev (aka SLOW)?
Has anyone managed to get this video chip working properly with newer versions of oS?
No, but... I have Radeon 7500 in 2 systems, and Radeon 9000 in one, all with moderately to significantly faster CPUs than yours, one with all openSUSE versions 10.0-up, the others with at least 11.4 all the way up through 13.2. I'm not very demanding of video except on any that are actually recommended as suitable for h.264 MPEG4 HDTV playback and editing. For all I have manually disabled compositing via /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/50-extensions.conf thus: Section "Extensions" Option "Composite" "Disable" EndSection All three use the automagically selected (radeon) driver. I can't recall any noticeable variation in, or lack of, acceptable speed according to which OS is booted, but as these are test systems, they do not get a lot of use in general, and even less trying to play video. My oldest, slowest system, a 600MHz Dell laptop with r128 video (last generation ATI before Radeon 7000 introduction), seems to have retired itself via expired CMOS battery since 12.3 was installed on it last February. I remember its 1400x1050 video was at least tolerable considering the lack of CPU speed and only 384MB RAM. -- "The wise are known for their understanding, and pleasant words are persuasive." Proverbs 16:21 (New Living Translation) Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 ** a11y rocks! Felix Miata *** http://fm.no-ip.com/ -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org
participants (5)
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David C. Rankin -
Felix Miata -
John Andersen -
Larry Stotler -
Peter