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ATI's newest driver problems


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Hi there.

 

When using the ATI driver that was included in Mandriva, I had some annoying problems, the worst was that always when restarting the X server the system would hang, and nothing would happen until closing or rebooting via the power switch. That was very troublesome, because it meant that it hung always if I tried to log out, shut down or reboot using the graphical interface. So I decided to try the newest driver from the ATI website. My card is Sapphire Radeon X1950 Pro, and I use the 64-version of Mandriva 2007 Spring Free, so I downloaded the "ati-driver-installer-8.40.4-x86.x86_64". I used the command

chmod +x ati*

in Konsole, and run it with

sudo sh ati*

The installer sprung up, and all went well, and in the end it said that it will configure the card, and that I could do the advanced adjustments with the aticonfig-tool. That was fine with me, and I pressed Finish. Then I rebooted the machine. When I had rebooted, I was happy, because the logout screen worked again without hanging. Then I tried to put on the 3D-desktop environment (Don't remember Beryl or Compiz), and logged out and back in. No desktop effects there, only the Window Decorator (or what was it called) had crashed. So I removed the desktop effects. Log out and back in. Then I tried to launch Planet Penguin Racer to try if the 3D acceleration was enabled. The game closed immediately after it was launched. I tried the same with other games requiring 3D, and the all did the same. Then I thought if I'd needed to run XFdrake and configure it, and it asked me again if I wanted to use the proprietary drivers. I chose yes, and it showed me what changes will be done to xorg.conf. I accepted. Reboot. Tried Planet Penguin Racer again, and it did exactly the same.

I thought if the 3D acceleration was mysteriously disabled, and tried

glxinfo | grep rendering

The output was

direct rendering: Yes

Another curious fact is that Warcraft III: Frozen Throne runs fine with wine and the -opengl option.

 

So, does anybody have an idea of what is causing this?

Also, should I try the Mesa drivers, and if, how do I install them?

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Then I tried to put on the 3D-desktop environment (Don't remember Beryl or Compiz), and logged out and back in. No desktop effects there, only the Window Decorator (or what was it called) had crashed.

 

Sorry, you can not run 3D desktop with ATI proprietary drivers.

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True... the ATI prorprietary drivers currently have issues with the xorg version that is shipping with Mandriva.

The solution is either using the GPL xorg driver, or waiting for ATi issuing a fixed driver- whatever you prefer.

Personally I have chosen buying Nvidia cards-only, but this clearly isn't a pick for everyone...

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Sorry, you can not run 3D desktop with ATI proprietary drivers.
Uhh... yes you can. You just have to use XGL instead of AIGLX, which sucks, 'cause you can't shutdown without logging out first. Combined with the "log out to crash the X-server & the computer" bug this is a really great.

I re-installed the old drivers. In the process I noticed that LibMesaGl or something like that and Libwine required the old driver package. So, as games work with wine (using OpenGL) but Mesa using games do not (at least I think that Planet Penguin Racer = Tux racer use Mesa), I came to the conclusion that maybe installing a newer version of that mesa library would fix it... I guess I'll try, and edit the results here.

 

I'm also eager for the Mandriva 2008.0 to come out, as it seems it'll be using the avivo driver for r500 cards. I hope they'lle be able to implement 3D support to it by then. The site also said that X1900-series card users would be encouraged to test the beta... but I don't think I want to do that, as I'm truly not an expert with linux and will probably be helpless with an unstable release.

 

EDIT: More info: the games do not work with the old driver either! The don't crash but work slow as h*ll and have drawing issues.

And... "GPL xorg driver"is this the "ati" driver? Mystically, that driver doesn't work, it just throws a bunch of errors and shuts X down.

EDIT2: Help. Even wine doesn't work: it crashes and sends me back to the login screen.

Edited by anyone
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