nomodeset needed for radeon 7000

Bug #1075296 reported by hpkeck
6
This bug affects 1 person
Affects Status Importance Assigned to Milestone
linux (Ubuntu)
Incomplete
Medium
Unassigned

Bug Description

I recenty started to migrate from Lucid (10.04) to Precise (12.04). Unfortunately, I have noticed that the video rendering performance has decreased with Precise. Videos with a resolution of about 720x576 that are played smoothly on Lucid are either flickering or shortly hanging in-between while played on Precise (the standard video player tends more to flickering, in vlc I get hangs).
I should mention that I have a quite old graphics card, it is identified by the X server as
    Chipset: "ATI Radeon VE/7000 QY (AGP/PCI)" (ChipID = 0x5159)

After experimenting around quite a while I found out that I get back the old performance if I boot with "nomodeset", so I guess there's a bug in kernel modesetting.

BTW, the output of "uname -a" is
    Linux faramir 3.2.0-32-generic-pae #51-Ubuntu SMP Wed Sep 26 21:54:23 UTC 2012 i686 athlon i386 GNU/Linux

---
AlsaVersion: Advanced Linux Sound Architecture Driver Version 1.0.24.
ApportVersion: 2.0.1-0ubuntu14
Architecture: i386
AudioDevicesInUse:
 USER PID ACCESS COMMAND
 /dev/snd/controlC0: piet 2050 F.... pulseaudio
CRDA: Error: command ['iw', 'reg', 'get'] failed with exit code 1: nl80211 not found.
Card0.Amixer.info:
 Card hw:0 'V8237'/'VIA 8237 with ALC850 at 0xe800, irq 22'
   Mixer name : 'Realtek ALC850 rev 0'
   Components : 'AC97a:414c4790'
   Controls : 49
   Simple ctrls : 30
Card2.Amixer.info:
 Card hw:2 'UART'/'MPU-401 UART at 0x300, irq 10'
   Mixer name : ''
   Components : ''
   Controls : 0
   Simple ctrls : 0
Card2.Amixer.values:

DistroRelease: Ubuntu 12.04
HibernationDevice: RESUME=UUID=f8b00408-9845-97bf-7c8b-0408a45ef8b7
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 12.04 LTS "Precise Pangolin" - Beta i386 (20120328)
IwConfig:
 lo no wireless extensions.

 eth1 no wireless extensions.

 eth0 no wireless extensions.
MachineType: System manufacturer System Product Name
Package: linux (not installed)
ProcEnviron:
 TERM=xterm
 PATH=(custom, no user)
 LANG=de_DE.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
ProcFB:

ProcKernelCmdLine: BOOT_IMAGE=/boot/vmlinuz-3.2.0-32-generic-pae root=UUID=b90b85f9-e205-4221-97b3-a64bbbd735a1 ro nomodeset
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.2.0-32.51-generic-pae 3.2.30
RelatedPackageVersions:
 linux-restricted-modules-3.2.0-32-generic-pae N/A
 linux-backports-modules-3.2.0-32-generic-pae N/A
 linux-firmware 1.79.1
RfKill:

Tags: precise
Uname: Linux 3.2.0-32-generic-pae i686
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)
UserGroups: adm cdrom dip lpadmin plugdev sambashare sudo
WifiSyslog:

dmi.bios.date: 11/03/2005
dmi.bios.vendor: American Megatrends Inc.
dmi.bios.version: 0219
dmi.board.name: A8V
dmi.board.vendor: ASUSTeK Computer Inc.
dmi.board.version: Rev 1.xx
dmi.chassis.asset.tag: Asset-1234567890
dmi.chassis.type: 3
dmi.chassis.vendor: Chassis Manufacture
dmi.chassis.version: Chassis Version
dmi.modalias: dmi:bvnAmericanMegatrendsInc.:bvr0219:bd11/03/2005:svnSystemmanufacturer:pnSystemProductName:pvrSystemVersion:rvnASUSTeKComputerInc.:rnA8V:rvrRev1.xx:cvnChassisManufacture:ct3:cvrChassisVersion:
dmi.product.name: System Product Name
dmi.product.version: System Version
dmi.sys.vendor: System manufacturer

Revision history for this message
hpkeck (navaj072-info) wrote :

moved to linux kernel package, which contains the modesetting

affects: xserver-xorg-video-ati (Ubuntu) → linux (Ubuntu)
tags: added: apport-collected precise
description: updated
Revision history for this message
hpkeck (navaj072-info) wrote : AcpiTables.txt

apport information

Revision history for this message
hpkeck (navaj072-info) wrote : AlsaDevices.txt

apport information

Revision history for this message
hpkeck (navaj072-info) wrote : AplayDevices.txt

apport information

Revision history for this message
hpkeck (navaj072-info) wrote : ArecordDevices.txt

apport information

Revision history for this message
hpkeck (navaj072-info) wrote : BootDmesg.txt

apport information

Revision history for this message
hpkeck (navaj072-info) wrote : Card0.Amixer.values.txt

apport information

Revision history for this message
hpkeck (navaj072-info) wrote : Card0.Codecs.codec97.0.ac97.0.0.txt

apport information

Revision history for this message
hpkeck (navaj072-info) wrote : Card0.Codecs.codec97.0.ac97.0.0.regs.txt

apport information

Revision history for this message
hpkeck (navaj072-info) wrote : CurrentDmesg.txt

apport information

Revision history for this message
hpkeck (navaj072-info) wrote : Lspci.txt

apport information

Revision history for this message
hpkeck (navaj072-info) wrote : Lsusb.txt

apport information

Revision history for this message
hpkeck (navaj072-info) wrote : PciMultimedia.txt

apport information

Revision history for this message
hpkeck (navaj072-info) wrote : ProcCpuinfo.txt

apport information

Revision history for this message
hpkeck (navaj072-info) wrote : ProcInterrupts.txt

apport information

Revision history for this message
hpkeck (navaj072-info) wrote : ProcModules.txt

apport information

Revision history for this message
hpkeck (navaj072-info) wrote : PulseList.txt

apport information

Revision history for this message
hpkeck (navaj072-info) wrote : UdevDb.txt

apport information

Revision history for this message
hpkeck (navaj072-info) wrote : UdevLog.txt

apport information

Changed in linux (Ubuntu):
importance: Undecided → Medium
status: New → Incomplete
Revision history for this message
hpkeck (navaj072-info) wrote :

I analysed this problem further and found out that all videos are played using the Xvideo extension by default (on precise). This is different from lucid, where the Xvideo extension doesn't seem to be available (xvinfo reports that no driver was found).
If I force the video player to use the x11 driver (e.g. mplayer -vo x11 ...) I get a better performance (on precise). BTW, the bug seems to exist in Debian as well, because this description is quite similar to what I am experiencing: http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=672972

What I do not understand so far:
1. Why does it help to boot with "nomodeset"? Somehow the kernel modesetting seems to be involved.
2. Should Xvideo be enabled? Because it wasn't on lucid, but it seems that it has been enabled earlier (see http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/9305/xvideo-extension-not-active-with-the-radeon-driver). Which component is responsible for enabling it? It doesn't seem to be the Xorg radeon driver, because if I use an old version that is similar to the one used in lucid (I compiled 6.13.1 myself), Xvideo is still enabled on precise.

I will continue investigating...

Revision history for this message
hpkeck (navaj072-info) wrote :

BTW, I briefly tested this on oneiric and it's the same situation there, so it's not really a new problem...

Revision history for this message
hpkeck (navaj072-info) wrote :

I tested this with Fedora 17 to check if it is Ubuntu-specific but it isn't - Fedora behaves similar.
So I filed a bug report with freedesktop.org:
https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=57027

To post a comment you must log in.
This report contains Public information  
Everyone can see this information.

Other bug subscribers

Related questions

Remote bug watches

Bug watches keep track of this bug in other bug trackers.