Visual effects on Radeon X300 RV370 5B60

[Gavin Hamill]

PCI ID 1002:5b60 using Free 'ati' driver as the default Gutsy install leaves it. This is a really basic entry-level gfx card that came free with my one-year-old Dell Dimension PC. Nothing special at all.

With Visual Effects set to 'Normal' I see really bad artefacts. Nearly impossible to describe, so here's a video.

http://bum.net/pics/screencast.ogg

With the fglrx non-free driver enabled, I have no effects at all due to Composite extension not being supported.

[Gavin Hamill (gdh)]

FWIW, this still happens with Hardy daily live-cd as of 14-Apr. No doubt far too late for any fix, but there you go.

[Leann Ogasawara (leannogasawara)]

Hi Gavin,

Sorry for the delayed response here. Is this still an issue with the latest 2.6.24-19 kernel for Hardy? The upcoming Intrepid Ibex 8.10 release is actually under development at the moment. Would you also care to confirm this is still an issue with the latest Alpha for the upcoming Intrepid Ibex 8.10. You should be able to test via a LiveCD - http://www.ubuntu.com/testing. Please let us know your results. If the issue still exists, per the kernel team's bug policy could you attach the following:

* cat /proc/version_signature > version.log
* dmesg > dmesg.log
* sudo lspci -vvnn > lspci-vvnn.log

For more information regarding the kernel team bug policy, please refer to https://wiki.ubuntu.com/KernelTeamBugPolicies . Thanks again and we appreciate your help and feedback.

[Gavin Hamill (gdh)]

Yes, still broken in hardy.

More importantly, it's still broken in intrepid. I didn't need to do any investigative work whatsoever... have a look at the screenshots. The first is what I saw as soon as the live CD finished loading!

[Gavin Hamill (gdh)]

After moving windows around a little...

[Gavin Hamill (gdh)]

FWIW, my 19" TFT (1280x1024) monitor connected via DVI showed 'cannot display this mode' between the ISOLINUX menu and Xorg appearing. I've included Xorg.0.log for good measure.

[Leann Ogasawara (leannogasawara)]

Thanks for testing and the feedback Gavin. One more question - I'm curious if you'd be able to disable visual affects all together when testing. You mentioned "With the fglrx non-free driver enabled, I have no effects at all due to Composite extension not being supported." . I'd like to narrow down if this is really an issue with the driver in the kernel or rather with compiz. When looking at the debugging compiz page - https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DebuggingCompiz I saw a reference to a known bug - https://bugs.edge.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/xorg-server/+bug/96991 which I'm wondering is related or evena duplicate as that bug reporter comments having Radeon hw as well. Thanks.

[Gavin Hamill (gdh)]

With the X300 and all effects turned off, the system is perfectly stable and sensible.

The comment about fglrx was made at a time when the ATI-provided driver did not support the X Composite extension. I believe this has now changed, although I have not tested it.

Thesedays I actually use an NVidia card, and have no problems at all with full compiz support. I only keep the ATI X300 around to support this bug :)

I've looked at 96991 but I don't really understand what's going on there, I'm afraid.

[Oibaf (oibaf)]

Can you try the latest intrepid LiveCD with the default free ati driver:
http://www.ubuntu.com/testing

This problem should be fixed now.

[Gavin Hamill (gdh)]

I tried Intrepid Alpha 5 a few days ago to re-test another bug with the X300 card, and I noticed that the desktop appeared by default with compiz disabled.

In this respect, yes the problem is fixed, however if I enable Compiz (even in 'Normal' mode) then the same corruption / artefacts immediately return.

IMO, the problem is not 'fixed' until either the upstream driver is correctly working with compiz, or compiz is made completely unavailable for this card.

Having an option that simply doesn't work is surely not the air of professionalism that Ubuntu needs.

[Oibaf (oibaf)]

Compiz was disabled due to other bugs.

Can you try it again adding in the Device section of your /etc/X11/xorg.conf
Option "AccelMethod" "EXA"

[Gavin Hamill (gdh)]

OK have been able to try this again

Deleting the xorg.conf (I normally have an nvidia card) and booting the computer caused no desktop effects to be enabled. If I try to launch 'glxinfo' I get a segfault. 'glxgears' just tells me

Xlib: extension "GLX" missing on display ":0.0".
Error: couldn't get an RGB, Double-buffered visual

I get exactly the same when I add Option "AccelMethod" "EXA" to the (almost empty) xorg.conf.

Pertinent snippets from Xorg.log :

(**) RADEON(0): Using EXA acceleration architecture
(II) Loading sub module "exa"
(II) LoadModule: "exa"
(==) RADEON(0): Not using accelerated EXA DownloadFromScreen hook
(II) RADEON(0): Render acceleration enabled for R300/R400/R500 type cards.
(II) RADEON(0): Setting EXA maxPitchBytes
(II) RADEON(0): num quad-pipes is 1
(II) EXA(0): Offscreen pixmap area of 25841664 bytes
(II) EXA(0): Driver registered support for the following operations:
(II) Solid
(II) Copy
(II) Composite (RENDER acceleration)
(II) UploadToScreen
(II) DownloadFromScreen

I can confirm that previousl the Xorg.log spoke only of XAA

Intrepid with all current updates applied:

ii xserver-xorg-video-ati 1:6.9.0+git20081003.f9826a56-0ubuntu2
ii xserver-xorg-video-radeon 1:6.9.0+git20081003.f9826a56-0ubuntu2

[Gavin Hamill (gdh)]

OK the segfaults were the nvidia binary module causing conflicts. I have uninstalled nvidia-glx-177, and the default libglx.so from xserver-xorg-core has priority.

XAA: The same wild redraw problems, with the addition that the desktop locks up within seconds. Mouse moves, but nothing is clickable, CTRL-ALT-F1 does not work, CTRL-ALT-BACKSPACE does not work.

EXA: Compiz works really well! Windows can be dragged / resized without problem / graphical artefacts. HOWEVER: Any attempt to play video in totem-gstreamer will cause X to bomb out within 5 seconds. X reloads and shows the GDM login screen. After this has happened for the first time, it is not possible to use CTRL-ALT-F1 - the screen changes but shows a corrupted 'screenshot' of the X screen rather than the black virtual terminal.

With compiz switched off in EXA mode, videos play perfectly and the system is stable.

So, still no further forward in terms of a stable, usable compiz desktop on this hardware.

[Gavin Hamill (gdh)]

OK just an addendum for the moment. It appears to be any Xv video which will cause an X crash with EXA; I tried playing a couple of different video types (ogg + avi) on Totem, VLC and mplayer, and all crashed.

Oddly, all sizes of video (even 'HD') from YouTube plays perfectly...

[Oibaf (oibaf)]

Which Ubuntu version are you using?

If at least 8.10, could you try installing the updated xserver-xorg-video-radeon package from:
https://edge.launchpad.net/~tormodvolden/+archive

[Gavin Hamill (gdh)]

It's 8.10, yes.

In order to test things with this card, I have to clean out my xorg.conf, remove nvidia glx drivers and physically change the card in my machine. Is there anything else to try at the same time so I can make the procedure more worthwhile?

I'm happy to help out; I just want to be as efficient as possible :)

[Oibaf (oibaf)]

If you have the time, once you changed the card, you could also test the latest Jaunty Alpha LiveCD (shipping a newer X server) from:
http://www.ubuntu.com/testing
(or the latest LiveCD of currenty jaunty from:
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/daily-live/
)
also using the updated xserver-xorg-video-radeon driver from (install the new driver from the LiveCD and restart X):
https://edge.launchpad.net/~xorg-edgers/+archive

If still doesn't work, attach the Xorg log file (eventually from both 8.10 and jaunty)

Thanks!

[Oibaf (oibaf)]

Eventually you could also try the radeonhd driver (for jaunty: from https://edge.launchpad.net/~xorg-edgers/+archive , for 8.10: from https://edge.launchpad.net/~tormodvolden/+archive). Note, however, that with radeonhd you have to add
Option "DRI"
in your xorg.conf to enable Xv.

[mazerj (james-mazer)]

Was there every any resolution on this problem? I'm running a stock Intrepid installed
updated from the standard repos and I have exactly the same problems with my cheapo
radeon card from dell (lspci reports: RV370 [Radeon X300SE]). Everything's fine until
I enable compiz (normal or extra visual effects). There are some subtle problems as
well with GL/pygame apps, as well, but they seem closely related..
Thanks!

[Gavin Hamill (gdh)]

Kneejerk reaction, but try the Jaunty live CD.. final release is tomorrow - so grab the release candidate now before the internet stops ;)

Am unsubbing from this bug since I no longer have that machine or card.

[Robert Ancell (robert-ancell)]

Thanks for your bug report. The symptoms provided indicate this is a problem with your video drivers and is being reassigned to the xorg package. For more information on problems with visual effects and video drivers see http://wiki.ubuntu.com/VisualEffects.

[Bryce Harrington (bryce)]

Since the original reporter no longer has the hardware for doing the testing, I'm closing the bug out at this point. I understand other people are having similar issues however the length of this report and the inconsistency of information provided makes it difficult to troubleshoot. I'd ask that anyone still having this problem and able to reproduce it on Karmic please file a new bug report using `ubuntu-bug xorg`, and that will make it simpler to investigate.