Gentoo Archives: gentoo-amd64

From: Duncan <1i5t5.duncan@×××.net>
To: gentoo-amd64@l.g.o
Subject: [gentoo-amd64] New video card, finally!
Date: Thu, 10 Dec 2009 02:00:34
Message-Id: pan.2009.12.10.01.31.32@cox.net
1 As regulars are aware, I /was/ running an old Radeon 92xx series card,
2 r200 series chip. My system was /relatively/ good, even if it's half a
3 decade old now, because it's a dual socket Opteron, which I had upgraded
4 to top-of-the-line dual-core Opteron 290s (2.8 GHz), with plenty of
5 memory (8 gigs, tho it's now six as a stick went bad on me and I've not
6 replaced it yet), and running four SATA drives in md/kernel RAID.
7
8 Well, a few weeks ago I switched the system partitions from RAID-6 to
9 RAID-1. In many tasks the RAID-1 is actually faster than the RAID-6 was,
10 tho part of that might be that the new partitions aren't fragmented,
11 yet. While I was at it, I rid myself of the LVM2 layer I was running
12 most of the non-rootfs system on. No real issues with it here, but it
13 was a bit of a hassle since I couldn't put the rootfs on it directly, and
14 I have seen some horror stories I didn't like, tho whether they're
15 accurate on the current LVM2 I don't know. But anyway, I decided that
16 layer was more hassle than it was worth, and experience with the new
17 layout so far says I was right.
18
19 But that just lays the groundwork for the REAL upgrade. I FINALLY got
20 the video card upgrade that I'd been needing for awhile, thus bringing it
21 more inline with the rest of the system. It's a Radeon hd4650, rv730
22 chip, gig video RAM (tho I have a feeling I'm not using anything near
23 that), dual DVI output (I'm not sure if both are dual-link tho, might be
24 one dual-link and one single-link), AGP bus as that's what my system is
25 -- five years old, remember, I have PCI-X but not PCI-E.
26
27 Of course, the xorg native xf86-video-ati driver (and xf86-video-
28 radeonhd, tho that seems to be falling behind now, unless you have HDMI
29 you want to support or something) only have 2D for anything r600 or newer
30 in their released drivers, thru the 6.12 series (with 6.12.4 being the
31 latest, and a possible 6.12.5 coming up). There's not even a beta
32 tarball out for the 6.13 series yet, so if one wants OpenGL support,
33 really the whole point to the upgrade, one has to run the "live" driver,
34 straight from git or available in the x11 overlay as the traditional live
35 version 9999.
36
37 So that's what I grabbed. I already had the latest non-live xorg
38 components installed from the tree and x11 overlay, so I was fortunate
39 and didn't need any further live packages, only xf86-video-ati-9999.
40
41 Meanwhile, I basically gave up on the kernel bug I was git-bisecting, as
42 I couldn't duplicate it on the (then still unaccelerated) new radeon
43 hardware, tho I saved a bisect-log in case it comes back with the new
44 hardware after I enable acceleration, git-pulled, did a git-checkout of
45 v2.6.32 (Linus git tree), did the usual oldconfig, then a menuconfig and
46 changed my config around a bit, enabling KMS, etc.
47
48 Did a reboot into the new kernel and played around at the radeondrmfb
49 enhanced CLI for awhile, tweaking a couple things there, then started X/
50 kde4 and started tweaking things for the new hardware, there.
51
52 After editing xorg.conf and restarting X a few times, playing with
53 glxgears, etc, I started trying out the newly available kde4 OpenGL eye
54 candy options. =:^) As I run dual 22" 1920x1200 LCDs, stacked for
55 1920x2400, and the old card couldn't handle OpenGL at resolutions above
56 2048 either direction, I hadn't had the OpenGL effects available to play
57 with on the old card. What a change the new card made! =:^)
58
59 So now I'm running kde 4.3.4 with OpenGL effects. It's nice. I've
60 actually had the "snow on the desktop" effect turned on as I worked, for
61 several hours now, tweaked a bit to add more "flakes" but reduce the size
62 to make them a bit more realistic, and with the "behind windows" option
63 turned off, so they float in front of the windows. Much like watching
64 real snow fall outside the window while you're nice and warm inside, it's
65 quite a calming effect.
66
67 OTOH, there's still enough glitches to see why it's not released yet, and
68 I did have one crash. Also, font anti-aliasing /really/ looks bad now,
69 it's /gotta/ be a bug somewhere I'm sure, so I turned off font anti-
70 aliasing entirely. MUCH better! With that, it's working well enough to
71 be usable if a few visual glitches, mostly background repaints turning
72 bits of the plasma panels and desktop weird colors at times, which goes
73 away with desktop switches, etc, but also a semi-regular flashing of bits
74 of one particular corner of the desktop, and artifacts appearing on
75 scrollbars and the like occasionally. But it's good enough I've no
76 intention of going back, even if the driver code is unoptimized at
77 present and the snow makes new launches rather less than responsive! But
78 I can always turn the snow bit off, if I want, and have a reasonably
79 responsive system with the other effects still.
80
81 So now I suppose I'm experiencing kde4 as it was meant to be seen, fully
82 accelerated opengl effects, cube desktop switching, snow on the desktop,
83 wobbly windows (which unlike many, I think I'll keep tho I turned down
84 the effect power a notch, and can turn it down another if I want), cover-
85 switch for alt-tabbing, etc. Very nice, even with the glitches. It'll
86 be even nicer when the radeon r600 opengl driver and kernel KMS matures a
87 bit. Unfortunately, even in 4.3.4, kde4 itself is still buggy enough I'd
88 consider it beta, tho late beta now. The first kde 4.4 beta is out now,
89 and since 4.3 still feels like beta anyway, I'll probably upgrade before
90 the scheduled February release date, tho it'll probably be beta2 or rc1
91 before I get to it. I expect kde 4.4 to be what I'd call release
92 candidate quality, the critical bugs gone and no show-stoppers, but still
93 not quite there, and 4.5, in August, to finally hit what I'd call good
94 release quality suitable for an ordinary user. After that, it'll all be
95 frosting on the cake, especially now that I have a decent video card and
96 can enjoy it as it was designed to be enjoyed. =:^)
97
98 --
99 Duncan - List replies preferred. No HTML msgs.
100 "Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
101 and if you use the program, he is your master." Richard Stallman

Replies

Subject Author
Re: [gentoo-amd64] New video card, finally! Barry Schwartz <chemoelectric@×××××××××××××.org>
Re: [gentoo-amd64] New video card, finally! Wil Reichert <wil.reichert@×××××.com>
KMS can't find firmware (Was: Re: [gentoo-amd64] New video card, finally!) "Sebastian Beßler" <sebastian@××××××××××××.de>
KMS can't find firmware (Was: Re: [gentoo-amd64] New video card, finally!) "Sebastian Beßler" <sebastian.bessler@××××××××××××××.de>