• Registered: 2011-06-16
  • Posts: 2

Topic: Proprietary ATI driver 2D performance

Hi,
Issues:
2D performance using the proprietary ATI driver is poor. Moving windows looks "juddery" max/minimising looks dreadful, etc.

What I have done:
Fresh install
dist-upgrade
install 11.6 ATI driver from AMD

What happens:
Everything works great apart from performance.

Why:
The default driver does not support power saving modes. I also know that there is a setting to effectively disable the graphics card rendering the 2D grahpics, but that kind of defeats the point of having a graphics card!

Setup:
Kernel: Default 2.6.32-5_amd64
Graphics: HD4710 (HD4xxx series)

Any ideas?
Thanks,
Phil

p.s. If anyone is struggling to boot with the default drivers with this card, I had to add the option "radeon.powersave=0" to the boot configuration. "nomodeset" usually works fine, but in this instance it didn't.

  • Registered: 2011-01-10
  • Posts: 45

Re: Proprietary ATI driver 2D performance

Try out different ATI drivers versions using this script:
http://smxi.org/site/about.htm#sgfxi
You'll find selection of free and proprietary driver options, could be one of them will play nicer on your pc.
  Maybe I got lucky, but  fglrx drivers work perfectly with ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4250 and Xfce, both with .32 and .38 backport with this ATI laptop:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Sony-EF3E1E-not … B00462RU5G

  • Registered: 2011-06-16
  • Posts: 2

Re: Proprietary ATI driver 2D performance

rizzeh,
What an amazing tool!
I used this to install the fglrx-current version of the drivers (as the debian version said that my X version was not compatible). I expected similar problems, but no! Performance is blinding!
I'll be sure to use this from now on.

Many thanks,
Phil

p.s. I had to manually "sudo apt-get install linux-headers-2.6.32-5-amd64" as the tool couldn't find them. Other than that, perfect.