Flickering in graphics-heavy applications

[Duncan]

Dotan Cohen posted on Thu, 01 Apr 2010 02:43:31 +0300 as excerpted:

>> Which ATI card?
>>
>>
> ATI Radeon Mobility X1400
> 
> 
>> The older r300-r500 drivers (generally the xXXXX series cards, with a
>> few exceptions at either end) are somewhat better, but of course, the
>> hardware is generally weaker, too.  That'd probably depend on the
>> resolution you're running stuff.
> 
> I'm running at 1680*1050 with the FOSS drivers. Note that Compiz / Kwin
> effects run smooth as silk.

OK, the radeon manpage says that's the rv505/rv515/rv516/rv550, so 
definitely the r300 (thru r5xx) driver.

That one's somewhat more mature than the r600 (thru r7xx) driver.  You've 
had OpenGL support for some time.  1680*1050's likely fine, but you might 
have issues running double that (dual monitor like my 1920x1200 stacked 
for 1920x2400).  I don't know the real detail on that driver tho, as I 
rather skipped that level of hardware.

AFAIK, that driver got KMS the kernel before the r600/700 driver did, so I 
think you should be able to get it with kernel 2.6.31, tho the kms-by-
default option was in the kernel staging drivers area until 2.6.33.  With 
2.6.33 it's in the main driver options, now.  Certainly for the r600/700 
driver, 2.6.33 is HIGHLY preferred.  I don't believe it makes as much 
difference for the r300-500 driver.

Also, while Nikos is absolutely correct about wanting kms and the absolute 
newest stuff (even not-yet-released) for the r600/r700 driver, I'm not 
sure it's such a big deal with the older r300-500 driver, tho if you do 
any outside-X work at all, you'll almost certainly want KMS once you see 
how nice it is.  But I do think the OpenGL support is actually better with 
KMS off on the older hardware/driver, at least until kernel 2.6.33 and the 
upcoming mesa and radeon driver releases to match it, at which point kms 
will be preferred.

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman

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