Problem in Wheezy with ATI Mobility Radeon HD

[chersanya]

I have a laptop with ATI Mobility Radeon 5650 HD graphic card and want to get it working both with video acceleration and OpenCL. Page http://wiki.debian.org/ATIProprietary doesn't contain much useful information about Wheezy, just a piece of advice to try AMD driver. So I've downloaded the latest version 12.10 from http://support.amd.com/us/gpudownload/l ... linux.aspx and installed it. After a reboot the X server didn't work until I removed xorg.conf created with the installer. The corresponding Xorg.log: http://pastebin.com/Wq7Wft2H. So, the question is - how to get all it working?

[gradinaruvasile]

Installng the AMD driver:

1. Download and run the package with root rights, select full install.
2. issue the following command (root again):

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aticonfig --initial


3. reboot.

NOTE: for (1) you need the kernel headers and development packages (the may be already installed):

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sudo aptitude install linux-headers-`uname -r`
sudo aptitude install build-essential


[chersanya]

I've done exactly the same thing.

[gradinaruvasile]

You seem to have a dual gpu intel+amd system. These dont work well under Linux if both adapters are enabled at the same time.
See if you have a BIOS switch to turn off the Intel card and force the usage of the AMD.
Although this

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[  3309.775] (EE) this is a Muxless PX A+I platform, we doesn't supported it


doesnt sound promising.

Some more here:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1930450&page=3

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[  3309.774] (--) Chipset Supported AMD Graphics Processor (0x68C1) found

[  3309.774] (WW) fglrx: No matching Device section for instance (BusID PCI:0@2:0:1) found

[  3309.774] (II) fglrx: intel VGA device detected, load intel driver.

[  3309.774] (II) LoadModule: "intel"

[  3309.774] (II) Loading /usr/lib/xorg/modules/drivers/intel_drv.so

[  3309.774] (II) Module intel: vendor="X.Org Foundation"

[  3309.775]    compiled for 1.12.3.902, module version = 2.19.0

[  3309.775]    Module class: X.Org Video Driver

[  3309.775]    ABI class: X.Org Video Driver, version 12.1

[  3309.775] (WW) PowerXpress feature is not supported on A+I Mux platform. Please uninstall fglrx driver.

[  3309.775] (EE) this is a Muxless PX A+I platform, we doesn't supported it

[  3309.775] (EE) No devices detected.

[  3309.775]

Fatal server error:

[  3309.775] no screens found


[chersanya]

Thanks for the advice to set "Discrete only" in BIOS settings, now Xorg works And another good thing is that now the laptop works at least 4 hours on battery (before was only 1.5-2 in linux; still not as long as with Windows by the way).

[gradinaruvasile]

Thanks for the advice to set "Discrete only" in BIOS settings, now Xorg works And another good thing is that now the laptop works at least 4 hours on battery (before was only 1.5-2 in linux; still not as long as with Windows by the way).

Your laptop has 2 video cards - the intel is on for simple tasks and the amd kicks in if needed and in the rest is powered down - this saves some additional power since the intel card is integrated and uses less power. This however works like this only under windows.

Linux is another story - here you get the intel by default and no amd - the amd may or may not be powered fully or partially, the drivers cannot tell it to power/throttle down since they are not loaded and everything is up to the BIOS. To make matters worse, intels linux drivers lack power management for the intel card.
The proprietary AMD drivers do have working power management however.

[chersanya]

Yes, and there seems to be no way to turn off the power supply for the ATI card: its drivers work only when "Discrete only" is selected in BIOS, and then it's impossible to turn it of and use the integrated one.
However, the main problem with drivers is solved and I got OpenCL working too with no issues