Build ATI driver for current Kernel. Good idea?

Question

Hi,
I change to Arch after a long time in Ubuntu and Mint.
My video card is an APU (CPU+GPU): AMD C-50/HD 6290. It's works fine in Arch with VLC and run videos in HD, but sometimes, the screen is cuted. Is it a good idea to build a amd driver to my kernel?
My system is fully updated at the time.
Arch Linux 32x XFCE

Answer 1

I have a quite similar setup
$ lspci
00:01.0 VGA compatible controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] Wrestler [Radeon HD 6320]
(I have the E450 "APU")
and my video performance is awesome! The only difference is, that I use mpv for videos rather than vlc. You could give it a try for testing purposes. So install mpv, it's in the repos, and try this config (path is ~/.mpv/config)
vo=vdpau
ao=alsa
softvol=yes
alang = en,de
[vo.vdpau]
hwdec = auto
vf-clr=yes
Then just run
mpv /path/to/your/video/file
Works perfectly for me, no issues whatsoever.
So if the problems don't show with mpv, it looks like it's vlc's fault. If you run into the same problems, it might be caused by the video driver, the ffmpeg backend (both vlc and mpv use ffmpeg) or the video file itself. So do some experiments and hopefully you'll find out what's the culprit here.