[SOLVED] X11 + radeon hd 4650 = artifacts

Question

Fresh arch install on a laptop with radeon hd 4650.
Decided to try radeon hd driver first (haven't really read into which is best for which chipsets), installed it, ran 'Xorg -configure' and X starts just fine, but crashes (and flashes colours) when I try to quit it and all tty's are blank black screens.
Next try is with xf86-video-ati, no problems with getting out of X but there are some artifacts including:
- icons in Tint2's systray aren't displayed properly, not displayed at all or mismatched
- lxappearance is almost unreadable
- graphical text editors colour all lines black on startup, they remain this way until you do something, click on it, input text, scroll etc.
I'm using openbox, here is my xorg.conf
Section "ServerLayout"
Identifier "X.org Configured"
Screen 0 "Screen0" 0 0
InputDevice "Mouse0" "CorePointer"
InputDevice "Keyboard0" "CoreKeyboard"
EndSection
Section "Files"
ModulePath "/usr/lib/xorg/modules"
FontPath "/usr/share/fonts/misc"
FontPath "/usr/share/fonts/100dpi:unscaled"
FontPath "/usr/share/fonts/75dpi:unscaled"
FontPath "/usr/share/fonts/TTF"
FontPath "/usr/share/fonts/Type1"
EndSection
Section "Module"
Load "extmod"
Load "dri2"
Load "record"
Load "glx"
Load "dri"
Load "dbe"
Load "drm"
EndSection
Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Keyboard0"
Driver "kbd"
EndSection
Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Mouse0"
Driver "mouse"
Option "Protocol" "auto"
Option "Device" "/dev/input/mice"
Option "ZAxisMapping" "4 5 6 7"
EndSection
Section "Monitor"
Identifier "Monitor0"
VendorName "Monitor Vendor"
ModelName "Monitor Model"
EndSection
Section "Device"
### Available Driver options are:-
### Values: <i>: integer, <f>: float, <bool>: "True"/"False",
### <string>: "String", <freq>: "<f> Hz/kHz/MHz"
### [arg]: arg optional
#Option "NoAccel" # [<bool>]
#Option "AccelMethod" # [<str>]
#Option "offscreensize" # [<str>]
#Option "SWcursor" # [<bool>]
#Option "ignoreconnector" # [<str>]
#Option "forcereduced" # [<bool>]
#Option "forcedpi" # <i>
#Option "useconfiguredmonitor" # [<bool>]
#Option "HPD" # <str>
#Option "NoRandr" # [<bool>]
#Option "RROutputOrder" # [<str>]
#Option "DRI" # [<bool>]
#Option "TVMode" # [<str>]
#Option "ScaleType" # [<str>]
#Option "UseAtomBIOS" # [<bool>]
#Option "AtomBIOS" # [<str>]
#Option "UnverifiedFeatures" # [<bool>]
#Option "Audio" # [<bool>]
#Option "AudioStreamSilence" # [<str>]
#Option "HDMI" # [<str>]
#Option "COHERENT" # [<str>]
#Option "ForceLowPowerMode" # [<bool>]
#Option "LowPowerModeEngineClock" # <i>
Identifier "Card0"
Driver "radeon"
VendorName "ATI Technologies Inc"
BoardName "M96 [Mobility Radeon HD 4650]"
BusID "PCI:1:0:0"
Option "AGPMode" "4"
Option "ColorTiling" "on"
Option "AccelMethod" "EXA"
Option "DRI" "on"
Option "DynamicPM" "on"
Option "ClockGating" "on"
Option "RenderAccel" "on"
Option "ScalerWidth" "2048"
EndSection
Section "Screen"
Identifier "Screen0"
Device "Card0"
Monitor "Monitor0"
SubSection "Display"
Viewport 0 0
Depth 1
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Viewport 0 0
Depth 4
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Viewport 0 0
Depth 8
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Viewport 0 0
Depth 15
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Viewport 0 0
Depth 16
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Viewport 0 0
Depth 24
EndSubSection
EndSection
I also tried hwd but it only generates xorg.conf with the vesa driver (with which the artifacts don't occur by the way).
Last edited by Netsu (2010-04-10 09:40:57)

Answer 1

flamelab wrote:Delete your xorg.conf, and try again (make sure you hal running and xorg-input-drivers installed).
Tried that several times, also using hwd.
dcc24 wrote:
Netsu wrote:- graphical text editors colour all lines black on startup, they remain this way until you do something, click on it, input text, scroll etc.
I suffered from this exact problem with my HD 4330. I've tried everything, finally I've given up, downgraded X.org to 1.6 and installed the catalyst driver. Doing fine ever since.
I know catalyst sucks in general, but in my case this is the only working option.
Good to know I'm not alone, and that there's a working solution, even if I have to downgrade.