Artifacts when moving windows. ATI video card

[CharlieB]

Hello all,

I have an ATI Radeon HD 3450 card and most times when I move windows the contents are corrupted and artifacts show all over them. Horizontal scrolling of windows makes this happen also. Probably because the window is moved instead of the contents being "scrolled". Vertical scrolling works fine.

Artifacts when moving windows seems to happen worse with OpenBox/lxde and IceWM. KDE seems to handle moving windows differently and does not corrupt when moving but horizontal scrolling does produce artifacts.

All I need to do to produce this is open a spreadsheet in LibreOffice that has data in more columns than can be displayed, scroll over 2 columns to the right then hit the page section of the scroll bar to bring column A back in view and the contents are destroyed.

I tested this on another computer with the same PCLinuxOS 2011.6 software with the exception of a nVidia card and it does not corrupt the display at all. I used to have the 3d effects installed (including wobbly windows) on the ati computer but removed them and went so far as modifying the xorg.conf file:

Added in xorg.conf:

Section "Extensions"
        Option  "Composite" "Disable"
EndSection

Section "ServerFlags"
        Option  "AIGLX" "off"
EndSection

Tried Option "NoAccel" in Section "Device" but caused X not to start.

I was hoping someone else ran into this before and knows of some magical option to put in the xorg.conf file to fix this.

Thanks in advance,
Charlie

[djohnston]

I haven't run into it before, but I have a much older and lesser Ati card. Your card is supported by the catalyst driver. What driver are you using and have you installed the fglrx-control-center package from Synaptic?

[CharlieB]

I haven't run into it before, but I have a much older and lesser Ati card. Your card is supported by the catalyst driver. What driver are you using and have you installed the fglrx-control-center package from Synaptic?

I do have the fglrx-control-center package installed. This is the "ATI Catalyst Control Center" on the menu right? I didn't see any useful settings there for this problem.

Now for what driver. I'm not sure which package is the actual driver. Is it the x11-driver-video* packages? If it is I have the x11-driver-video-fglrx-8.881-1pclos2011 package installed.

[menotu]

My wife had this on one of her laptops that had an ATI Radeon card and she fixed it by turning on the KDE Desktop Effects via Configure Your Desktop >> Workspace Appearance & Behaviour  >> Desktop Effects

Note, this is the default KDE Effects not the installed 3ddesktop / Compiz

[Texstar]

I hate to tell you this but I have many ATI video cards and in my experience most ATI cards older than HD4000 seems to have serious problems running the fglrx video driver. You might have better results by switching to the xorg ati driver from the Configure your computer, configure video card and select not to use the proprietary driver.

[CharlieB]

My wife had this on one of her laptops that had an ATI Radeon card and she fixed it by turning on the KDE Desktop Effects via Configure Your Desktop >> Workspace Appearance & Behaviour  >> Desktop Effects

Note, this is the default KDE Effects not the installed 3ddesktop / Compiz

I don't believe this but the above worked. I guess the effects handle redrawing the window. Now ready for the punch line...I hardly ever use KDE anymore and the problem is still there in LXDE/Openbox

I hate to tell you this but I have many ATI video cards and in my experience most ATI cards older than HD4000 seems to have serious problems running the fglrx video driver.

That figures. To quote Maxwell Smart, "Missed it by THAT much"

You might have better results by switching to the xorg ati driver from the Configure your computer, configure video card and select not to use the proprietary driver.

If I do that I will lose 3D though correct? If so I couldn't do that. If I can't play my games anymore I'll get the shakes  

I see a new package sitting in the repositories, x11-driver-video-fglrx-8.920-1...Is that a new driver? If so any idea if that would help? --never mind. Tried the new one and the same thing.

[CharlieB]

The open source driver does eliminate the problem so that confirms that it is a driver problem.

I found that an older distribution I was using had version 8.60.40 of the 2d driver (it doesn't show the catalyst version) and it does not have the move window problem. I checked version 9.5 and it mentions X versions up to 7.4. I get this:

[charlie@localhost ~]$ X -version

X.Org X Server 1.10.3
Release Date: 2011-07-08
X Protocol Version 11, Revision 0
Build Operating System: Linux_2.6.38.8-pclos3.pae.bfs PCLinuxOS

X org must have changed their version numbers unless you drop the 1.?

Is it possible to download the older version of the driver from ATI and build it for a newer X server?

Thanks again.

[Old-Polack]

The open source driver does eliminate the problem so that confirms that it is a driver problem.

I found that an older distribution I was using had version 8.60.40 of the 2d driver (it doesn't show the catalyst version) and it does not have the move window problem. I checked version 9.5 and it mentions X versions up to 7.4. I get this:

[charlie@localhost ~]$ X -version

X.Org X Server 1.10.3
Release Date: 2011-07-08
X Protocol Version 11, Revision 0
Build Operating System: Linux_2.6.38.8-pclos3.pae.bfs PCLinuxOS

X org must have changed their version numbers unless you drop the 1.?

Is it possible to download the older version of the driver from ATI and build it for a newer X server?

Thanks again.

No. That's why they post an earliest and latest version of X that the driver supports. Yes, when they name the supported versions of X, they leave out the 1. that comes before the posted numbers.

[CharlieB]

No. That's why they post an earliest and latest version of X that the driver supports. Yes, when they name the supported versions of X, they leave out the 1. that comes before the posted numbers.

Thanks for clarifying the version numbering.

I'm not about to downgrade the X server. That sounds like asking for trouble. I wonder why the X server version means so much? Is only a minor version change.

I'll try filing a bug report with ATI if it is not fixed soon. There is some hope of a fix coming soon for some other bugs. Maybe this one will be fixed too...

All hopes are up for this months driver release, which is supposed to fix a lot
of the issues. http://ati.cchtml.com/show_bug.cgi?id=99