ATI driver not working properly (probably:)

[Wegas]

Hi,
I run fully updated 2010 KDE version on Dell Inspiron 1501 with AMD proc. and ATI radeon express 1150 graphics. I have the latest drivers from repo installed but I only get around 350 fps in glxgears, google earth as well as flash videos(higher resolution) run slowly and often distorted. I can run KDE compositing quite smoothly and also glxinfo says direct rendering is working. Also when I shut down my computer I dont get usual Pclinuxos "goodbye" screen, instead I get screen with thin stripes of all colors. Can anyone please tell if this is normal behavior for this type of graphics in 2010 Pclinuxos or can it be fixed? If so how?
glxgears output:  (I remember getting around 1500fps-1900fps score a few years ago with old driver)

$ glxgears
1577 frames in 5.0 seconds = 315.147 FPS
1740 frames in 5.0 seconds = 347.872 FPS
1729 frames in 5.0 seconds = 345.742 FPS
XIO:  fatal IO error 104 (Connection reset by peer) on X server ":0.0"
      after 16685 requests (43 known processed) with 0 events remaining.

thank you for replies

[Ertain]

Reminds me of when I used the "fglrx" drivers.  Now I have to use the open source "ati" driver because support for my card was dropped.  While I miss the major frame rate it still works nicely.

As for the shut down issues it could be anything.  Before you updated did you use the fglrx drivers?  If so maybe some parts are still in your laptop (I remember using the fglrx drivers and getting stripes at times).  Or, worse, it could be your display (however I doubt this ).

It could also be your resolution as well as what display settings you have.

[Wegas]

thank you for your reply,
I did some research and as you said the native support for older ATIs was dropped so now I'm running xorg ATI driver. Framerate is poor but yes, everything else, maybe except for Google earth, is running fine so I guess I have to deal with it until people at ATI come up with something better. And about that shut down screen..actually I'm starting to like it, it looks much cooler than regular PCLinuxOS screen:D.