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I recently built a new desktop with an AMD A10-6800K (Radeon HD 8670D) APU. Basic graphics performance was fine with the open source drivers, but I installed fglrx* because I wanted to enable sound through the HDMI port.

It works like a charm for playing videos (no problem with fullscreen 1080p), but today I decided to try playing Supertuxkart for the first time on this machine. The result was very poor - the sound was choppy, the video lagged, and even moving the mouse around on the setting screen was jumpy. Oddly enough, my system monitor was not showing particularly high CPU or RAM usage at the time.

If anyone has any suggestions on sorting out the gameplay issues, I'd appreciate it. The only things I can think of are trying out the open source drivers (which cuts off the sound output to my tv) or the beta driver from AMD, but maybe there is some other configuration I can try.

*I installed the (non-beta) drivers from the AMD website since both fglrx and fglrx-updates in the Ubuntu repos were showing an "unsupported hardware" watermark, but this didn't come up with the one from AMD. I've also enabled hardware acceleration.

Other info: even running glxgears causes trouble. It's fine in the small window (and even returns over 1500 fps) but enlarging the window causes the framerate to drop (to a still-respectable 200 fps) but the playback becomes choppy and again, the mouse cursor no longer moves smoothly. It seems like this is probably an overall openGL issue.

Update: using the fglrx-updates package from the Ubuntu repositories gives much better performance, but leaves me with an "unsupported hardware" watermark. The open source Radeon drivers work OK for video and display management, but leave games like Supertuxkart unplayable.

Sean Fitzpatrick
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1 Answers1

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Update:

According to AMD website, the 13.04 driver is not compatible with your APU, but the 13.08 beta driver is.

Catalyst 13.04 release notes:

http://support.amd.com/us/kbarticles/Pages/amdcatalyst13-4linreleasenotes.aspx

Catalyst 13.08 release notes:

http://support.amd.com/us/kbarticles/Pages/AMDCatalyst13-8LINBetaDriver.aspx

For AMD graphics you need to use the proprietary drivers from AMD website, any other driver will not work properly. It's also important to use the latest version of Ubuntu, since the driver needs up-to-date Kernel, X.Org and Mesa packages to achieve full performance.

You can try removing all AMD drivers from your system and start from the beginning, with the Catalyst driver from AMD website.

To remove all drivers from you system and go back to the open source driver, run the following commands:

sudo sh /usr/share/ati/fglrx-uninstall.sh

sudo apt-get remove --purge fglrx fglrx_* fglrx-amdcccle* fglrx-dev*

Remove your X.Org conf:

sudo rm /etc/X11/xorg.conf

Reinstall X.Org and open source drivers:

sudo apt-get install --reinstall libgl1-mesa-glx:i386 libgl1-mesa-glx:amd64 libgl1-mesa-dri:i386 libgl1-mesa-dri:amd64 xserver-xorg-core

Reconfigure X.Org:

sudo dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg

And then reboot the system:

sudo reboot

To install Catalyst from AMD website you will need to install the following packages:

sudo apt-get install linux-headers-generic dkms ia32-libs

Download the driver and run the following commands to install:

cd Downloads

chmod +x amd-catalyst-13.4-linux-x86.x86_64.run

sudo sh amd-catalyst-13.4-linux-x86.x86_64.run

sudo aticonfig --initial
Removed
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  • Thanks, although it's the driver from the AMD website that was giving me the problems. I installed it as per the method you suggest. I'm trying the latest beta now to see if that works any better. – Sean Fitzpatrick Aug 31 '13 at 21:52
  • Please see the update in the beginning. – Removed Aug 31 '13 at 21:57
  • OK, thanks. Things seem to be working all right with the beta driver. I built .deb packages first and then installed, to make it easier to remove later if necessary. For some reason with the beta drivers the Catalyst control centre doesn't show up properly (I used the same steps to install the non-beta driver from AMD) but other than that it's all right. – Sean Fitzpatrick Aug 31 '13 at 22:27
  • So the end result: fglrx-updates from the Ubuntu repositories worked fine, except for the annoying watermark. So far so good with the 13.8 beta, except for the fact that the control centre didn't seem to install properly. – Sean Fitzpatrick Aug 31 '13 at 22:31
  • Good to know. I hope this problem with the control center is corrected in the final version. – Removed Aug 31 '13 at 22:32
  • The control centre installed to /usr/lib/fglrx/bin, so I can run it from there. Presumably I could run it directly by creating a link in /usr/bin but with other versions this isn't necessary. – Sean Fitzpatrick Aug 31 '13 at 22:36
  • You can remove the watermark using one of these methods: http://wiki.cchtml.com/index.php/Ubuntu_Raring_Installation_Guide#Unsupported_Hardware_Watermark or http://askubuntu.com/questions/206558/how-to-remove-the-amd-testing-use-only-watermark – Removed Aug 31 '13 at 22:37
  • Thanks. There is no watermark using the latest beta drivers from the AMD website, so I'll stick with that. Performance seems pretty good so far. – Sean Fitzpatrick Sep 02 '13 at 14:30