ATi graphics cards

[Felix Sheldon]

Vincent Trouilliez wrote:

>>It's interesting to here you are having problems with the nvidia
>>binary drivers. 
>>    
>>
>
>Why ? Does Nvidia have a magic stick to make a driver work flawlessly on
>Ubuntu on all machines ? If htey have such a stick, would they be so
>kind as lend it to Gnome and it's apps ? That would be great ! ;-)
>
>  
>
>>I have been using them in both warty anf hoary (and
>>many other linux distros) with no problem what so ever. on a geforce 2
>>mx, geforce fx 5600, and now my 6600gt. I have never had a lock up or
>>any problems at all, 
>>    
>>
>
>I am happy for you :o)
>I don't doubt that it works for many people, otherwise I hope Nvidia
>would not have released their drivers at all ! ;-)
>
>  
>
>>even during intense 3d games like doom3 and unreal tourny 2k4.
>>    
>>
>
>Interestingly, when I play with X-Plane, every goes fine.
>the biggest (and repeatable) problem appears when I try to log-out (the
>screen gets corrupted, then hangs for 5+ seconds before actually
>logging-out), then logging back-in (a few Gnome components crash, then I
>get screen corruption, then 10 seconds later it freezes solid).
>Then there is the random seg fault and/or hard-lock that comes out of
>nowhere.
>
>  
>
>>It may be another part of your system that is causing the problems.
>>    
>>
>
>Hmmm, when I use the 'nv' driver, all the symptoms go away, as soon as
>load the 'nvidia' driver, nightmares are back. H/W is obviously
>unchanged, only the driver changes...
>
>  
>
>>Maybe faulty memory? (since the onboard card uses your system memory)
>>    
>>
>
>Yeah I tried to go this route, trouble shooting H/W, but nothing helped.
>I ran the memory test for 8 hours, not a single error. I changed the
>hard drive, and also its ribbon cable, still no joy. I removed all PCI
>cards, SCSI and IDE peripherals, removed 2 of the 3 RAM modules, but no.
>
>Then I found in bugzilla hints that other people experienced the same
>kind of problems, so I stopped investigating.
>
>The only guess I can make, is that maybe it's some sort of bug between
>GDM and nvidia-glx, but it's impossible to know which one of them is
>really responsible. Maybe both packages have problems.
>All I can hope is that both packages get updated/worked on, and that
>someday, by coincidence, this "incompatibility"/bug will cure itself due
>to some other, unrelated work.
>
>At least I can work around it by using the 'nv' driver, and using
>'nvidia' only when I want to play X-Plane. Not very practical, but gets
>me going...
>
>
>  
>

Have you tried turning off RenderAccel in xorg.conf? It seems to be a 
bit crashy with the GF4MX4000 cards, especially on amd64.


--
Felix