I am running openSUSE 11.1 (64 bit) on a Dell laptop with an ATI Radeon x1200 card and the 8.57.2 driver from ATI. I am having trouble enabling KWin effects with this card. The effects were enabled in systemsettings, but they were not running. recently I updated the driver (don't recal what the old version was) and they just started working again.

Since this was not my laptop, I didn't have a user account. I just added one (as I'll be using this machine temporarily) but the KWin effects don't work when I'm logged in. They work fine on the other user account. Am I missing something? How else do I enable KWin effects?

Also, as a side note, are there any ATI specific tweaks that I should make (in xorg.conf or somewhere else) for KDE4? It's performance with this card seems worse than with Intel Integrated Graphics on my desktop!

Does it output an error message when you activate them under the new account?

Hmm, it appears that my first problem was solved. All I did was upgrade the ati driver via yast (even though it was already at the current version) and reboot. Works fine now. But the performance is still lacking. Even the simple effects are painfully slow. Compiz/GNOME was much faster with this card. Are there any ATI/KDE 4 tweaks I could try?

What is the output of the command:

Code: Select all

glxinfo | grep -i direct

direct rendering: Yes

Is t his the proprietary (fglrx) or open source (ati/radeon) driver? I have found that the open source driver works much better with KDE than the proprietary driver (especially after X.org 7.4).

You also need to setup your xorg.conf for compositing (AIGLX, EXA, etc).

Really? Well, I would much rather use the radeon driver anyways.

And about the compositing; is there a place where I can get the syntax and options for various compositing setups (AIGLX, EXA, etc)? I know that XAA (i think) works best on my desktop, but I am not familiar with any of them.

zak89 wrote:And about the compositing; is there a place where I can get the syntax and options for various compositing setups (AIGLX, EXA, etc)? I know that XAA (i think) works best on my desktop, but I am not familiar with any of them.

Here are the relevant sections of my xorg.conf (which is for a Radeon X1550). You should also consult the SuSE forums and lists. They should be the primary source of your information.

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Section "Module"
    ...
    Load  "dri"
    Load  "glx"
EndSection

Section "ServerFlags"
    Option       "AIGLX" "True"
EndSection

Section "Device"
    Identifier  "Card0"
    Driver      "radeon"
    ...
    Option      "RenderAccel" "on"
    Option      "AccelMethod" "EXA"
EndSection

Section "Extensions"
    Option "Composite"  "Enable"
EndSection


Thanks! I'll give that a try.

One quick question; I keep hearing that the radeon driver does not support 3D. Is this true or not?

The radeon driver supports 3D for the r100-r500 chipsets. I believe the x1200 is an r500 chipset. You won't get 3D for the newer HD3xxx/HD4xxx cards.