MINT 13 - disappointing in AMD HD 3000 and 4000 series IGP

[myaravindg@gmail.com]

Dear friends,
MINT 13 (tried only KDE edition) behavior is very much disappointing in certain systems.
My system(only 1 year old) AMD Phenome X4 840 cpu, MB biostar with HD 4290 based IGP., 8 GB ram, Pinacle tvtuner card.
(my feriend with "NEW" AMD system - HD 3000 based IGP, also informed similar problem)
1. Instalation is not stable, when installed from default live booting.
2. Instalation is possible through compatable mode live booting,
3. But become slower and slower after updates.
4. Additional AMD driver not activated because of fear.
5. If compared to old AMD athlonX2 with 1200 IGP it is nearly 6 times slower for booting and very mich sluggish.
6. while comparing with KUBUNTU 12.04 in the same system(installed 4 months back and AMD driver activated), it is slower and slugish by nearly 10 times.
7. In lase 2 days I installed MINT 13 (KDE edition) for 5 times from different medias. But results are the same.

[AMD is still selling HD3000 and HD4000 series IGP.
(for eg. http://www.flipkart.com/computers/compu ... ayout=grid).]

I Like MINT KDE 13 MAYA (LTS) and want to continue with it.
Please help

[igor83]

>>4. Additional AMD driver not activated because of fear.
>>5. If compared to old AMD athlonX2 with 1200 IGP it is nearly 6 times slower for booting and very mich sluggish.
>>6. while comparing with KUBUNTU 12.04 in the same system(installed 4 months back and AMD driver activated), it is slower and slugish by nearly 10 times.

So, Kubuntu's got the ati driver, but you didn't install the driver on LM 13 due to fear.
You will need to use an older version of ATI's video driver. ATI quit supporting older versions such as 3 and 4000x a while back.
Check out the ubuntu and archlinux guides to the ati video driver, for starters. Arch Linux has the best documentation. Ubuntu documentation tends to be terse and lacking in detail, with lots of links to other articles that may or may not be helpful. More links than explanations. Whereas Arch Linux explains the how and why in a very straight-forward fashion.

I don't buy any ATI or AMD products any longer due to ATI's overall poor Linux support.
Intel works better with both Windows and Linux. I used to buy nothing but AMD, but now I would not buy any AMD product even if it was discounted by 40%. AMD needs to compensate their customers for the extra work required to get their hardware working good on Linux.

My suggestion to users of AMD hardware that complain about problems with Linux is to sell their incompatible hardware on E-bay, and use the money to buy Intel hardware, which does not have as much problem with Linux. To blame Linux for the inadequacies of AMD / ATI seems unfair.There are plenty of Windows users in the world, and bless them all, because they will buy your hardware and give you a good price for it, and you can replace it at little cost. That is the reason Windows users were created, to buy our incompatible AMD /ATI hardware.

[igor83]

I learned today that KDE is disappointing in AMD HD 6310, too. Or actually any ATI product. ATI is bad for Linux... really regret buying those two AMD motherboards... should sell...

Yes, it is possible to install fglrx and watch HD videos in Linux.
However, KDE won't direct render via Catalyst. And after a couple hours poking around online, I don't see any way to make it do so. So that makes all the KDE desktop effects slow and I don't know what else, maybe Dolphin too.
KDE's devs are discussing how KDE 4.10 might direct render Opengl in Catalyst.
So when 4.10 rolls out in, when, April? Assuming there aren't any bugs etc., I would then reinstall? But I can reinstall right now using different hardware and everything works ok, just ditch the AMD hardware kludge.
That seems to be the picture I'm seeing.

Anybody have a good recommendation for a low cost socket LGA 1155 motherboard that works great with Linux and supports direct render in KDE?

[Cerule]

I don't have IGP but Radeon 4550 HD and actually I'm quite satisfied with the performance of it with proprietary drivers. As desktop use it's very snappy with almost all of the effects on. Quicker than fresh installed Win7 with same hardware and newest drivers. 1920x1080p24/30 video playback is fine after little tweaking with vlc/mplayer. Downside is that this doesn't work with newest xorg (mint14) and hd flash videos drop fps if viewed fullscreen.

[igor83]

I don't have IGP but Radeon 4550 HD and actually I'm quite satisfied with the performance of it with proprietary drivers. As desktop use it's very snappy with almost all of the effects on. Quicker than fresh installed Win7 with same hardware and newest drivers. 1920x1080p24/30 video playback is fine after little tweaking with vlc/mplayer. Downside is that this doesn't work with newest xorg (mint14) and hd flash videos drop fps if viewed fullscreen.

I'm satisfied with my ATi video too but then I don't game, and my computer uses are not very demanding. Still I'd have a snappier and more responsive KDE desktop with Intel. ATI's kludge won't support desktop effects acceleration. So I spent an hour or two turning off KDE's desktop effects. Well, this will be a distant memory once I've sold the ATI kludge and upgraded to... anything else except ATI.