ATI Radeon HD 5870 Eyefinity 6 & Xorg

English Hardware
#1

Hi,

I tried finally upgrading to 12 (12.3) and ran into a problem with my graphics card. This is an unusual card with 6 video outputs so I knew from past experience it would present problems but I had it working on 11.4 perfectly for a long time.

On 11.4 I could only make it work with a proprietary driver however on 12.3 it works better with the radeon driver. But, there is one problem I can’t get past. I use these 6 screens in a grid of 3 across by 2 down as one big screen at a resolution of 1680x1050 per monitor. The card and the monitors could go higher but I have other equipment in between that limit it to this resolution for now and is connect by just VGA plugs, not DVI yet.

The radeon driver doesn’t pick up the card properly (I think) and gives a max. of 1024x768 so I need to override that and typically I would do that in xorg.conf or xorg.conf.d but it doesn’t seem to be picking up my settings there.

Xorg -configure fails so I can’t use that as a starting point. Perhaps solving this is the starting point but I don’t really know where to begin.

Any help in what I need to put the xorg configuration files or any other way to solve this would be appreciated. I’ve tried all the normal things like using nomodeset and I’ve played around with xorg.conf but couldn’t figure it out for this case.

Below is what the proprietary driver created although I don’t know if that is of any help - from opensuse 11.4.


Section "ServerLayout"
    Identifier     "amdcccle Layout"
    Screen      0  "amdcccle-Screen[1]-0" 0 0
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
    Identifier   "0-DFP1"
    Option        "VendorName" "ATI Proprietary Driver"
    Option        "ModelName" "Generic Autodetecting Monitor"
    Option        "DPMS" "true"
    Option        "PreferredMode" "1680x1050"
    Option        "TargetRefresh" "60"
    Option        "Position" "0 1050"
    Option        "Rotate" "normal"
    Option        "Disable" "false"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
    Identifier   "0-DFP2"
    Option        "VendorName" "ATI Proprietary Driver"
    Option        "ModelName" "Generic Autodetecting Monitor"
    Option        "DPMS" "true"
    Option        "PreferredMode" "1680x1050"
    Option        "TargetRefresh" "60"
    Option        "Position" "3360 0"
    Option        "Rotate" "normal"
    Option        "Disable" "false"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
    Identifier   "0-DFP3"
    Option        "VendorName" "ATI Proprietary Driver"
    Option        "ModelName" "Generic Autodetecting Monitor"
    Option        "DPMS" "true"
    Option        "PreferredMode" "1680x1050"
    Option        "TargetRefresh" "60"
    Option        "Position" "3360 1050"
    Option        "Rotate" "normal"
    Option        "Disable" "false"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
    Identifier   "0-DFP4"
    Option        "VendorName" "ATI Proprietary Driver"
    Option        "ModelName" "Generic Autodetecting Monitor"
    Option        "DPMS" "true"
    Option        "PreferredMode" "1680x1050"
    Option        "TargetRefresh" "60"
    Option        "Position" "1680 0"
    Option        "Rotate" "normal"
    Option        "Disable" "false"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
    Identifier   "0-DFP5"
    Option        "VendorName" "ATI Proprietary Driver"
    Option        "ModelName" "Generic Autodetecting Monitor"
    Option        "DPMS" "true"
    Option        "PreferredMode" "1680x1050"
    Option        "TargetRefresh" "60"
    Option        "Position" "1680 1050"
    Option        "Rotate" "normal"
    Option        "Disable" "false"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
    Identifier   "0-DFP6"
    Option        "VendorName" "ATI Proprietary Driver"
    Option        "ModelName" "Generic Autodetecting Monitor"
    Option        "DPMS" "true"
    Option        "PreferredMode" "1680x1050"
    Option        "TargetRefresh" "60"
    Option        "Position" "0 0"
    Option        "Rotate" "normal"
    Option        "Disable" "false"
EndSection

Section "Device"
    Identifier  "amdcccle-Device[1]-0"
    Driver      "fglrx"
    Option        "Monitor-DFP1" "0-DFP1"
    Option        "Monitor-DFP2" "0-DFP2"
    Option        "Monitor-DFP3" "0-DFP3"
    Option        "Monitor-DFP4" "0-DFP4"
    Option        "Monitor-DFP5" "0-DFP5"
    Option        "Monitor-DFP6" "0-DFP6"
    BusID       "PCI:1:0:0"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
    Identifier "amdcccle-Screen[1]-0"
    Device     "amdcccle-Device[1]-0"
    DefaultDepth     24
    SubSection "Display"
        Viewport   0 0
        Virtual   5040 2100
        Depth     24
    EndSubSection
EndSection
#2

what other equipment are we talking about? and have you removed such other equipment from the chain to see whether it is the prime reason things are not working the way they should?

The radeon driver doesn’t pick up the card properly (I think) and gives a max. of 1024x768 so I need to override that and typically I would do that in xorg.conf or xorg.conf.d but it doesn’t seem to be picking up my settings there.

Xorg -configure fails so I can’t use that as a starting point. Perhaps solving this is the starting point but I don’t really know where to begin.

Any help in what I need to put the xorg configuration files or any other way to solve this would be appreciated. I’ve tried all the normal things like using nomodeset and I’ve played around with xorg.conf but couldn’t figure it out for this case.
nomodeset will not help you – the radeon driver only supports kernel mode setting now.

what is the output of

xrandr

If you remove/rename your xorg conf files, what is the result achieved when X tries to autoconfigure everything? Post your xorg log file to suse paste and then provide a link.

#3

what other equipment are we talking about?

It’s not the other equipment. If it was then it wouldn’t work in 11.4. It’s a video 8x8 matrix switcher. There is no need to remove it, I know it’s not a cause of any problems other than limiting the bandwidth to allow a maximum resolution of 1680x1050. When I have the money I’ll upgrade to a DVI version.

what is the output of

xrandr

I won’t be able to tell you this until the weekend, same for supplying the Xorg.0.log file. I’ve rolled back to 11.4 as I need the machine to work on during the week. I saved the 12.3 install as a disk clone so Friday night I’ll roll forward to 12.3 and find this out.

If you remove/rename your xorg conf files, what is the result achieved when X tries to autoconfigure everything?

As I said, no Xorg file at all will be generated with “Xorg -configure”. This was tested by first removing the xorg.conf.

Xorg does load, which is great, and I do get the 6 displays however they are at a maximum resolution of 1024x768. I need to know the command to put in Xorg.conf force a 1680x1050 resolution. You will see from the above xorg.conf I was able to do this with the proprietary drivers. I don’t know the configuration code for the radeon driver. I remember that in the Xorg.0.log that it called each display in the form of DisplayPort-0, DisplayPort-1 and so on so I tried the following:


Section "Modes" 
  Mode "1680x1050_60.0" ....various values...
EndSection

Section "Monitor" 
  Identifier   "DisplayPort-0"     
  Option        "PreferredMode" "1680x1050_60.0" 
EndSection

Please note that I did the above from memory as I’m not in front of a Linux box right now so it might not be, and probably won’t be, 100% correct. Consider it representative only.

#4

Okay, fair enough. I can certainly appreciate that :slight_smile: