ATI Radeon HD 3200 very slow performance

Question

I used ATI fglrx driver for 12.04 with ATI Radeon HD 3200. After upgrade to 12.10 - there is no fglrx and the system uses standard opensource ATI driver. The driver is very slow especially on playing movies (including flash movies) and on scrolling web pages.

I attempted to install fglrx* packages but fglrx in the version 2:9.000-0ubuntu3 (Catalyst 1.12.8) does not support HD 3200 anymore.

I attemtped to install http://www2.ati.com/drivers/legacy/12-6/amd-driver-installer-12.6-legacy-x86.x86_64.zip which seems to be most recent version supporting HD 3200. But it fails on kernel module compilation without any meaningful messages in logs.

Moreover, AMD unofficial wiki states that drivers < 1.12.8 do not support kernel 3.5 and xserver 1.13. See also the comment below.

My exact lspci hardware info:

01:05.0 VGA compatible controller: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] nee ATI RS780 [Radeon HD 3200]

So the question is: how to diagnose performance issue with open source driver for HD 3200 and tune it to get better performance in everyday usage like movies and page scrolling?

Solution

As I also have found out (4850 here), you can't via any method install fglrx-legacy on stock ubuntu 12.10, even if you use catalyst 12.6 which supports our cards, because the x server that 12.10 uses (1.13) is not supported by catalyst 12.6 or older.

However, this is somewhat of a solution, that I can confirm works on my machine: http://www.ubuntuvibes.com/2012/10/how-to-install-amd-catalyst-legacy.html

Just follow that (well, uninstall any fglrx you have installed now first), and you should have a better experience.

I should note, you will be downgrading your x server to version 1.12, and these packages are not supported by ubuntu, but this is the closest to a "solution" as can possibly exist at this time.

Comments

[Andrew Mao]

This is a very general problem with 12.10 Quantal and an entire range of cards, as I discovered. You seem to have a specific problem with kernel module compilation, but even if you get past that, you'll run into a bigger problem. Instructions for compilation and the bigger problem are in my post here: askubuntu.com/questions/203232/…

[Alek Kowalczyk]

@AndrewMao, according to Unofficial AMD Wiki , there is no possibility to use Catalyst < 12.8 (with HD 3200 support) on 3.5 Kernel and 1.13 xserver which confirms your research.

[Alek Kowalczyk]

I found a workaround: Performance issues resolved by switching from default Ubuntu session (Unity) to Gnome Shell session (provided by ubuntu-gnome-remix packages). No compiz but Gnome Shell compositing with some extensions provide quite adequate replacement for unity+compiz features. The graphics performance is excellent in this configuration.

[Alek Kowalczyk]

Hi, thanks for suggestion - I'd rather prefer to stay on ubuntu-supported xserver to not run into another class of issues. I still believe that OpenSource driver cannot be so bad comparing to fglrx and it might be possible to finetune it - just don't know how (yet)