Radeon 4550 black 3D / no Unity despite reporting 3D being ok

[pontu]

MSI P4M890M, 512M RAM
Gigabyte HD4550 512M

1. after install i got blank wallpaper+mouse (auto login)
2. learning to Ctrl+Alt+F1 and pkill X gave me login screen where Safe Mode got me in sans Unity
3. $ /usr/lib/nux/unity_support_test -p

OpenGL vendor string: X.Org
OpenGL renderer string: Gallium 0.4 on AMD RV710
OpenGL version string: 2.1 Mesa 7.10.2

Not software rendered: yes
Not blacklisted: yes
GLX fbconfig: yes
GLX texture from pixmap: yes
GL npot or rect textures: yes
GL vertex program: yes
GL fragment program: yes
GL vertex buffer object: yes
GL framebuffer object: yes
GL version is 1.4+: yes

Unity supported: yes4. glxgears (and tuxracer) produce black window with no graphics, similarly no FPS output to console, going deeper:
5. $ vblank_mode=0 glxgears
ATTENTION: default value of option vblank_mode overridden by environment.
ATTENTION: default value of option vblank_mode overridden by environment.
2 frames in 11.9 seconds = 0.167 FPS
1 frames in 6.5 seconds = 0.154 FPS
1 frames in 6.0 seconds = 0.166 FPS
1 frames in 5.5 seconds = 0.182 FPS
1 frames in 6.0 seconds = 0.166 FPS
1 frames in 6.0 seconds = 0.167 FPS
1 frames in 6.0 seconds = 0.166 FPS
1 frames in 6.0 seconds = 0.166 FPS
6. both radeon and fglrx seem equally crippled (direct rendering: Yes)

help:confused:

[Sinner]

Up please.

[OS1]

Same here, everything suggests that 3D should work but it just doesn't. DRI & DRM enabled just fine, glxinfo reports Direct Rendering is enabled, no errors in the xorg log file, yet still no 3D. glxgears report about 10 fps. I did see this kind of behaviour on a Mandriva install when there were permissions problems so I tried an xorg.conf that had a DRI section but still no good. What on earth do I need to do to get 3D running when it worked just fine in 10.04. I think it may have actually have broken in 10.10 but I only used this as an upgrade path to 11.04. Has the ATI driver been "improved"? How could I revert to the 10.04 drivers?