Mobility Radeon HD 4500 Series, Compiz = Crash?

[creiss]

Hey all!

I have a Dell Studio 1555 with a Mobility Radeon HD 4500 Series and Ubuntu 9.04. I run the restricted hw drivers for my card so I can "enjoy" acceleration. I can enable compiz, even with full effects, and it works.

Sorta.

When I run VLC switching to full screen takes 10 seconds (and back), and manualy resizing the player windows makes X crash. Even worse is TV Playback with kaffeine: If compiz is enabled and I *try* to tune to a channel Linux hangs. I can't even SSH in anymore.

This is really frustrating, is there a workaround? Like opensource drivers capable of doing 3d on said hardware? Or a configuration that, umm, stops the crashes?

Any help is gladly appreciated!

Cheers!

-Christian

[markbuntu]

You need a really new driver to get a 4550 to work. Are you using the latest driver from ati?

[Vivek788]

I too have the similar configuration as creiss.

Two times while logging into my Ubuntu system, the screen just shows up as a jitter of colours. The OS freezes, and i can see the a white shape moving around when I move the mouse pointer.

I don't know whether creiss's and mine are similar problems,but if it is I am gonna try to install latest driver. but how do i know what is my installed version and what is the latest from ati?

In my hardware drivers menu it shows ATI/AMD proprietary FGLRX graphics driver - and not activated. Does that mean anything?
Thanks in advance.