ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5650 (Acer Aspire TimelineX 4820TG) driver install problem

[andy12345]

Hello,
I am currently using ubuntu(64 bit) on my 4820TG (related thread). After installation, I got the addition drivers, there were 2 options present 1. my wifi card driver which I successfully got and is working. 2. my ati graphics card (so I guess by default its running on the onboard intel card?). It said "ATI/AMD proprietary FGLRX graphics drivers", I downloaded it and activated it.
After rebooting the desktop didn't show up and instead it directly booted into the terminal. After searching for a while I found a solution and ran the following commands

sudo Xorg -configure
sudo mv xorg.conf.new /etc/X11/xorg.conf
sudo reboot

and Ta-Da my desktop was back, but the driver was again disabled, enabling again would cause it to go to terminal after reboot.
SO i guess the problem is in the driver or something?
What I have tried so far
--Searching, but didn't get any specific answers (I am new to linux/ubuntu and I hardly know what shell or kernel or anything else is, again pardon me for that, so its certainly no point to telling me to 'patch a script' or anything, unless of course you tell me how to patch first)
--Switching to discreet in BIOS and trying to enable the drivers and reboot.After reboot its gets stuck in the login like background window with some messages, forcing me to reboot and change back to switchable and the same cycle again.

Waiting for a solution (which could be followed easily..)

PS- sorry for my bad english.

[jocko]

ATI's linux driver (fglrx) does NOT support switchable graphics, will not work when switchable graphics is active, and will totally mess up the integrated intel graphics if you try to use it when the switchable graphics is activated in bios.
Either use only the discrete card with the fglrx driver or use the open source drivers (intel/i915 and radeon) with switchable graphics activated in the bios.

[andy12345]

ATI's linux driver (fglrx) does NOT support switchable graphics, will not work when switchable graphics is active, and will totally mess up the integrated intel graphics if you try to use it when the switchable graphics is activated in bios.
Either use only the discrete card with the fglrx driver or use the open source drivers (intel/i915 and radeon) with switchable graphics activated in the bios.

As I said in my first post, I have also tried to switch to discreet through BIOS and try the drivers but ubuntu gets stuck at the loading screen with some messages like, checking battery state [ok] etc..

Your second solution to use the open source drivers "(intel/i915 and radeon) with switchable graphics activated in the bios", how to I get them through command line? can you tell the commands please?

[jocko]

The open source drivers are the drivers that were installed and activated by default before you installed ati's proprietary driver. Just uninstall fglrx (search for it in synaptics and mark for complete removal), then make sure you don't have a xorg.conf and reboot.

Edit: The commands would be:

sudo apt-get purge fglrx fglrx-amdcccle
sudo rm /etc/X11/xorg.conf
sudo reboot

[andy12345]

The open source drivers are the drivers that were installed and activated by default before you installed ati's proprietary driver. Just uninstall fglrx (search for it in synaptics and mark for complete removal), then make sure you don't have a xorg.conf and reboot.

Edit: The commands would be:

sudo apt-get purge fglrx fglrx-amdcccle
sudo rm /etc/X11/xorg.conf
sudo reboot

Thank you I will try it out and post the results.
I did not try to install the ati drivers, but I want to use the intels card, the battery backup shown is low, which makes me guess that the ATI card is still active. How do I solve this issue?

[andy12345]

I did not try to install the ati drivers, but I want to use the intels card, the battery backup shown is low, which makes me guess that the ATI card is still active. How do I solve this issue?

[Temüjin]

You can't turn the ATI card off unless your BIOS allows it.

[jocko]

I did not try to install the ati drivers, but I want to use the intels card, the battery backup shown is low, which makes me guess that the ATI card is still active. How do I solve this issue?

You can't turn the ATI card off unless your BIOS allows it.

Actually, you can switch it off even if bios does not have that option, at least if you have a 2.6.35 or newer kernel.

I have a 3820TG with the same graphics situation, and I save pretty much battery life by turning off the radeon. This is how I did it:

gksudo gedit /etc/rc.local

Add these lines before "exit 0" at the end of the file:

echo DIGD > /sys/kernel/debug/vgaswitcheroo
echo OFF > /sys/kernel/debug/vgaswitcheroo

Then reboot and see the power consumption go down.
With the radeon off, powertop reports ~11-15W on idle with the screen brightness on the lowest possible setting (and between 4 and more than 6 hrs of battery life), with the radeon powered on (but not in use) it reports ~28W (and 2.5 hrs of battery life)...

One annoying problem is that there are a bunch of error messages about atombios when I turn off the computer, possibly causing the shutdown to take a few extra seconds, but I can live with that.

[andy12345]

Actually, you can switch it off even if bios does not have that option, at least if you have a 2.6.35 or newer kernel.

I have a 3820TG with the same graphics situation, and I save pretty much battery life by turning off the radeon. This is how I did it:

gksudo gedit /etc/rc.local

Add these lines before "exit 0" at the end of the file:

echo DIGD > /sys/kernel/debug/vgaswitcheroo
echo OFF > /sys/kernel/debug/vgaswitcheroo

Then reboot and see the power consumption go down.
With the radeon off, powertop reports ~11-15W on idle with the screen brightness on the lowest possible setting (and between 4 and more than 6 hrs of battery life), with the radeon powered on (but not in use) it reports ~28W (and 2.5 hrs of battery life)...

One annoying problem is that there are a bunch of error messages about atombios when I turn off the computer, possibly causing the shutdown to take a few extra seconds, but I can live with that.

Thank you. I have tried it and will be testing now. All I don't want is the lap to heat up, it heats up pretty fast in idle mode too (only in ubuntu), so I hope this switching stops that problem.

PS-anyway to check which graphics card is active?

[jocko]

PS-anyway to check which graphics card is active?

First you need to know the BusID of the cards:

lspci | grep VGA

This will give you an output similar to this:

00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Core Processor Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 18)
02:00.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc Redwood [Radeon HD 5600 Series] (rev ff)

To see the status of the switch for the cards:

cat /sys/kernel/debug/vgaswitcheroo/switch

The output will look something like this:

0: :Off:0000:02:00.0
1:+:Pwr:0000:00:02.0

In this output you can see that my intel card is powered on (indicated with "Pwr") and the ati card is powered off (indicated with "Off"). The "+" sign show which gpu is being used.