@cinmay (cinmay) posted a new topic, subject "My experience with AMD ATI  radeon HD4870 and linux". It read:

   (If you are having distortion problems with your new HD4850 or HD4870 then try running “blender -W” or “blender -p 10 10 1024 768” then resize it)
    
    Hi. Some days ago I finally got my new computer. Intel quad core, 8Gb ram, 4x750gb disks in raid10 (for performance and backup at the same time  ) and the new HD4870 ATI card.
    
    I have been a Linux user for many years now and I always used to by Nvidia cards but this time a friend of mine convinced me to get the HD4870 because of its same day support for Linux. Well here is how it when down:
    
    After spending a lot of time trying different drivers I finally went with the proprietary drivers downloaded from amd.com I got DRI to work and all the openGL applications i tried worked perfectly  (accept Blender). I am working on a commercial project so Blender is the only application I really really need 
    
    When I started Blender I got this weird distortion bug. Everything but the header buttons at the top was completely distorted.  
    Unfortunately no one can be told what the matrix is… errr… distortion bug is, you have to see it for your self. The only problem with that was that a print screen looked just fine without any distortion. 
    
    finally after about 4 to 5 hours of driver reinstallations and xorg config changes I found out that if I start Blender in “Force opening without borders” mode “blender -W” or setting the opening size of the windows with -p then it worked perfectly. 
    
    I also had partial success with changing between hardware cursor and software cursor. When I sett the Option “SWcursor” “true” in xorg.conf I get rid of the distortion but the cursor was always pointing about 1 cm higher then it was showing on the screen. But with the “blender -p” or “-W” option I didn't have to enable software cursor a all.
    
    In conclusion. I think ATI is finally catching up to Nvidia when it comes to drivers and support for linux. Unfortunatly for ATI it took AMD to make it happen  The proprietary drivers are working and the open source drivers are in rapid development. I don't think it will be long before both are production quality. I have not spent a lot of time testing blenders functions with the new grapics card but I have not seen any more problems. Ill let you all know if something shows up.
    
    It looks like us blenderheads finally have a choice when it comes to graphics cards. Even for Linux.
    
    Happy blendering.

So @rdo3 (rdo3) replied

    try running the apricot game demo and see if it crashes you out. i can run other glsl blends fine but for some reason apricot crashes blender in vista.

After which, @kay_Eva (kay_Eva) added

    yes post your apricot benchmark scores plz
    
    thanks

So @free_ality (free_ality) replied

    @rdo3: I had that problem as well, but for now I'm assuming its because my gfx card is a piece of junk. I just ordered a new one(NVidia 8500 GT, should get here on friday), and I'll go ahead and post how that works out.
    
    @cinmay: Thats awesome! I was thinking of getting an ATI card due to the price, but Id heard so much about the Blender issues that I passed it up. Good to know they're finally on the way to becoming an option.

Then @san (san) said

    Cool cinmay! Glad you shared that info, and that the 4870 works for you. I've also been an Nvidia-guy because of their Linux/OpenGL support, but I'm sure that my next gfx card will be from ATi (but not for a while, yet). My experiences with supporting ATi FireGL rendernodes on linux were not pleasant, compared to Nvidia, and the only good experiences I had with ATi, were with the open source ati driver (worked better on my work laptop than the FireGL-drivers, and perfectly on my Linux iBook G4 w. Radeon 9200 chip). Thinking of open drivers for R700+ just makes me smile. A working FireGL driver with **good** OpenGL support will be just fine in the meantime 
    
    Hope you'll share more good ATi/Linux/Blender experiences, cinmay!

After which, @cinmay (cinmay) added

    Thanks  I have a lot of work to do just now but a test of the Apricot project is on my to do lits… Ill post what I find but it will probably bee some days before I get around to it. I just have to finish my current deadline (that was last Thursday  )

To which @Jogai (Jogai) replied

    Thanx for the useful information. When u use portage in gentoo the blender shortcut is already windowless.

So @drdespair (drdespair) replied

    I am having real problems with display, blender runs fine in full screen mode, but it completely messes up the rest of my desktop, I cant see any other window, althought I know that I have tabbed out, and its a flashing mess for the -W option, and the -p option has the blender window pop in and out of existance.

@cinmay (cinmay) replied

    drdespair:
    
    > I am having real problems with display, blender runs fine in full screen mode, but it completely messes up the rest of my desktop, I cant see any other window, althought I know that I have tabbed out, and its a flashing mess for the -W option, and the -p option has the blender window pop in and out of existance.
    
    Hmm…  try changing the -p options. (From blender -h)
    
    > -p <sx> <sy> <w> <h> Open with lower left corner at <sx>, <sy>  
    >  and width and height <w>, <h>
    
    If it pops out of exitence try changing the 2 first numbers. “blender -p 10 10 1024 768” works fine for me. but try changing 10 and 10 to something else and see if it doesn't work for you.

To which @Surt (Surt) replied

    drdespair:
    
    > I am having real problems with display, blender runs fine in full screen mode, but it completely messes up the rest of my desktop, I cant see any other window, althought I know that I have tabbed out, and its a flashing mess for the -W option, and the -p option has the blender window pop in and out of existance.
    
    If you've got compiz running try disabling it. I found I had to do that to use blender on my HD3200.
    
    I was tempted to get myself an ATI HD4850 but I had so much trouble with my (integrated) ATI HD3200 with propriety drivers in linux that I went with a Nvidia 9600GSO instead with propriety drivers and my linux experience has since been flawless.

After which, @drdespair (drdespair) added

    Any updates on this? Even with the latest 8.8 I am still getting the distortions unless using the W or p flags, disabling compiz dosnt seem to help. Sometime if I fill the screen it does it also, resizing it down seem to revert it back to normal, but not all the time.

After which, @digipix3d (digipix3d) added

    I have trouble with Catalyst 8.8 too. May be in the end of the year, the Mesa driver with support the Radeon HD 2000/3000/4000 series.
    
    http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NjY3OQ

So @Buttons (Buttons) replied

    Try going into administration (I forget what tab it is)… whatever. Find something called Apperance (this is Ubuntu 8.04 I'm speaking of BTW) and click it. You'll find a effects tab or something, it's the tab to the right, and you can go there and disable all desktop effects, and also re-enable them with ease. Sorry for the terrible instructions, just find “Apperance” and look around… This should fix the scrambled screens, I hope.
    
    I have a HD4850, and I FINALLY got Blender to run. It works well. EXCEPT FOR, when I enter particle mode Blender crashes with a “Segmentation Fault.” (No I didn't run out of RAM.) I'm not the only one having this issue, although the other post I found on this subject involved 2.46, I'm using 2.47. Funny thing is, I can get Blender to run well in both Windows and Ubuntu, but both will crash instantly when I enter particle mode. Hmmmmm…

Then @digipix3d (digipix3d) said

    Hi all!!
    
    The latest ATI driver 9.3 SOLVED problems with Blender!!
    
    I´m using that and Blender are running with Compiz ON on my Ubuntu 8.10!!

Then @yellow (yellow) said

    I've been using Linux for 8 yrs plus now and NVidia all the way (ever since prop drivers were available) without wishing to turn this into a ati v NVidia thing, personally I couldn't give a f–k if ati is getting as good or even surpassing Nvidia for Linux, there are enough lame ass manufacturers out there not prepared to support their hardware on Linux and ATI is one of them. NVidia for me for years to come.  Sorry for the mini rant but I'm never buying ATI, jeez they couldn't even stick to the OpenGL spec without shortcutting to eek out a bit extra performance at the expense of compatibility. T-ssers. 
    
    cinmay, my rant's not aimed at you, maybe things are getting better and good to hear you are having good luck but…


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