Ubuntu thinks I have another type of GPU?

[Jamie_Edwards]

Hi guys,

Here's my first post on here

first off, my specs:

Mobo: ASUS M4A78LT-M LE
CPU: AMD Athlon II X2
RAM: 2GiB
GPU: VTX Radeon HD 5450
OS: Ubuntu 12.04 LTS

OK, got that out of the way here's my problem:

As you can see above I my GPU should be a Radeon 5450, but after I fresh installed 12.04, things started going wrong. First of all I had to actually re-install the OS twice after I tried installing Catalyst Control Centre, which then left me booting up till the Splash screen.

After that I didn't bother trying to reinstall the official drivers, until now, only I know that it will end up breaking my OS again, so I did some digging in the terminal giving Ubuntu this command:

sudo lshw -C video

Which came out with this:

*-display               
       description: VGA compatible controller
       product: Manhattan [Mobility Radeon HD 5430 Series]
       vendor: Hynix Semiconductor (Hyundai Electronics)
       physical id: 0
       bus info: pci@0000:01:00.0
       version: 00
       width: 64 bits
       clock: 33MHz
       capabilities: pm pciexpress msi vga_controller bus_master cap_list rom
       configuration: driver=radeon latency=0
       resources: irq:42 memory:d0000000-dfffffff memory:feae0000-feafffff ioport:d000(size=256) memory:feac0000-feadffff

Now that can't be right, to me it telling me that I have a Mobility Radeon HD 5430, so I found another command to try to back up what this one said:

lspci | more

Came out with this:

01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] nee ATI Manhatta
n [Mobility Radeon HD 5430 Series]

OK so Ubuntu thinks I have a completely different GPU to the one I have bought.

I did some digging into that card to find it's a Netbook/Laptop card, and I'm running on a Desktop so this can't be right at all.

Here's my question.

How do I tell Ubuntu I'm using the 5450 and not the 5430? Or how do I configure Ubuntu to use the 5450?

Thanks.

Jamie.

 

[I.M.O.G.]

Jamie, I think the card is recognized in a weird way, but it doesn't reflect an issue that will impact operation compared to normal functionality on the open source gpu drivers.

I know this doesn't exactly answer your question, but wanted to share my initial thoughts based on past experience on Linux.

Other than the model name detection, are there symptoms you are having issues with?

Welcome to the forums man. Lots of people around here who know their Linux stuff very well. I learned everything I know startig from their advice, and breaking a lot of stuff.

 

[Jamie_Edwards]

Jamie, I think the card is recognized in a weird way, but it doesn't reflect an issue that will impact operation compared to normal functionality on the open source gpu drivers.

I know this doesn't exactly answer your question, but wanted to share my initial thoughts based on past experience on Linux.

Other than the model name detection, are there symptoms you are having issues with?

Welcome to the forums man. Lots of people around here who know their Linux stuff very well. I learned everything I know startig from their advice, and breaking a lot of stuff.

Thanks dude, Your right I haven't had much of a problem with it in the sense that the open source drivers have done what I've asked, specially as I'm running a dual monitor setup.

The reason why I need to official drivers is for two reasons, first off Ubuntu also thinks my 19" is a 32" ( don't know what gives there, but I have heard it's because I'm using the HDMI interface which isn't as reliable as the DVI ) so getting the official may solve this problem ( or just switching to DVI )

And second is that Blender 3D is now able to use the GPU for rendering instead of the CPU ( which is apparently a faster render method ) I want to be able to use this capability, but it needs the official driver in order to work :L

Sorry for the essay XD

 

[I.M.O.G.]

If i follow correctly, you are having an issue with the official drivers loading and you think that may be because of the model detection?

Essays are no problem, that's more the norm here compared to other forums - we like to get detailed.

 

[Jamie_Edwards]

If i follow correctly, you are having an issue with the official drivers loading and you think that may be because of the model detection?

Essays are no problem, that's more the norm here compared to other forums - we like to get detailed.

I'm guessing it's one/ one of the problems, it seems that when I install CCC and reboot, everything hangs at the Ubuntu Splash screen, so that could mean Ubuntu is getting confused because it's been compiled as desktop edition, but the CCC driver is telling it that it's been installed onto a netbook/laptop.

Or that could be completely wrong :L either way I'm completely perplexed in how to solve this

 

[Shelnutt2]

I'm guessing it's one/ one of the problems, it seems that when I install CCC and reboot, everything hangs at the Ubuntu Splash screen, so that could mean Ubuntu is getting confused because it's been compiled as desktop edition, but the CCC driver is telling it that it's been installed onto a netbook/laptop.

Or that could be completely wrong :L either way I'm completely perplexed in how to solve this

How are you installing the CCC? You need the fglrx drivers to not just the ccc. You should install it from the hardware drivers manager (I think that's what it's called). If you are installing it from there and that's causing the boot freezing, try downloading and installing the .deb it from the amd website.

Lastly you could also just try the always improving open source radeon (xserver-xorg-video-ati) driver. That's what you're using right now but I recommend switching to the xorg-edgers ppa to get the latest and great.
https://launchpad.net/~xorg-edgers/

 

[Jamie_Edwards]

How are you installing the CCC? You need the fglrx drivers to not just the ccc. You should install it from the hardware drivers manager (I think that's what it's called). If you are installing it from there and that's causing the boot freezing, try downloading and installing the .deb it from the amd website.

Lastly you could also just try the always improving open source radeon (xserver-xorg-video-ati) driver. That's what you're using right now but I recommend switching to the xorg-edgers ppa to get the latest and great.
https://launchpad.net/~xorg-edgers/

I've tried doing both, I think Radeon is the driver I'm currently using already

 

[Bobnova]

What I've had to do a couple times with both GPU manufacturers is install the driver and then delete (from CLI on a safe-boot-to-CLI or whatever they call it) xorg.conf
Or just rename it, then you can at least get back to where you were later.
The driver installs sometimes add things to that file without subtracting other things I guess. In any case when it tries to boot it'll start X and then realize that it can't start X without xorg.conf and will generate a default file. That default file should work perfectly.

That's my experience anyway.

 

[Jamie_Edwards]

I think I've installed the the xorg-edger thing, but I can't tell :L

WHen I mess around with files within the OS, or with any of the apps like sciTE, I normally change the original file to say xorg.conf.old so that if I do break something I can just change the .old file back to the original.

 

[I.M.O.G.]

I use the .old extension as well. It is good practice. I've smoked config files so many times, and thats saved my butt from bigger headaches.

Can you do "sudo lshw -C video" again and show us the output? That will allow us to confirm which driver you are running currently, and if you got the "xorg-edgers thingy" going.

 

[Jamie_Edwards]

I use the .old extension as well. It is good practice. I've smoked config files so many times, and thats saved my butt from bigger headaches.

Can you do "sudo lshw -C video" again and show us the output? That will allow us to confirm which driver you are running currently, and if you got the "xorg-edgers thingy" going.

here's the output of lshw:

*-display               
       description: VGA compatible controller
       product: Manhattan [Mobility Radeon HD 5430 Series]
       vendor: Hynix Semiconductor (Hyundai Electronics)
       physical id: 0
       bus info: pci@0000:01:00.0
       version: 00
       width: 64 bits
       clock: 33MHz
       capabilities: vga_controller bus_master cap_list rom
       configuration: driver=radeon latency=0
       resources: irq:42 memory:d0000000-dfffffff memory:feae0000-feafffff ioport:d000(size=256) memory:feac0000-feadffff

In all honesty I haven't a clue to whether I have xorg-edger or not, any idea how I test that?

And I actually learnt using .old in the same way XD I use it especially when I'm programming, and change something within a header file, I always change the extension of the original, and keep that one until I'm happy and certain the new one is working, and then delete it

 

[I.M.O.G.]

It lists driver there as radeon. Is that fglrx? Asking the peanut gallery here.

I expected that to say something different if you had the driver set.

 

[Shelnutt2]

It lists driver there as radeon. Is that fglrx? Asking the peanut gallery here.

I expected that to say something different if you had the driver set.

Nope that's the xorg-video-ati driver. Which is the one he was suppose to install with the xorg-edgers. The open source ati driver is actually pretty good. Not perfect, not feature parity with the frglx driver but it's getting close. Also since he was having problems with the frglx driver I thought it'd be best to try a newer open source driver and see how that goes.

As far as detecting as the wrong card, it seems the 5450 and 5430 are the same cards just with different clocks. Its likely that your exact pcid might not be registered and thus with detection it's guessing it as a 5430. Generally when software has to guess which card it is, and it could be one of two or so, they pick the lowest card because each card higher will work, but no necessarily the other way around. For example in wine, with directx gpu reporting. They report 8500 and 8400's as 8400 because the two are similar except in number of cuda cores. So by reporting a 8400 the 8500 will run fine. If they reported an 8500 however a program might try to access cuda cores that don't exist on the 8400.

http://products.amd.com/en-us/Mobil....1+Surround+Sound&f17=True&f18=True&f19=True&

http://products.amd.com/en-us/Mobil....1+Surround+Sound&f17=True&f18=True&f19=True&

 

[Jamie_Edwards]

I see how that works, and it stops things from going terribly wrong, but the problem still remains, I still can't get the official drivers to work without breaking anything, and I'm still not able to use blenders gpu rendering capabilities

 

[Jamie_Edwards]

I think I actually have the xorg-edger thingy xD I actually took notice to my login screen, and well I noticed that the wallpaper on my 19" is no longer in the top left hand quarter of my screen any more, it's actually covering the whole screen as should be.

I've had that problem since the initial install of 12.04 ( which was a few hours after it was released ) so thanks for that! As for having my actual gpu, well thats still an annoying problem, but oh well cant win everything XD

Although, the wallpaper gets bigger after I change it, then reboot, any idea's? This problem is really annoying as I can't use my favourite wallpaper