On Sat, Sep 19, 2015 at 07:48:12AM +1000, [email protected] wrote: > The machine itself is new (at the time, its nearly 18 months old > now, ie the problem is that old) using a Gigabyte Sabertooth X79 > motherboard and an AMD 7870 GPU running the Radeon OS driver. Debian > has been updated a number of times without any improvement. Note > WindowsXP runs completely OK on the machine so the hardware is OK.
note that the radeon driver is part of the kernel - a debian update that doesn't involve a kernel upgrade will make no difference to the radeon driver. you could try running a new kernel....if you're running stock debian stable or testing, you have an ancient kernel. if you don't want to compile your own, liquorix make quite decent newish kernels for debian. they currently have a patched 4.1 kernel in their repo. http://liquorix.net/ according to their web site, "Liquorix is a distro kernel replacement built using the best configuration and kernel sources for desktop, multimedia, and gaming workloads." i use their kernels on some of my machines (notably my myth boxes), and they work fine. they install directly on testing or sid but their web site says they may need recompiling for stable - in which case, the benefit over just downloading and compling the latest kernel source is the debianised source package and being able to use standard debian package management tools to manage the kernel versions, which is a lot less of a PITA than DIY. > I am on the verge of dumping AMD64 all together, anyone have any > ideas? Maybe Debian AMD64 does not like the Sabertooth X79, I have > had a similiar situation on the system this post is being writen on. your problems are extremely unlikely to have anything at all to do with the fact that your system is amd64. amd64 linux has been rock-solid reliable for years and, since it gets far more development effort than i386 these days, is likely to be far more reliable than i386. you probably just have one or more pieces of shit or broken/unreliable hardware - it could be your motherboard, your cpu, your ram, your psu or anything else. it's far more likely to be your radeon 7870 (and/or the driver) than anything else. unfortunately, the open source radeon driver is far from perfect (and the catalyst proprietary driver can be worse) another possibility is your power supply - the 7870 uses a lot of power and generates a lot of heat (max TDP of 175W), if your PSU can't *reliably* supply at least 400W (your motherboard, cpu, disks, fans, and everything else are going to use *at least* 150-200W) then that could the source of your lockups. note that cheap shit PSUs are often incapable of delivering anything even close to their rated spec, and often can't deliver good, clean, regulated power. if you have one of these, throw it out and replace it with a name-brand 500+ Watt PSU. btw, one of the problems that the radeon OS driver has had in the past is an inability to do proper power management on various cards. this may or may not still be true for the 7870....you can probably hear this on your system if the GPU fans are always on at their fastest, noisiest speed under linux. you said that the lockups more likely to happen if you're doing something that makes intensive use of the GPU - watching videos, playing games, googleearth or other heavily graphical apps. in that case, it's almost certain to be the 7870 GPU, the driver, or the PSU. i'd guess it's most likely the driver. second most likely, the PSU. you could test this by tring a different card, different driver (i.e. catalyst rather than OS radeon), or swapping the PSU. if the crashes go away, problem solved. if not, then further investigation/testing is required....try swapping the RAM, for example, or installing the memtest86+ package and rebooting into it (it will be an option on the grub menu). Finally, except for your requirement for google earth, i'd be inclined to say that the 7870 is probably massive overkill for your needs - even a $35 nvidia GF210 is capable of normal desktop use, including playing videos, without struggling (and with a TDP or 31W rather than 175). similarly, a radeon 5450 has a TDP of 19W and costs about $29. AFAIK, the open source nouveau driver for nvidia cards is adequate for desktop use and playing videos (but i still use the proprietary nvidia driver on my systems). in my experience, the most reliable and full-featured linux graphics option is still an nvidia card with the nvidia proprietary driver. i wish it were different, but it isn't. craig -- craig sanders <[email protected]> _______________________________________________ luv-main mailing list [email protected] http://lists.luv.asn.au/listinfo/luv-main
