amd-catalyst interview questions
Top amd-catalyst frequently asked interview questions
Eyefinity is great for games but extended desktop is better for normal work. How do I set up quick switching between those two modes?
I've heard that it can be achieved using "Profiles" in Catalyst Control Center - I've found something called "Presets" in the latest 11.x version but can't figure it out (settings not being stored and applied properly). Can someone provided step by step instructions please?
Source: (StackOverflow)
When I run Photoshop CS4 on Windows 7, other running programs don't receive the ESC key (I noticed in PuTTY and Total Commander's Lister). When I close Photoshop, they start receiving the ESC key again.
- I tried multiple keyboard layouts, no change.
- Photoshop is an out-of-box install, no settings changed
- I exported the list of keybindings from Photoshop (ctrl-alt-shift-k) and ESC isn't used in any combination
Why is this? Is there any way to disable or bypass this so that I could use other programs normally?
Source: (StackOverflow)
Just installed Windows 8 and downloaded the Catalyst version which ATI website recommended. However it says that it can't start! My main monitor is connected to my PC via a HDMI cable and the display is not full screen (there is a blank padding area around display). Usually I change overscan/underscan settings in CCC to reset it but since I have no access to it, I wanted to know if there is any way I can change it without CCC (through registry maybe?) Thanks.
Source: (StackOverflow)
I have a dual-boot Windows 7 64 bit/Linux 64 bit machine that uses ATI's Catalyst drivers. Sometimes I attach it to a 1080p LCD TV over HDMI. ATI is daft enough to provide a border to account for overscan.
I'm using an LCD TV. No overscan, or it looks like crap because the pixel mapping is not 1:1. How do I disable this driver "feature" in Windows? in Linux?
Source: (StackOverflow)
I can't get to install the proprietary driver "fglrx" with ATI Radeon HD 5970 on Debian Squeeze.
After the installation with ATI Catalyst 12-8 and a reboot, from the stage of GDM, the screen is freezing with a lot of little squares appearing on X, mouse is locking and total freezing of the system. I have tried with old Catalyst versions and same problems.
I would like to install the proprietary fglrx driver because I need to use bi-GPU of this card with OpenCL. With the free radeon driver, I have no problem for X but I don't have GPU support.
I also try with "module-assistant" but the issue is the same.
Here's my config :
PC : Aspire G5900-090 - Core i7-870 - 8Go - HD5970 (2048Mo)
$ lspci | grep ATI
03:00.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc Hemlock [ATI Radeon HD 5900 Series]
03:00.1 Audio device: ATI Technologies Inc Cypress HDMI Audio [Radeon HD 5800 Series]
04:00.0 Display controller: ATI Technologies Inc Hemlock [ATI Radeon HD 5900 Series]
$ uname -a
Linux sev 3.2.0-0.bpo.2-amd64 #1 SMP Sun Jun 3 21:40:57 UTC 2012 x86_64 GNU/Linux
With free radeon driver, "CLInfo" tool of ATI stream SDK makes only appear CPUs :
/opt/ati-stream-sdk-v2.1-lnx64/samples/opencl/bin/x86_64 $ ./CLInfo
Number of platforms: 1
Platform Profile: FULL_PROFILE
Platform Version: OpenCL 1.0 ATI-Stream-v2.1 (145)
Platform Name: ATI Stream
Platform Vendor: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc.
Platform Extensions: cl_khr_icd
Platform Name: ATI Stream
Number of devices: 1
Device Type: CL_DEVICE_TYPE_CPU
Device ID: 4098
Max compute units: 8
Max work items dimensions: 3
Max work items[0]: 1024
Max work items[1]: 1024
Max work items[2]: 1024
Max work group size: 1024
Preferred vector width char: 16
Preferred vector width short: 8
Preferred vector width int: 4
Preferred vector width long: 2
Preferred vector width float: 4
Preferred vector width double: 0
Max clock frequency: 1200Mhz
Address bits: 64
Max memory allocation: 1073741824
Image support: No
Max size of kernel argument: 4096
Alignment (bits) of base address: 1024
Minimum alignment (bytes) for any datatype: 128
Single precision floating point capability
Denorms: Yes
Quiet NaNs: Yes
Round to nearest even: Yes
Round to zero: No
Round to +ve and infinity: No
IEEE754-2008 fused multiply-add: No
Cache type: Read/Write
Cache line size: 0
Cache size: 0
Global memory size: 3221225472
Constant buffer size: 65536
Max number of constant args: 8
Local memory type: Global
Local memory size: 32768
Profiling timer resolution: 1
Device endianess: Little
Available: Yes
Compiler available: Yes
Execution capabilities:
Execute OpenCL kernels: Yes
Execute native function: No
Queue properties:
Out-of-Order: No
Profiling : Yes
Platform ID: 0x7f6f1e600228
Name: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7 CPU 870 @ 2.93GHz
Vendor: GenuineIntel
Driver version: 1.1
Profile: FULL_PROFILE
Version: OpenCL 1.0 ATI-Stream-v2.1 (145)
Extensions: cl_khr_icd cl_amd_fp64 cl_khr_global_int32_base_atomics cl_khr_global_int32_extended_atomics cl_khr_local_int32_base_atomics cl_khr_local_int32_extended_atomics cl_khr_int64_base_atomics cl_khr_int64_extended_atomics cl_khr_byte_addressable_store cl_khr_gl_sharing cl_ext_device_fission cl_amd_device_attribute_query cl_amd_printf
Passed!
Has anyone already got this problem of freezing with the fglrx proprietary driver on Radeon HD 5970 ? Could it be an issue with my screen or with frequencies ?
Any help would really be appreciated
Source: (StackOverflow)
Is the Catalyst Control Center (CCC) that comes with AMD graphic driver necessary?
I have tried using the driver alone without installing CCC and there has been no problem so far, so is it necessary?
(I'm using a small laoptop mainly for office work, so no gaming required)
Source: (StackOverflow)
I have bought a new video card based on the ATI Radeon HD 5670 chipset.
I couldn't make it work with the latest ATI Catalyst drivers found on their website, only the drivers found on the CD delivered with the card worked.
How can I know the version of Catalyst that is installed on my PC (running Windows 7 64-bits)?
The ATI Catalyst Control Center returns the following information:
Driver Packaging Version 8.673-091110a-092263C
Provider ATI Technologies Inc.
2D Driver Version 8.01.01.973
2D Driver File Path /REGISTRY/MACHINE/SYSTEM/ControlSet001/Control/CLASS/{4D36E968-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}/0000
Direct3D Version 8.14.10.0708
OpenGL Version 6.14.10.9120
Catalyst™ Control Center Version 2009.1110.2225.40230
I do not recognize anything pointing to a "marketing version". The website says the current version of Catalyst is 10.2.
Source: (StackOverflow)
I re-installed Windows 7 a few days ago on my computer and I've noticed that the Ati drivers are using too much RAM and CPU.
There have been instances where ccc.exe would use around 4-5GB of RAM out of a total of 8GB and shoot to ~80% CPU usage. I terminated that process and now atieclxx.exe is using 3.5GB of RAM(cpu is at ~19%). I'm using the latest drivers available. I just re-started Catalyst Control Center and it shot to ~60% CPU usage in a matter seconds.
The specifications of my computer are:
Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 @ 2.4GHz
8GB RAM
2 x Ati HD3850 512mb using crossfire(I don't know if it makes a difference but I'm only using 1 bridge)
CCC 12.6
I've noticed many cases of similar problems while searching the net but I couldn't find a solution.Does anyone have any idea what the problem might be?
Thanks a lot.
Updates:
If ccc.exe is terminated atieclxx.exe starts using too much RAM and CPU instead(~20-25% CPU and ~0.5+ GB of RAM)
I tried re-installing the drivers as climenole suggested but it didn't fix the problem.
Restarting fixes the problem temporarily.
EDIT:
I disabled Catalyst on startup and stopped AMD External Services utility and everything seems normal. It turns out that stopping AMD External Services Utility would only cause problems if hotkeys or Overclocking were enabled so I just went to msconfig->Services and stopped it.
Thanks a lot for helping out.
Source: (StackOverflow)
I have a Lenovo T400 laptop with an ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3400 Series video card, using the ATI Catalyst Control Center to span my Windows XP display over the laptop display and a Dell flatpanel LCD.
This works fine, but I'm used to NVIDIA multi-desktop that let me control the "Start bar" to either exist on only 1 screen... be duplicated on both, or (what I want), stretched across both.
Is this possible with the ATI card/Catalyst Software? If not, are there any utilities out there that will handle this for me?
That is, what I have:
+----------+ +----------+
| | | |
| Lenovo | | Dell |
| (primary)| | |
+----------+ | |
|Start Tray| | |
+----------+ +----------+
And this is what I want:
+----------+ +----------+
| | | |
| Lenovo | | Dell |
| (primary)| | |
+----------+ +----------+
|Start | | Tray|
+----------+ +----------+
Source: (StackOverflow)
When I put my laptop to hibernate or sleep while plugged in and I resume from hibernate or sleep on battery, the backlight is off. A faint image exists on the display, but is nearly impossible to read, suggesting a video driver problem. When I change GPUs using AMD PowerXpress switchable graphics, the backlight comes back on. Why would this occur, and how do I fix it?
The system is a custom-built HP Pavilion dv6z-3000 Select Edition laptop with Windows 7 Home Premium. There are two GPUs on this system, an ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4250 for low power and an ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5650 for high performance. The system is running an OEM version of the Catalyst drivers that appears to be version 10.3, based on the internal version number supplied by HP. Would I lose any OEM features in upgrading the Catalyst drivers (which may be necessary to fix the problem)?
Edit: I've updated Catalyst, and the problem seems to be gone. I can't say for sure at this time, so I'm not posting this as an answer. I'll update the question as needed. If anyone can reproduce this, let me know.
Edit 2: Unfortunately, the problem still recurred on me at least once. What exactly is the problem?
Edit 3: This problem only occurs when the system is set to use the high-performance HD 5650 GPU. PowerPlay is disabled. Any ideas? The problem is still unresolved.
For now, an answer will remain accepted, but if anyone can give a better answer, I will gladly accept the better answer.
Source: (StackOverflow)
Is there a way to install the latest Catalyst drivers on my Sony VAIO (VGN-SR21M, Mobility Radeon HD 3450)? The ATI installer refuses to install it. The AMD website states that for Sony VAIO notebooks I have to use OEM drivers, but the drivers on the Sony website are out of date.
Source: (StackOverflow)
I have a Dell Studio XPS 1645. Since upgrading to Windows 8, it will always display the following error message "kdbsync.exe has stopped working". How can I resolve this problem?
Source: (StackOverflow)
I have two monitors on my desk and a TV mounted above my desk; I often like to plug my HDMI from the TV into my PC to enjoy watching TV via Plex and other sorts of things. However, I have a couple issues. My TV and monitor have different over scanning options which cause things to be chopped off. I have to manually adjust this setting in my ATI Control Panel every time and it's a bit of a pain.
Is there a way to automate this process? (Detect when a display has changed) to launch Plex and change the display settings?
Source: (StackOverflow)
I've recently purchased a new computer (around July 2010) and I've been having some problems with proprietary video drivers on Linux.
The hardware is:
- Video: ATI/AMD Radeon HD 5870 (XFX HD-587X-ZNFC);
- Motherboard: Asus P7P55D-E Deluxe;
- Processor: Intel i5 750;
- Memory: Kingston Hyperx KHX1600C8D3K2/4GX (2x - 8GB Total);
- Power Supply: XFX P1-750B-CAG9;
There are no overclocks, not even the memories (they are at 1333mhz due processor memory controller limitation).
The operational system is a homebrew Linux distribution with the following software:
- Architecture: x86_64 (multilib)
- Kernel: 2.6.35.10
- Xorg: 7.5
- Window Manager: wmii-3.9.2
- Video Driver: ATI/AMD Catalyst 10.12
There are no desktop effects programs like compiz fusion or beryl.
The problems:
With ATI/AMD proprietary driver, some applications are with slow draw/redraw, and, the same applications make the driver to increase the card clocks to maximum (0% gpu activity, only the clocks are increased). I dunno exactly how to describe the slow draw but I'll list some applications and symptoms.
xterm
- Flickers a lot when drawing continuous output;
- When I'm in a workspace with fullscreen xterm, The gpu load stays at 12% in idle, and, with smaller xterm, smaller GPU load.
"aticonfig --odgc" output:
Default Adapter - ATI Radeon HD 5800 Series
Core (MHz) Memory (MHz)
Current Clocks : 157 300
Current Peak : 850 1200
Configurable Peak Range : [600-900] [900-1300]
GPU load : 12%
"aticonfig --pplib-cmd 'get activity'" output:
Current Activity is Core Clock: 157MHZ
Memory Clock: 300MHZ
VDDC: 950
Activity: 12 percent
Performance Level: 0
Bus Speed: 5000
Bus Lanes: 16
Maximum Bus Lanes: 16
More examples:
- mplayer time info flickers on terminal;
- "find /" flickers a lot (It takes some time to stop with control-c. But, If I change the workspace or put some window upon it, just after the control-c, it stops instantly);
- "cat somefile" if the file is big (Xorg.0.log for example) it takes some time to display;
vim and less (ex: find / | less) don't have much problems, just a little flicker when scrolling;
mplayer (no gui)
- Slow reproduction and seek with -vo x11;
- Tearing with -vo xv;
- Time info flickers on terminal (xterm consequence);
gvim
- A little slow draw when scrolling with page up/page down;
Firefox
- Slow draw/redraw on some pages like www.boadica.com.br and sometimes on www.youtube.com with flash enable (never noticed on many pages);
- Corruptions when informative yellow boxes are showing and scroll the page (an gray box appears at the same place of the informative box);
"Wallpaper"
- After minimizing a fullscreen window or changing to an empty workspace it takes some time to redraw wallpaper.
"Video Card"
- The core and memory clocks are increased with the events described above and on other situations like change workspace (even without wallpaper), minimize, maximize or move a window;
Idle clocks: Core: 157mhz, Memory: 300mhz
Full clocks: Core: 850mhz, Memory: 1200mhz
xpdf
display (from ImageMagick)
- Slow menus and sometimes slow image redraw;
Programs that I use and are apparently without problems:
- gimp;
- pidgin;
- mplayer (-vo gl, gl2);
- blender;
- unigine heaven (better fps than on Windows);
- doom3;
- tibia;
- penumbra overture;
- amnesia the dark descent (wine);
- diablo 2 (wine);
No problems on Windows (Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit).
And special note to this:
Full desktop effects from Debian and Ubuntu gnome appearance cpanel don't cause ANY problems, even the core and memory clocks don't increase when change workspace, minimize, maximize or move a window.
What I've tested:
Unsuccessful tests:
- Tested all drivers versions since 10.6 (released approximately when I've installed the first slackware in this PC);
- Tested other video card - ATI/AMD Radeon HD 5570 (XFX HD-557X-ZHF2);
- Tested some options on xorg.conf and that I've found googling (some of these options are commented on my xorg.conf. I'll send the links at the end of post);
- Tested some patches like 107_fedora_dont_fill_bg_none.patch and xserver-xorg-backclear.patch from Arch Linux Catalyst page (https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/ATI_Catalyst);
Tested other distros and software versions:
- Tested XORG-7.6 on my own distribution;
- Tested Debian Squeeze (testing - from 2010-12-20);
- Tested Ubuntu Marverick (10.10);
- Tested Slackware 13.1;
Distros info:
Architecture: i386
Debian and Ubuntu with all default software (kernel, gnome, xorg, drivers);
Slackware with Catalyst from AMD page and default window managers like: fvwm, xfce, and my own build of wmii;
Successful tests:
- Tested other video card (only on my homebrew distro) - NVIDIA Geforce 7300GS with driver 260.19.29;
That didn't shown the slow draw problems, but that card is a bit obsolete, so, dunno if that lacks features like the dynamic clocks. I don't dispose of other video cards like nvidia g/gt/gts/gtx 200~400~500 or Radeon HD 3000/4000/6000 to make more tests.
Tested other hardware:
- Video: ATI/AMD Radeon HD 5570 (XFX HD-557X-ZHF2);
- Motherboard: Intel DG31PR;
- Processor: Core 2 Duo E6750;
Software for that hardware:
Fresh install of same distros (except for the mine) with same program versions;
That video card (HD 5570) were full time at the maximum clocks (something like 500/750, don't remember) in all the operational systems (Windows XP and Windows 7 too), but it didn't shown the same problems that I have here.
I've googled a lot about common problems with ATI/AMD proprietary drivers for Linux and didn't find similar problems, except by the Firefox corruptions, that the solutions were to disable ATI Direct2DAccel and use XAA. With XAA the problems persists and the other applications like pidgin and rest of Firefox showed the same problems of slow draw/redraw.
Open source Drivers:
With open source drivers (xf86-video-ati-6.13.2) I hadn't the same slow draw problems, but, had other problems, that, for now, make it no viable solution. I'll not discuss it here because this is another line of problems and will confuse everything. If it happens to be the only solution, I'll make another thread to discuss it.
Logs and Configs:
Source: (StackOverflow)
I cannot add an app to the list to manually set it to high performance (Radeon instead of Intel HD). When I browse for an exe, nothing happens, the list is still empty. So, maybe I can edit some .cfg or .ini?
UPDATE
This is not my machine, but an example of what I'm looking to do: the list with iexplore.exe is what I meant. When I click 'Browse' and choose any exe (Portal2.exe, for instance) nothing happens. The list is empty, so I cannot set mode for Portal2.exe.
Source: (StackOverflow)