Fglrx and PowerPlay
I guess I’ve found why glxgears have so low fps with fglrx. It’s because of PowerPlay.
Even when laptop is on AC power, it show me only 400+ and fps goes higher when I scroll something in Firefox =) (that’s strange)
I have turned off PowerPlay in Catalist Control Center and it gave me 4k-5k fps.
Another what I’ve found is that cpu is much cooler with fglrx (even with PowerPlay turned off) then with radeonhd. Seems radeonhd eats more cpu. I was thinking it is because of cpufreqd, but was wrong.
So, has anybody found a way of changing brightness?
This super bright screen with FullHD is driving me nuts, it makes laptop almost unusable…
PLus it shortes the lifetime of the lamp…
Anze
November 10, 2008 at 06:33
Nope, there is no war right now.
Well, top FW laptops have two lamps it’s even brighter than now =)
egaistek
November 10, 2008 at 06:54
I know is not the best solution, but you can lower the colour brightness using the Catalist control center (aticc).
I does the trick for me, until some proper brightness support is added.
miguel
November 10, 2008 at 19:48
Hi egaistek
Thats site is truly awesome! I’m going to buy FW in 2weeks.
Now it’s off topic but i didn’t know where to post this:
Is it possible to install Mac Os X on FW series ?
Answer would by much appreciated.
alexvroger
alexvroger
November 10, 2008 at 20:28
It’s possible, but probably touchpad and wireless would not work and video will be in low res =)
egaistek
November 10, 2008 at 20:30
Thanks for prompt reply! , vaio fw seems as awesome laptop to buy. I’m currently using macbook and it would be cool to be able to run osx on vaio as well.
I really love Ubuntu, and from what I’ve read on your site it seems that there are no major problems with running ubuntu on Fw. Is that correct?
alexvroger
November 10, 2008 at 20:44
Well, if brightness is not major, that is correct =)
egaistek
November 10, 2008 at 20:52
Thats great! Will buy it 11 days (when i get paid ;])
Last question (and i know its stupid)
When running windows will I be able to play any games, by that I mean: Cod4, The Witcher, TF2 etc, or nothing will work decently ?
Thanks for you awesome help!
alexvroger
November 10, 2008 at 20:58
While you in windows game will work ofcourse.
egaistek
November 10, 2008 at 21:05
Ave Cezare:
As root:
aticonfig –initial
and then
aticonfig –query-dispattrib=lvds,brightness
and then, e.g.
aticonfig –set-dispattrib=lvds,brightness:-30
Anze
November 11, 2008 at 00:10
Managed to get it to change brightness exactly once!
Now fglrx wouldn’t load any more, computer just freezes. Xorg.0.log looks absolutely fine. Drives me nuts!
Anze
November 11, 2008 at 13:21
Anze, thanks for the tip. This works perfect for me. I have had no problems with changing multiple brightness levels and it maintains the setting across reboots.
The thing to realize is that this is still not controlling the backlight — only the brightness of the colors so there is no power savings — but my eyes appreciate it!
Tamagotono
November 13, 2008 at 13:31
Two problems:
a) the aticontrol works, but doesn’t survive sleep/wakeup cycle
b) If you fglrx refuses to wake up, even after several reboots, delete /etc/ati/amdpcsdb. It took me a long time to work this one out!
And yes, it doesn’t really change the backlight.
Anze
November 14, 2008 at 04:10
Thanks a lot!
My eyes appreciate it. I’m always on AC power, so not a big deal for me.
Cheers!
Ivo Jimenez
April 6, 2009 at 12:39