Dual screen issues with Radeon X1250 on HP t5730

[Jeffrey Langerak]

Hi all,

I have a HP t5730 thin client, lightly converted to a fat client sporting the following specs:

AMD Turion X2 TL-58 1,9GHz CPU
2GB 800MHz RAM
32MB Radeon X1250 GPU
8GB DOM flash disk

OS'es tested:
Ubuntu 12.04
Ubuntu 14.04
Ubuntu 14.10
Bodhi Linux (testing)
Fedora 20
Manjaro 20 (KDE and XFCE edition)
Point Linux (stable and testing)
Linux Mint 17.1 (XFCE and KDE edition)
Windows 7
Windows 8.1

Based on these specs this makes the device perfect for running Linux and is running well. But...

Using Windows 7 and 8.1 on the HP works as expected using 1 monitor or 2 monitors using the old Catalyst driver from Vista supplied by AMD.

When using one of the mentioned Linux systems it works as expected by using 1 monitor and attaching a 2nd monitor will work but only in mirroring mode. When I select that I want to extend the desktop indeed extends but the output on both screens is completely garbled and completely unusable, the strange part is that my cursor is the only thing being correctly rendered and works on the extended desktop. The fun fact is that the symptom with the garbled screen is happening on all tested Linux systems and the garbling looks exactly the same, I'm suspecting a driver issue of config issue here.

I've tried the radeonhd and radeon driver and both have the same issue, I've even tried using a custom xorg.conf file with additional tweaks and settings, even enabling or disabling compositing did not make a difference and switching between rendering methods EXA and XAA resulted in the same garbled output.

My custom xorg.conf is below:

Section "ServerLayout"
   Identifier   "Main Layout"
   Screen      "RadeonHD Screen"
   InputDevice   "USB Mouse"
   InputDevice   "Built-in Keyboard"
   Option           "AIGLX" "true"
EndSection

Section "Files"
   FontPath   "/usr/share/fonts/X11/Type1"
   FontPath   "/usr/share/fonts/X11/misc"
EndSection

Section "Module"
        Load  "i2c"
        Load  "bitmap"
        Load  "ddc"
        Load  "dri"
        Load  "extmod"
        Load  "freetype"
        Load  "glx"
        Load  "int10"
        Load  "vbe"
EndSection

Section "ServerFlags"
   Option      "EstimateSizesAggresively"   "4"
   Option      "AIGLX"      "on"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
   Identifier   "USB Mouse"
   Driver      "mouse"
   Option      "ZAxisMapping"   "4 5"
   Option      "Protocol"   "ImPS/2"
   Option      "Device"   "/dev/input/mice"
   Option      "Emulate3Buttons"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
   Identifier   "Built-in Keyboard"
   Driver      "keyboard"
   Option      "AutoRepeat"   "300 40"
   Option      "XkbModel"   "pc105"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
   Identifier   "Built-in Monitor"
   Option      "ModelName"   "Built-in HP Monitor"
   Option         "AddARGBGLXVisuals" "True"
EndSection

Section "Device"
   Identifier   "ATI Radeon Xpress 1250"
   Driver       "radeon"
   Option       "DRI"
   Option       "DRI2"
   Option       "ColorTiling"                   "on"
   Option       "ColorTiling2D"                 "on"
   Option       "EnablePageFlip"                "on"
   Option       "AccelMethod"                   "EXA"
   Option       "GARTSize"                      "128"
   Option       "SwapbuffersWait"               "off"
   Option       "AccelDFS"                      "on"
   Option       "RenderAccel"                   "on"
   Option       "NoAccel"                       "off"
   Option       "MigrationHeuristics"           "greedy"
   Option       "SWcursor"                      "off"
   Option       "HWCursor"                      "on"
   Option       "DisableGLXRootClipping"        "on"
   Option       "EXAPixmaps"                    "on"
   Option       "EXAVSync"                      "off"
   Option       "AllowGLXWithComposite"         "on"
   Option       "DynamicClocks"                 "true"
   Option       "XAANoOffscreenPixmaps"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
   Identifier   "RadeonHD Screen"
   Device      "ATI Radeon Xpress 1250"
   Monitor      "Built-in Monitor"
   DefaultDepth   24
   SubSection "Display"
      ViewPort   0 0
      Depth      24
   EndSubSection
EndSection

Section "DRI"
   Mode   0666
EndSection

Section "Extensions"
   Option      "Composite"   "Enable"
EndSection

Some settings may be completely useless, if there are any specific settings that I need to set up here, please let me know, specially if it's required for multi display setup.

I've examined the Xorg.log.0 file as well, but the output of the log is completely the same as using 1 screen, only change is that it's detecting my 2nd screen as well and is not showing any errors related to rendering or issues with the screens itself.

I know the GPU is rather crappy, but should be able to perform this kind of task, are there more people who are having these issues or have a solution to this issue?

The monitors being used are 2 LG 24MP55 screens. I've tried other displays from Samsung as well and resulted in the same garbled screen.

If more information is required, let me know so I can supply it!

Thanks in advance and kind regards,

Jeffrey Langerak