X freeze with proprietary fglrx driver on radeon HD 5970

[henry wasker <henry.wasker@gmail.com>]

Hi,

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