Bug 73911 - Color Banding on radeon
Summary: Color Banding on radeon
Status: RESOLVED FIXED
Alias: None
Product: DRI
Classification: Unclassified
Component: DRM/Radeon (show other bugs)
Version: unspecified
Hardware: x86-64 (AMD64) Linux (All)
: medium normal
Assignee: Default DRI bug account
QA Contact:
URL:
Whiteboard:
Keywords:
: 76884 (view as bug list)
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
Reported: 2014-01-22 03:37 UTC by Sean Rhone
Modified: 2014-07-12 12:59 UTC (History)
3 users (show)

See Also:
i915 platform:
i915 features:


Attachments
dmesg (84.00 KB, text/plain)
2014-01-22 14:00 UTC, Sean Rhone
no flags Details
Xorg.0.log (50.34 KB, text/plain)
2014-01-22 14:00 UTC, Sean Rhone
no flags Details
example-1 (116.30 KB, text/plain)
2014-01-22 14:41 UTC, Sean Rhone
no flags Details
example-1 (116.30 KB, image/jpeg)
2014-01-22 14:42 UTC, Sean Rhone
no flags Details
example-2 (102.99 KB, image/jpeg)
2014-01-22 14:43 UTC, Sean Rhone
no flags Details
testing patch (1.43 KB, patch)
2014-02-03 20:44 UTC, Alex Deucher
no flags Details | Splinter Review
testing patch (495 bytes, patch)
2014-04-01 21:05 UTC, Alex Deucher
no flags Details | Splinter Review
fix (1.38 KB, patch)
2014-05-27 20:44 UTC, Alex Deucher
no flags Details | Splinter Review

Description Sean Rhone 2014-01-22 03:37:28 UTC
I have an Acer Aspire V3 551G-X419 laptop with Xubuntu 13.10, Kernel 3.13, and oibaf's PPA (I should mention this banding issue occurs on lower kernels and other distros). I haven't done any xorg.conf modifying either.

Basically, everything seems to have heavy banding. I can see gradients (they don't blend smoothly as-expected).

This doesn't occur when using fglrx.
Comment 1 Alex Deucher 2014-01-22 13:51:50 UTC
Is this a regression?  Please attach your xorg log and dmesg output.
Comment 2 Sean Rhone 2014-01-22 14:00:30 UTC
Created attachment 92587 [details]
dmesg
Comment 3 Sean Rhone 2014-01-22 14:00:57 UTC
Created attachment 92588 [details]
Xorg.0.log
Comment 4 Sean Rhone 2014-01-22 14:04:04 UTC
(In reply to comment #1)
> Is this a regression?  Please attach your xorg log and dmesg output.

No; I can't recall the lowest kernel and other components I used, but it's happened with every distro I've tried on this laptop (the oldest distro tried was Ubuntu 12.04.3).

It seems the color banding is only present with non-fullscreen applications and videos, but I'm not 100% certain. The desktop background on Xubuntu 13.10, the dashboard on Ubuntu's Unity, and Steam (both desktop and big picture) show the banding the worst though.
Comment 5 Sean Rhone 2014-01-22 14:41:28 UTC
Created attachment 92590 [details]
example-1
Comment 6 Sean Rhone 2014-01-22 14:42:53 UTC
Created attachment 92591 [details]
example-1
Comment 7 Sean Rhone 2014-01-22 14:43:26 UTC
Created attachment 92592 [details]
example-2
Comment 8 Inti Alonso 2014-02-03 20:36:44 UTC
Same problem here.

When using the open driver for my graphic card (Radeon HD 6520G, on APU A6-3400m) I get ugly gradients and color banding (see the attachment). Everything fine and smooth with Catalyst.

I want to stay with the open drivers, but this issue is driving me crazy.

I have tested with kernels 3.10, 3.11, 3.12 and 3.13. With and without DPM.

[img width=599 height=800]http://s29.postimg.org/b6sftnq07/IMG_20140202_100203.jpg[/img]
Comment 9 Alex Deucher 2014-02-03 20:42:44 UTC
Are you only having problems with the built in display on the laptop?
Comment 10 Alex Deucher 2014-02-03 20:44:25 UTC
Created attachment 93321 [details] [review]
testing patch

Does this kernel patch help?
Comment 11 Inti Alonso 2014-02-03 22:20:50 UTC
Right now Im at the office, I will test with a external screen when I get home.

Im not experienced with patching the Kernel, I gonna do some reading so I can try the patch.
Comment 12 rue 2014-02-06 04:51:21 UTC
Hi I am having the same issue with Banding using the open source Radeon Driver. 
My laptop is an Acer Acpire 5560G with Radeon HD6520G + 7470M I have tryed a few different Distros and I get the same Banding problems at the moment I have Ubuntu-Gnome 14.04 2.13 kernel and Fedora 20 3.12 Kernel 

NOTE: I have noticed the Banding only happens on the built in Laptop Screen if I attach an external Monitor either VGA or HDMI the displays on those monitors are fine, no Banding. 
Running xwininfo shows my Depth is 24 bit I originally thought that may have been set to 15.
Comment 13 Alex Deucher 2014-02-06 16:04:48 UTC
(In reply to comment #12)
> Hi I am having the same issue with Banding using the open source Radeon
> Driver. 
> My laptop is an Acer Acpire 5560G with Radeon HD6520G + 7470M I have tryed a
> few different Distros and I get the same Banding problems at the moment I
> have Ubuntu-Gnome 14.04 2.13 kernel and Fedora 20 3.12 Kernel 

Can you try the patch in comment 10?
Comment 14 rue 2014-02-06 21:38:53 UTC
(In reply to comment #13)
> (In reply to comment #12)
> Hi I am having the same issue with Banding using
> the open source Radeon
> Driver. 
> My laptop is an Acer Acpire 5560G with
> Radeon HD6520G + 7470M I have tryed a
> few different Distros and I get the
> same Banding problems at the moment I
> have Ubuntu-Gnome 14.04 2.13 kernel
> and Fedora 20 3.12 Kernel 

Can you try the patch in comment 10?

No problem Alex I will try the patch when I get home this afternoon and report back.
Comment 15 rue 2014-02-07 10:18:32 UTC
(In reply to comment #13)
> (In reply to comment #12)
> > Hi I am having the same issue with Banding using the open source Radeon
> > Driver. 
> > My laptop is an Acer Acpire 5560G with Radeon HD6520G + 7470M I have tryed a
> > few different Distros and I get the same Banding problems at the moment I
> > have Ubuntu-Gnome 14.04 2.13 kernel and Fedora 20 3.12 Kernel 
> 
> Can you try the patch in comment 10?

I applied the patch on Fedora20, no go I'm afraid I still have banding on the built in screen.
Comment 16 scix55 2014-02-26 06:56:01 UTC
I'm experiencing the same problem with an AMD A10-4600M in an Asus N56DP laptop. I don't have an external screen to test at the moment, so can't be sure if it's evident there as well.

I tried the patch with both 3.13 and 3.14-rc4 (with some edits due to it not applying cleanly for the latter) and the patch actually causes a flickering black screen on boot, with some faint green line popping up periodically. Perhaps I applied the patch inproperly, though.

As far as the banding goes, the problem is particularly evident when running Steam and looking at the grey background, which is filled with multi-coloured banding.
Comment 17 Kertesz Laszlo 2014-02-26 08:03:03 UTC
I have a A8-6500 (kernel, mesa from git) and i too have banding in Steam and the xfce desktop if i set gradient background. 
But this doesnt show in gimp for example is i create a gradient.
Comment 18 Bernhardt Mark 2014-03-11 07:17:09 UTC
I have the same problem on my laptop Samsung NP355V4C with 7660G and 7670M. I have tried 3.13 kernel on Kubuntu 14.04 x86-64 and Debian Wheezy x86-64 (with default debian kernel config from /boot), and this problem was observed in both distributions.
Comment 19 Alex Deucher 2014-04-01 21:01:56 UTC
*** Bug 76884 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 20 Alex Deucher 2014-04-01 21:05:44 UTC
Created attachment 96751 [details] [review]
testing patch

Does this patch help?
Comment 21 Paula Breton 2014-04-02 02:02:00 UTC
(In reply to comment #20)
> Created attachment 96751 [details] [review] [review]
> testing patch
> 
> Does this patch help?

unfortunately I can't test it as of now, I don't have enough disk space to compile the patched kernel. didn't know it would eat up my last 12GB.
Comment 22 Paula Breton 2014-04-02 06:59:37 UTC
(In reply to comment #20)
> Created attachment 96751 [details] [review] [review]
> testing patch
> 
> Does this patch help?

it doesn't look like it helps. same problem as before. my cursor has also disappeared, but that might be a problem of that I haven't worked with the kernel before at all.
Comment 23 M132 2014-05-04 21:58:04 UTC
My laptop with A8-4500m is also affected. With fglrx colors are fine, but I can see little amount of noise (dithering?). With open source drivers, there is no noise.
Comment 24 Paula Breton 2014-05-04 22:02:48 UTC
(In reply to comment #23)
> My laptop with A8-4500m is also affected. With fglrx colors are fine, but I
> can see little amount of noise (dithering?). With open source drivers, there
> is no noise.

the noise is definitely dithering, since dithering accomplishes colour blending using patterns similar to noise. it shouldn't be so noticeable in general use, but, trying to accomplish smooth gradients with only 1/4 of the colour values per channel is difficult.

haven't been able to sort this out, catalyst isn't really an acceptable alternative.
Comment 25 M132 2014-05-04 22:50:11 UTC
It looks like Catalyst uses some kind of "dynamic" dithering, like NVIDIA's proprietary drivers, which generates different noise everytime the screen is refreshed, so isn't really noticeable.
Comment 26 Alex Deucher 2014-05-27 15:17:40 UTC
Does attachment 99834 [details] [review] help?
Comment 27 Alex Deucher 2014-05-27 20:44:15 UTC
Created attachment 99983 [details] [review]
fix

This patch should fix the issue.
Comment 28 M132 2014-05-28 18:35:23 UTC
It works! Thank you!
Comment 29 tomimaki 2014-06-01 15:22:55 UTC
(In reply to comment #27)
> Created attachment 99983 [details] [review] [review]
> fix
> 
> This patch should fix the issue.

I tested patch against 3.13 and it works. I assume it will fix later kernels too.
Comment 30 tomimaki 2014-07-12 12:59:35 UTC
Well, I think we can close it as fix is now in stable and longterm kernels (except 3.12). :)


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