Driver/display problems with ATI FireGL Z1-128 and Viewsonic LCDs

[Sean E. Millichamp]

I recently convinced my boss to let me upgrade my displays to the
following:
ATI FireGL Z1-128
2 x Viewsonic VP201s
Running Fedora Core 2 + updates and the included radeon driver.

So, I have two problems (and no, neither are 3D related):

1) If I connect both displays using the DVI cables the display is crisp,
the colors perfect.  Except, there seems to be some sort of pixel
flickering that occurs.  It occurs on both displays and in Windows so I
know that it is a problem with the card or the card/display
interaction.  I don't have any other ways of narrowing it down.  The
flickering is hard to describe but is apparently a bunch of random
pixels flickering through various colors (which seem to be full R, G, or
B but never a combination).  It seems to only happen where colors change
rapidly near each other (such as my background of Hurricane Isabelle
taken from space).

It sounds similar to what is described in this ATI FAQ:
http://www.ati.com/support/infobase/3992.html

It lists one of the two known offending monitors at the VP201M which
seems to be the predecessor to my VP201s.

It says that reducing the DVI frequency should help but I don't know how
to do that with the Xorg radeon driver.  Any ideas?

If I reduce the color depth or the resolution I run the displays at the
flickering is significantly reduced or (depending on how low I go)
unnoticeable.

2) The FAQ also says that when the monitors are analog connected that
the problem doesn't appear.  So, despite having acquired this hardware
in part so I could eliminate the analog segment I decided to give this a
try.  It works, but that problem #2 shows up:

On my primary display the card/driver doesn't handle colors properly,
specifically, the gray background that is common among most of the GNOME
windows.   It is most noticeable in Evolution because the alternating
background on the message list doesn't alternate.  If I drag the window
to the secondary display it shows just fine.  Every program I've tested
has been effected.

I swapped the monitors to confirm it was the card/driver.  If I go back
to using the DVI connection then the pixel color flicker reappears but
the "GNOME gray" comes back.  Arrrrgh!

I didn't try the ATI binary only drivers for this card because they only
say they support XFree86 4.3.

Does anyone have any ideas?  Anyone else using this combination?

Thanks!

Sean

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