Well, I bought an ATI Radeon 9550 video card, installed it, installed SuSE 9.2 and went to ATI to get the drivers for it. After a couple of false starts, I got the 64 bit AMD driver and installed it according to the instructions provided on their web site. It basically made X die a horrible death which I ended up recovering from by reinstalling 9.2 again. What is frustrating about this is that I emailed ATI twice about this using their "Customer Care" process. I have received two automated responses and a sum total of zero beyond that. So, my questions are as follows: 1. Does anyone know how to actually get help from ATI? I was given the impression that they were more sensitive to the needs of the Linux community, but that's not what I'm seeing in their (non-existent) customer support. My other machine has an Nvidia card and I've never had a problem with the drivers for it (admittedly under SuSE 9.0 and I did have to endure the kernel module build). 2. Has anyone had experience with the 9550 and SuSE 9.2? Any suggestions on a driver configuration that works? If anyone is interested I have a file that contains the error info from startx. Thanks for the help. -- Bill Lugg Milstar Software Support Peterson AFB, CO On Sat, 25 December 2004 10:04 pm, BandiPat wrote:
On Friday 24 December 2004 11:31 pm, William Lugg wrote:
Thanks for the info. I'll give it a try.
What chipset do you recommend for a video card? I was under the impression that NVidia was the best choice because the performed better and support Linux more that others.
Thanks again.
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Well, to hear everyone go on about the Nvidia cards on the mail list, you would think there isn't anything else out there! ;o)
I started out with a TNT nvidia card and it did perform well, but then problems like this started showing up! I got help from some of the best guys on the list and even SuSE, without ever getting the bugs worked out of Nvidia's drivers.
After that little incident, I ordered an ATI 7200 card. Popped it into the machine, run sax2 and no more problems. Went from that to the 9200 card and have just been very satisfied with ATI since. The kernel includes the radeon module and X.org supports them nicely, although the very latest models may not have full 3D support, because of the newer chipset, but at least 2D is always there! With the work that the X.org developers are doing and with ATI helping support them, their cards are seldom very long without support.
I've never been dissatisfied with 3D on the cards in any of the games I've played. Some machines I've seen properly setup for Nvidia were good and a few seemed faster, but never a significant difference. The difference comes from not having to deal with Nvidia drivers again! ATI supplies drivers as well and some have said those provide better 3D, but again, I don't see enough difference to bother.
If 3D is not something so important, then the Matrox cards are wonderful too! They probably have the best 2 monitor support of anything and 2D is outstanding. Try to stay with the name brands. Although many card makers use the chipset of either, I've found pure ATI cards the best with PowerColor cards, using the ATI chips, second and less expensive!
On Tuesday 25 January 2005 09:15 pm, William Lugg wrote:
Well, I bought an ATI Radeon 9550 video card, installed it, installed SuSE 9.2 and went to ATI to get the drivers for it. After a couple of false starts, I got the 64 bit AMD driver and installed it according to the instructions provided on their web site. It basically made X die a horrible death which I ended up recovering from by reinstalling 9.2 again. [...] 1. Does anyone know how to actually get help from ATI? I was given the impression that they were more sensitive to the needs of the Linux community, but that's not what I'm seeing in their (non-existent) customer support. My other machine has an Nvidia card and I've never had a problem with the drivers for it (admittedly under SuSE 9.0 and I did have to endure the kernel module build).
2. Has anyone had experience with the 9550 and SuSE 9.2? Any suggestions on a driver configuration that works? If anyone is interested I have a file that contains the error info from startx.
Thanks for the help. -- Bill Lugg Milstar Software Support Peterson AFB, CO =========
Bill, If you are running 64-bit SuSE, I think if you read the readme files both on SuSE's mirrors and ATI's, the ATI drivers are not yet suitable to use. Stick with the X.org default drivers included with your SuSE. Once installed, do you either boot to "init 3" or drop back to "init 3" and run sax2 to setup your graphics? That would be the simple way of handling things. I'm not that familar with the 9550, so not sure of the support available in X.org, but I do believe it's there. For now, leave the ATI drivers alone and use X.org's drivers, using sax2 to setup your card. regards, Lee -- --- KMail v1.7.2 --- SuSE Linux Pro v9.2 --- Registered Linux User #225206 "Don't let the fear of striking out keep you from playing the game!"
Thanks for the info. Actually, I was browsing through a forum and found a reference to ATI drivers in the SuSE Supplementary folders. Last night I followed the README file and it worked as advertised! Ironically, I finally got a response from ATI on my question. It was basically, "We don't know. If you want to leave feedback, here's the site... We don't support Linux." Thanks for the info, though. I appreciate it. -- Bill Lugg Milstar Software Support Peterson AFB, CO On Tue, 25 January 2005 11:14 pm, BandiPat wrote:
On Tuesday 25 January 2005 09:15 pm, William Lugg wrote:
Well, I bought an ATI Radeon 9550 video card, installed it, installed SuSE 9.2 and went to ATI to get the drivers for it. After a couple of false starts, I got the 64 bit AMD driver and installed it according to the instructions provided on their web site. It basically made X die a horrible death which I ended up recovering from by reinstalling 9.2 again.
[...]
1. Does anyone know how to actually get help from ATI? I was given the impression that they were more sensitive to the needs of the Linux community, but that's not what I'm seeing in their (non-existent) customer support. My other machine has an Nvidia card and I've never had a problem with the drivers for it (admittedly under SuSE 9.0 and I did have to endure the kernel module build).
2. Has anyone had experience with the 9550 and SuSE 9.2? Any suggestions on a driver configuration that works? If anyone is interested I have a file that contains the error info from startx.
=========
Bill, If you are running 64-bit SuSE, I think if you read the readme files both on SuSE's mirrors and ATI's, the ATI drivers are not yet suitable to use. Stick with the X.org default drivers included with your SuSE.
Once installed, do you either boot to "init 3" or drop back to "init 3" and run sax2 to setup your graphics? That would be the simple way of handling things. I'm not that familar with the 9550, so not sure of the support available in X.org, but I do believe it's there.
For now, leave the ATI drivers alone and use X.org's drivers, using sax2 to setup your card.
participants (2)
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BandiPat
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William Lugg