ATI Propriety Linux Driver
I just installed the ATI Proprietary Linux Driver on my system and I just thought that I would toss out a few comments for those people who are thinking about doing this upgrade. I have an ATI Radeom 9600XT card with 256mg in an 8X AGP slot. In Windows it can do 2D and 3D acceleration but is not particularly fast for heavy duty gaming. I mainly use this as a home business machine so that is not a big issue. It can play DVDs just fine with no dropped frames. The standard Suse Linux 10.1 driver for this card will do 2D acceleration but not 3D. I know from installing the ATI Propriety driver in Suse 10.0 that installation was a little tricky and it never did allow 3D acceleration. The installation process is much simpler this time around because you do not have to run an elaborate X11 installation and configuration routine after the install. Once the driver is installed all you have to do is run an aticonfig --initial script in your /usr/X11R6/bin directory. When you run the full ATI installer as opposed to the smaller XOrg or XFree86 packages, you have a choice of an Automatic install where it picks the package for your or do a Custom install to support either XOrg or XFree86 or to Generate a Specific Driver package based on your kernel and Linux distribution. The Generate a Specific Driver option is the most compatible with whatever your current hardware or software is so I choose that option, ran it in a terminal as root and then ran the aticonfig --initial script. Everything worked fine but 3D acceleration was still not enabled but I did have a choice of a two head display which I did not need. I rebooted the system and started up in Suse 10.1 Failsafe mode with no graphics. I logged in as root, ran YAST and when I went to change the graphics card configuration, the SAX system immediately suggested a configuration. I accepted this configuration without changing it, saved and rebooted. The SAX system correctly changed the acceleration to 3D, disabled the option for a second display, altered some font sizes and reset the AGP handling from the Agpgart system that Suse usually uses to its own setup. My card cannot fully support Xgl. It will run but the speed penalty is huge for my card. I would need a new high end graphics card to support Xgl fully. If you want Xgl, I would suggest only using a card on their official hardware compatibility list. Good luck on your own fiddling Ralph Ellis
On 5/25/06, Ralph Ellis <ralphellis1@netscape.ca> wrote:
I just installed the ATI Proprietary Linux Driver on my system and I just thought that I would toss out a few comments for those people who are thinking about doing this upgrade.
That's all good. Anyway, on ATI site they still claim that they did not fix one of the big problems for me - it hangs when/if you start a second X server (either by hand, or using the switch user functionality). Can you confirm if this is still a problem, as I replaced my ATI card with nVidia for that reason alone. But now I'm planning to build another system for my daughter, and I may reuse the ATI card ... Thanks -- -- Svetoslav Milenov (Sunny) Windows is a 32-bit extension to a 16-bit graphical shell for an 8-bit operating system originally coded for a 4-bit microprocessor by a 2-bit company that can't stand 1 bit of competition.
I don't believe that the second X server issue has been worked out. I'm sure that the ATI card would work nicely in a second computer. nVidia does provide a lot of support for their Linux cards. If you bought one of the 7xxx line in either AGP or PCI Express, you should be quite happy. Some of the 6xxx line cards are very capable performers as well and they are a little cheaper. Happy fiddling Ralph Ellis Sunny wrote:
On 5/25/06, Ralph Ellis <ralphellis1@netscape.ca> wrote:
I just installed the ATI Proprietary Linux Driver on my system and I just thought that I would toss out a few comments for those people who are thinking about doing this upgrade.
That's all good. Anyway, on ATI site they still claim that they did not fix one of the big problems for me - it hangs when/if you start a second X server (either by hand, or using the switch user functionality). Can you confirm if this is still a problem, as I replaced my ATI card with nVidia for that reason alone. But now I'm planning to build another system for my daughter, and I may reuse the ATI card ...
Thanks
On Thu, 2006-05-25 at 18:57 -0400, Ralph Ellis wrote:
I don't believe that the second X server issue has been worked out. I'm sure that the ATI card would work nicely in a second computer. nVidia does provide a lot of support for their Linux cards. If you bought one of the 7xxx line in either AGP or PCI Express, you should be quite happy. Some of the 6xxx line cards are very capable performers as well and they are a little cheaper.
I've put up a guide to nVidia GeForce 6 and 7 performance (bang v. buck) -- including an _extensive_ set of tables of every GPU/card option: http://thebs413.blogspot.com/2006/02/geforce-6-and-7-series-variants-nuts.ht... -- Bryan J. Smith Professional, technical annoyance mailto:b.j.smith@ieee.org http://thebs413.blogspot.com ----------------------------------------------------------- Americans don't get upset because citizens in some foreign nations can burn the American flag -- Americans get upset because citizens in those same nations can't burn their own
On Friday 26 May 2006 13:08, Bryan J. Smith wrote:
I've put up a guide to nVidia GeForce 6 and 7 performance (bang v. buck) -- including an _extensive_ set of tables of every GPU/card option: http://thebs413.blogspot.com/2006/02/geforce-6-and-7-series-variants-nuts.h tml
This is a VERY useful overview - thanks for putting it up. I shall be referring to it a lot in future! -- Pob hwyl / Best wishes Kevin Donnelly www.kyfieithu.co.uk - KDE yn Gymraeg www.eurfa.org.uk - Geiriadur rhydd i'r Gymraeg www.rhedadur.org.uk - Rhedeg berfau Cymraeg www.cymrux.org.uk - Linux Cymraeg ar un CD
On Thursday 25 May 2006 22:21, Ralph Ellis wrote: [snip] [Radeon 9600XT]
I know from installing the ATI Propriety driver in Suse 10.0 that installation was a little tricky and it never did allow 3D acceleration.
Er, I had various Radeon 9xxx cards running with 3D acceleration on x86_64 machines from SuSE 9.2 onwards. The whole point of fglrx is that it gives you hardware OpenGL! It must have been a specific problem with your installation... Anyway, glad to hear it works now :)
William Gallafent wrote:
On Thursday 25 May 2006 22:21, Ralph Ellis wrote: [snip] [Radeon 9600XT]
I know from installing the ATI Propriety driver in Suse 10.0 that installation was a little tricky and it never did allow 3D acceleration.
Er, I had various Radeon 9xxx cards running with 3D acceleration on x86_64 machines from SuSE 9.2 onwards. The whole point of fglrx is that it gives you hardware OpenGL! It must have been a specific problem with your installation...
Anyway, glad to hear it works now :)
I think that the main difference for me this time was that I attempted to change the settings in YAST with the graphics mode turned off. This made it easier for SAX to suggest settings and change them on the fly. I believe that my previous attempt in Suse 10 was hampered by me attempting to change the settings via YAST while I was still in normal graphics display mode. I'm not completely sure but I think that my system could not turn Agpgart off while running it. Also this time the graphics card was already installed in my system while under 10.0, my system had been running the on board nVidia driver and then I physically installed the Radeon card. There are always a ton of variables when you make these changes. Ralph
Ralph Ellis wrote:
Failsafe mode with no graphics. I logged in as root, ran YAST and when I went to change the graphics card configuration, the SAX system immediately suggested a configuration. I accepted this configuration without changing it, saved and rebooted. The SAX system correctly changed the acceleration to 3D, disabled the option for a second display, altered some font sizes and reset the AGP handling from the Agpgart system that Suse usually uses to its own setup.
Lucky you. I have tried ati 8.25.18 driver on my HP nx7010 laptop (Mobility Radeon 9200) and my desktop with Radeon 8500DV, and neither could be done. On laptop, I tried to download smaller rpm for x.org only and afer installation all I got is totaly garbled screen, with some out-of-range frequencies, "destroyed" all text consoles (either when I start with vga=normal, or vga=0x"some graphic mode"). All I could do is power off and back on, and return to original X.org driver. On desktop, I tried with larger (34.5MB) .run file, created rpm for SuSE 10.1, instaled it, and after starting "sax2 -r -m 0=fglrx"(as instructed in README.SuSE) screen switches to graphic mode, I can move mouse for about 3 seconds and then the machine freezes. All I can do is push reset button. On third PC, with a generic Nvidia FX 5200 based card, everything "just happened" as it was supposed, Xgl is working great. Any ideas about ATI are welcome, because I just cannot change laptop nor graphic card in desktop :( Good luck to everybody Sinisa Bandin
On Friday 26 May 2006 16:50, Sinisa Bandin wrote:
I have tried ati 8.25.18 driver on my HP nx7010 laptop (Mobility Radeon 9200) and my desktop with Radeon 8500DV, and neither could be done. On laptop, I tried to download smaller rpm for x.org only and afer installation all I got is totaly garbled screen, with some out-of-range frequencies, "destroyed" all text consoles (either when I start with vga=normal, or vga=0x"some graphic mode"). All I could do is power off and back on, and return to original X.org driver. On desktop, I tried with larger (34.5MB) .run file, created rpm for SuSE 10.1, instaled it, and after starting "sax2 -r -m 0=fglrx"(as instructed in README.SuSE) screen switches to graphic mode, I can move mouse for about 3 seconds and then the machine freezes. All I can do is push reset button.
On third PC, with a generic Nvidia FX 5200 based card, everything "just happened" as it was supposed, Xgl is working great.
Any ideas about ATI are welcome, because I just cannot change laptop nor graphic card in desktop :(
I had a problem with my desktop computer which uses a Radeon 9600 card and an LCD monitor. Here's what I did to fix it. 1) Installed the fglrx_6_8_0-8.25.18-1.i386.rpm file with: rpm -i --nodeps fglrx_6_8_0-8.25.18-1.i386.rpm 2) Booted to init level 3 (add a 3 to your kernel boot line) 3) Issued: sax2 -l This was the tough part because sax2 comes up in 640x480 mode which the monitor doesn't handle very well. Try to set the params for your monitor (resolution, size, freqs) You need to get a sax2 built xorg.conf file that has the settings you want in them even if they don't work right. 4) Run the ati-driver-installer-8.24.8-x86.run file to create an ATI xorg.conf file. And it worked for me. I fiddled with other stuff for 4 days before doing the above and it worked.
participants (7)
-
Bruce Marshall -
Bryan J. Smith -
Kevin Donnelly -
Ralph Ellis -
Sinisa Bandin -
Sunny -
William Gallafent