I messed up my video card as you can see from this thread, and I want to buy an ATi card because of the performance gains that they get over nVidia for the price. Does anyone here run Linux with the ATi drivers? I was thinking about a 9600Pro, but on the website, it says that only the 8500, 9000, and 9700Pro are supported. Anyone know why?
Linux ATI drivers.
- Thread starter Evolution
- Start date
I've never used ATI on linux before (or in windows for that matter), but there are a couple sources for drivers. One is the DRI (direct rendering interface) project and ATI's own website...
Other then that.. I know that your 9500 is supported. At worst you may have to reconfigure your kernel or something, because the accelrated driver may be avaible from there, but other then that I am not sure.
Other then that.. I know that your 9500 is supported. At worst you may have to reconfigure your kernel or something, because the accelrated driver may be avaible from there, but other then that I am not sure.
do you think it will become a huge PITA going with the ATi card? joshg, have you tried the ATi 3d drivers? Do you think I can get away with using the 9700Pro drivers?
Well... I tried installing the "official" drivers from ATI but after going through the configuring process and restarting X, I kept getting errors and I had to revert it back to the detected "ATI Radeon 9500 Pro" that came as-is installed with my RH9.0 package. (which, even though I've checked "Enable 3-D Hardware Support", I only get ~1 fps (literally, no exaggerating), so apparently it's not enabling 3-D hardware supprt...)
I have not yet tried DRI (don't have enough time to poke around as much as I'd like to
) ...
If anyone has got it to work, any help would be appreciated!
I have not yet tried DRI (don't have enough time to poke around as much as I'd like to
) ...If anyone has got it to work, any help would be appreciated!
I've only used an ATI card once, and I just used the driver that came with X, but I've heard nothing but horror stories about trying to get 3d acceleration working with an ATI card...
nVidia might be evil, but they have much better driver support.
*BTW, I'm not trying to sell nVidia products
I'm just saying I've only heard people complain about ATI drivers...I have to agree with Omega, I've seen alot of people complain about ATi cards not working properly in X.
I also see alot of people complaining about nVidia's drivers being closed source, but I don't really mind that, cause they work, and do their job very well, and in the end, that's what matters to me.
I also see alot of people complaining about nVidia's drivers being closed source, but I don't really mind that, cause they work, and do their job very well, and in the end, that's what matters to me.
A lot of it has to do with Official support and whatnot. The DRI project worked fine for my Radeon 64MB DDR VIVO, and I got pretty decent frame rates, but that was over a year ago.
Ya that's how I feel... I wanted to get a ATI card so I could get the superior 2-d color and get the nice onboard tv/dri stuff aviable with the All-in-wonder versions of the cards, but I am not going to put good money down on a card that I may or may not be able to properly use.
Although ironicly the ATI-based value tv card I bought works a hell of a lot better in Linux then it does in windows. (due to driver conflicts with the Nvidia drivers).
As far as getting the DRI versions of the 3D driver you can go a make a new kernel if the DRI drivers are not already installed into the kernel or are in module form. check to see if you have it in module form by doing "modprobe radeon" and see if something loads... (pretty sure that it will be named radeon.o). If it doesn't load it still may be in your kernel so just make sure that you have load "dri" written in the correct spot in your XF86Config file.
Check out that DRI link I put up and goto the documentation section and check out the beginner's guide and user's guide and see if that make sense.
It shouldn't be all that hard to get DRI working, it's been present since kernel 2.4.0 and XFree86 4.0, so it should be pretty mature by now.
And if it comes down to not having the DRI installed allong with your kernel, recompiling your own custom kernel is one of those niceties that as a Linux user can make you feel pretty "1337" once you get it figured out and it realy is pretty simple after the 3-4th try, kinda like winning at super mario tennis. But I'd bet that Redhat had the foresight to include it by default.
Although ironicly the ATI-based value tv card I bought works a hell of a lot better in Linux then it does in windows. (due to driver conflicts with the Nvidia drivers).
As far as getting the DRI versions of the 3D driver you can go a make a new kernel if the DRI drivers are not already installed into the kernel or are in module form. check to see if you have it in module form by doing "modprobe radeon" and see if something loads... (pretty sure that it will be named radeon.o). If it doesn't load it still may be in your kernel so just make sure that you have load "dri" written in the correct spot in your XF86Config file.
Check out that DRI link I put up and goto the documentation section and check out the beginner's guide and user's guide and see if that make sense.
It shouldn't be all that hard to get DRI working, it's been present since kernel 2.4.0 and XFree86 4.0, so it should be pretty mature by now.
And if it comes down to not having the DRI installed allong with your kernel, recompiling your own custom kernel is one of those niceties that as a Linux user can make you feel pretty "1337" once you get it figured out and it realy is pretty simple after the 3-4th try, kinda like winning at super mario tennis.
But I'd bet that Redhat had the foresight to include it by default.yea I run Gentoo, so I know all about customization. My question is, will the DRI driver have OpenGL support?
ATi sucks at linux.
EDIT: To clarify: The standard X4.3 drivers work better for 2d and video, as overlay in zapping and xawtv works. Ati's 3d is about as good as Xi's from my experience, but I cannot start Ut2003, or any other 3d game full screen without first changing my desktop to whatever resolution the game runs at. If I don't I get massive display corruption. Xi doesn't have this problem. Xi's problems are their full featured drivers cost $89, support for 6+ button mice is unknown, a serious lack of documentation on Xi's part (config files and the like), and the 25 minute limit on the demo mode is annoying; I would have much rather them give a 30 day limit, but allow the server to run constantly for that 30 days. It sucks having your X session "crash" in the middle of trying to do something important.
Anyway, that's why ati sucks. I've explored all of the options, and come to the conclusion that their linux team needs more time.
Well, I haven't given up hope yet. I'm pretty sure that I should be able to get it to work (since it appears that others have!) !!
The forums over at rage3d have a LOT of information about this topic... I'm poking around now.
The forums over at rage3d have a LOT of information about this topic... I'm poking around now.
My old Radeon worked OK, and XFree86 4.3 has 3D hardware acceleration for almost all of the Radeons built in, but nVidia's 'nix drivers are much better than ATI's
Even with my R200 XFree's built in drivers give me 1700+ in glxgears. The are pretty good, but lack texture compression. If you're not gaming with linux, and want good xv and dga support, you do yourself a disservice by installing ATI's drivers.
ATI's drivers installed perfectly on my Debian partition for X 4.1 using a 9500 Pro although I haven't tried anything 3D.
On my Libranet install w/X 4.2 however, things didn't go as smoothly on the install but seem to work fairly well.
I also haven't tried more than 1 monitor although that is supposedly supported.
On my Libranet install w/X 4.2 however, things didn't go as smoothly on the install but seem to work fairly well.
I also haven't tried more than 1 monitor although that is supposedly supported.
Well...
There is apparently a method right now of using the FireGL drivers (latest can be obtained from http://www.schneider-digital.de/html/download_ati.html ) to provide R9XXX cards with 3D hardware acceleration support in X. It actually *does* give you 3D acceleration because the Radeon started as a design of the FireGL in the first place. However, because it's not an official Radeon driver, the performance will not be quite as good as it should...
(At least if/until they release official X drivers for late Radeon series cards. )
You have to have your kernel source installed, then install the rpm from the site above. Make your new "customized" kernel (using specific libs that are included with the FireGL driver rpm - basically just install their RPM, and then run a make.sh that they even give you), then run the configuration app that is included with the FireGL driver rpm.
I'll be downloading source for kernel-2.4.20-18.9 so that I can try it out tonight... I'll let you know of the results! But it seems that it has worked for a lot of people so that they can at least get some 3D acceleration out of their cards!
There is apparently a method right now of using the FireGL drivers (latest can be obtained from http://www.schneider-digital.de/html/download_ati.html ) to provide R9XXX cards with 3D hardware acceleration support in X. It actually *does* give you 3D acceleration because the Radeon started as a design of the FireGL in the first place. However, because it's not an official Radeon driver, the performance will not be quite as good as it should...
(At least if/until they release official X drivers for late Radeon series cards.
)You have to have your kernel source installed, then install the rpm from the site above. Make your new "customized" kernel (using specific libs that are included with the FireGL driver rpm - basically just install their RPM, and then run a make.sh that they even give you), then run the configuration app that is included with the FireGL driver rpm.
I'll be downloading source for kernel-2.4.20-18.9 so that I can try it out tonight... I'll let you know of the results!
But it seems that it has worked for a lot of people so that they can at least get some 3D acceleration out of their cards!wow thank you, I just ordered a 9600Pro 128MB, I couldn't resist, and I should get it Friday, so I will let you know how it goes.
Originally posted by: joshg
I'll be downloading source for kernel-2.4.20-18.9 so that I can try it out tonight... I'll let you know of the results!
Did you test it? How did it go?
Well I got my Radeon 9600Pro yesterday, and NO driver works for it. The DRI driver sucks, and I cant get the FireGL one working because my RPM version sucks. I tried re-emerging RPM, but no luck. I'm using the VESA drivers right now, which arent bad for just using the computer for everything other than games. Maybe soon ATi will release R350 Core Linux drivers. Until then I guess im doing to have to live with no 3D acceleration. I hope the new drivers are out when Doom 3 comes out, due to Doom 3's native Linux support (Thanks John Carmack).
Hmmm...
Well I haven't had much of a chance to tinker with it (Aggressive Wife Syndrome ) but I know now that, at least for RedHat, you need to download kernel source and compile a kernel from source, boot into that kernel, then copy or make a symlink of your kernel source code at /usr/src/linux
then running the make and make_install supplied by the fglrx drivers
then run the fglrxconfig....
it's a really complicated process the first time (so it seems, especially if you are very new to Linux, but MAN does this stuff ever teach you a lot! ) but I can see how it's actually not all that complicated, you just have to know what you are doing and what to do...
Anyway I've downloaded and made and compiled my source kernel last night, going to see if I can boot to it tonight, then try reinstalling the fglrx and re-make'ing and make_install'ing with the fglrx files, then re-running fglrxconfig and hopefully everything will be ok!
I'll see what happens...
but no, it's definitely not a "simple" process!
Well I haven't had much of a chance to tinker with it (Aggressive Wife Syndrome
) but I know now that, at least for RedHat, you need to download kernel source and compile a kernel from source, boot into that kernel, then copy or make a symlink of your kernel source code at /usr/src/linux then running the make and make_install supplied by the fglrx drivers
then run the fglrxconfig....
it's a really complicated process the first time (so it seems, especially if you are very new to Linux, but MAN does this stuff ever teach you a lot!
) but I can see how it's actually not all that complicated, you just have to know what you are doing and what to do...Anyway I've downloaded and made and compiled my source kernel last night, going to see if I can boot to it tonight, then try reinstalling the fglrx and re-make'ing and make_install'ing with the fglrx files, then re-running fglrxconfig and hopefully everything will be ok!
I'll see what happens...
but no, it's definitely not a "simple" process!
Sounds like you're using Gentoo.
Have you tried the ATi drivers in Portage?
The package is called "ati-drivers".
Haven't tried them though, since I only have nVidia/Matrox/3Dfx cards.
OMG NICE!
Well I haven't been using Linux for a week yet, but this project has taught me how to download and install my own configured source kernel for RedHat (which is different from "default instructions"), and configure these FireGL drivers ...
AND I HAVE 3D ACCELERATION WITH MY R9500 PRO!!!
And the display looks WAY NICER and the 3D IS FASTT!!
So yes, it does work!
Well I haven't been using Linux for a week yet, but this project has taught me how to download and install my own configured source kernel for RedHat (which is different from "default instructions"), and configure these FireGL drivers ...
AND I HAVE 3D ACCELERATION WITH MY R9500 PRO!!!
And the display looks WAY NICER and the 3D IS FASTT!!
So yes, it does work!
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