Slashdot Mirror
ATi Drivers for Linux that Work?
James F. Hitchens asks: "I used to run Red-Hat Enterprise vs.3, just recently I switched to fedora core 3. The reason for my change was because I could not get my ATi Radeon 9600 All in Wonder to work. I hoped that Fedora was a little more advanced in the area of 3D acceleration (so I could play Unreal Tournament 2004 and Tux-racer). Yet again it was not to be, ne worke pas. Can anyone tell me what I need to do to make this work? The drivers that ATi supplies on their website are, in short, crap."
or wait for that open-graphics card to come out (200X?)
Currently I don't think it's possible to buy a card with OpenGL that has working DVI on Linux with Free drivers... really sucks.
Meanwhile NVidia's drivers are quite good.
That's what I had to do. No amount of distribution switching is going to help. It's all the same stuff underneath. Ati's drivers are worthless, plain and simple. NVidia's drivers are awesome. Hell, an old ti4200 or something will probably perform better than the best ati card simply because of driver differences.
ATI's drivers have been like this forever, even after they introduced the bi-monthly releases.
In a couple of recent interviews, however, they said the next drivers, due for release sometime this month, are going to be tagged Catalyst aswell, whatever that means. But I'm expecting somewhat bigger improvements compared to the last couple of drivers we've had, and that's pretty much the last of my hopes.
http://www.anandtech.com/linux/showdoc.aspx?i=2302
Seriously, I have an ATI AIW 7500, and I have officially given up on it. I've had it for a couple years, put it in a new machine I built this summer, and can't get the TV function to work unless I do a totall uninstall and reinstall of the drivers and catalyst software every time I want to use it.
This space available.
Eat my dust!
I've got a PC with Radeon at work, and in the last two years I've tried three times to get the ATi drivers to work with hardware 3D... I've never managed to get it run.
In contrast, I've never had any problems with nVidia's drivers... not on my TNT2, not on my GeForce 1 and not on the GeForce WhatEver that a friend of mine has. nVidia does a very good job with their drivers, IMHO. I'm not that happy thay they're closed source at least but they Just Work (tm).
This is why I won't ever buy a ATi card. They treat Linux users as third class citizens, unfortunately...
Their windows drivers have never been very good either. If you are using windows, I suggest you use the omegadrivers http://www.omegadrivers.net/. But even then, you still have to update bi-monthly, which is crazy. And all of your old setting are reset after every update.
I've been playing with the TV software and it has barely changed since about 5 years ago. (And it worked better then...) Anybody out there know of an open source TV tuner software package that works with ATI cards (and Windows)?
ATI's hardware is wonderful, it a shame you can't use it!
The best forum to read/ask this topic is at Rage3D.
They have howto's, patches, and some ATI dev's even post there.
Sold it and bought an nVidia card.
Work is punishment for failing to procrastinate effectively.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
If you look around at the specifications you'll find that virtually all laptops use ATI video chipsets - and of course we have no option to change them. HP, Compaq, Dell, IBM, all of them carry the ATI curse.
It's possible to buy an IBM Thinkpad with Linux preinstalled so if anybody who has one of these machines is reading this, what drivers have IBM installed ?
Ed Almos
Budapest, Hungary
The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws. - Tacitus, 56-120 A.D.
Matrox cards (at least, most of them) are actually properly supported under Linux, complete with vendor-supplied open source drivers. Sure, the 3d performance sucks, but they're better than ATI or nVidia offerings for 2d.
A 9200 Mobility came in my Acer Aspire 2100 (i think thats the model) and is pretty shit hot. It will even play Doom3, although it is just on the border of reasonable. 9200 was the last version with OSS 3D acceleration.
Having said all of this I can't actually vouch for the 3D performance in Linux, I run Xinerama and 3D + Dual Screen don't work together (Infact Xinerama, pretty much is a PITA full stop so picky to set up etc), I boot to XP for gaming, which is the only option for faster cards than the 9200 anyway.
Me personally I'm building a dedicated Games PC.
Well, my All In Wonder works fine. I used the built-in Windows XP driver, then only installed the TV application.
That's not a solution. First, you need their proprietary piece of shit kernel modules so, if you have any problem, nobody will be willing to help you until you get rid of them and reproduce the problem without the proprietary code loaded. Then the issue with 2D quality. NVidia cards have piss poor image quality at resolutions higher than 800x600. If that wasn't enough, their new cards have ridiculous power requirements, needing almost 2.5 gigawatts of power.
Thanks, I'll keep my Radeon 9200 which is enough for bzflags and blender and works with 100% open source drivers.
I got my ATI 9600 radeon pro working with the 2.6.x kernels. Here is a short procedure of how I go about it.
1. First install the rpm based drivers. Now if you look under
2. Now it should autodetect the existence of 2.6.x drivers and it will do some stuff. cd back to fglrx directory and do your usual
3. After this cd to your kernel directory where fglrx.ko is installed and delete it.
4. Then cd to
I do a
5. Now do a make in the 2.6.x directory.
6. Copy the fglrx.ko to the kernel directory where fglrx.ko was there.
7. Now run your fglrxconfig or whatever to create the XF86Config-4.
8. I have a nforce based chipset, so I enable the nforce motherboard drivers during kernel compilation and set this option on in my XF86Config.
Option "UseInternalAGPGART" "no"
I have an AMD so I need to switch off mtrr
Option "mtrr" "off"
9. Now try a X, remember you need a dri enabled kernel and you need to have enabled dri in your xf86config.
If you look in your
And for all those people who say nvidia chips are better. Once you get the ATI drivers working, they are a good competition to nvidia. In fact ATI had things like quad buffer opengl stereo on X, which was why I switched. Also I don't have a vaccum cleaner running inside my box.
If you (or anybody) get it working please reply to this post, so I can write a feedback report on the ATI website.
Good luck.
Hope this helps.
Slashdot: Tabloid for the nerds. Stuff that doesn't matter.
Currently, there is much discussion about the meaning of the IBM sell-off of its PC division. One of the current conjectures is that IBM might be preparing to release a low-cost PowerPC based machine for home use.
Now, if that is the case, I could see IBM going to both ATI and nVidia and saying:
Now, the question is, how likely is this?
www.eFax.com are spammers
Playing games at work! Does your boss know about this?
How am I supposed to fit a pithy, relevant quote into 120 characters?
I was wondering how to get the most out of my 9800 AIW PRO, so I installed Windows and the latest Cats and everything just works.
Interesting.
Not a Twitter sockpuppet... but I wish I was.
If interested support the open graphics projectf o/open-gr aphics
1 1/28/018227&tid=137&tid=152&tid=104&tid=8
http://lists.duskglow.com/mailman/listin
More http://developers.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/
Here's what I did: /etc/X11 /dev/input/mice
telinit 3
fglrxconfig
cd
mv xorg.conf xorg.conf.bak
ln -sf xf86Config -4 xorg.conf
telinit 5
(for mouse)
mice =
Use ATI driver and setup using XConfigurator then repoint the X.org file to that one and it works fine. I found this in a blog somewhere and worked like a charm.
That's not really true. Anecdotally, I've had a Radeon 9700 PRO for about 2.5 years, and in that time I've never had any problems with ATI's Windows drivers. The Linux drivers have always sucked, though.
It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.
No matter how good the OSS drivers get, they will never be up to par with Nvidia or ATI's offering because of the closed source nature of the work they do.
... 2.4 and 2.6 are getting to many options) and applications. The video driver thing isn't helping.
Is X.org going to make it easier to install the binary drivers for Linux? I used to have an Nvidia card (TNT 2) and after getting a Radeon 9500, I found that while its more work (I grew frustrated and never bothered to install ATI's) they are longer and more arduous of a process than Windows (and prob MAC) binary drivers.
I'm not a Linux noob but I don't like to spend 20 or 30 minutes to install video drivers (when its click, Yes, Yes, Install) with Windows. Is this process going to be easier in the future? My main quibbles with adopting Linux completely are drivers, kernel compilation not being very straitforward (2.2 was okay
Sparky, wake up and smell the napalm...
According to this article at cnet, IBM has already been making some of nvidia's chips since 2003...
And of course both nvidia and ati have been shipping boards to apple running PPC since knives and bear skins....
If you are trying to use French when you say, "ne worke pas," I believe the verb you are looking for is travailler. It is conjuagated like a regular -er verb.
tried that, and about every variation I could think of. No go.
This space available.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
www.xig.com offers what I have found to be the ONLY fully functional ATI Driver I have found that works great with Tux Racer and every other 3D OpenGL app that I have thrown at it. It is called their Summit Series. It can be trial(25 or so minutes maximum) installed on nearly any linux kernel 2.4 and up. The MAJOR DOWNSIDE is that it's full install is $39-$89USD, only the Gold and Platinum have OpenGL. It essentially replaces the current running XFree or Xorg server and runs it's own. Just thought I'd offer a little help. Perhaps Xi Graphics could be... ... alerted to the vast interest in a FREE or NEARLY FREE open driver for ATI cards. Lower the cost and get a massive /. following?
J.
Getting fglrx rpms to work is a little tricky (they DO work, if you try hard enough--and you don't have Xorg 6.8.1). However, getting 64-bit 3d support is impossible.
I recently switched to gentoo AMD64 and I don't see any reason to go back. Even if the performance benefits for natively compiled applications are minimal, 64-bit is the way to go, in my opinion. I emailed ATI complaining for their lack of 64-bit drivers. NVidia has provided 64bit drivers for a long time. We'll see... Guess my Radeon 9800 Pro is bound to be replaced by a nice 6600GT.
P.
I currently get 400+ fps on glxgears because of DRI, with minimal CPU usage (good since I have a 466Mhz celery). I got a first generation radeon (7000?).t h
http://dri.sourceforge.net/
Be hardcore though and don't use the binaries, get the CVS source and build everything yourself. They have instructions on the site. Be sure to use optimization flags:
-march=$your-architecture
-O3
-ffast-ma
at the least; not using any optimization I was only getting ~100fps on glxgears.
Would you like for me to replace the indefinite "you" with the more correct indefinite "one"? Would you also like for me to ensure reflexivity by saying "one's own head"?
Okay, I am involved in the Linux Development at ATI. We have drivers which will be released shortly that will support XOrg 6.8, AMD64 and GLSL.
We have worked with the guys at Livna for drivers for FC2 - and are ready to go with FC3, once the new drivers are released.
Some links for those who care...
http://bugzilla.livna.org/show_bug.cgi?id=308
http://bugzilla.livna.org/show_bug.cgi?id=296
And through Fedorafaq.org
http://www.fedorafaq.org/#radeon
All I can say, is watch this space.
Funny, I sold my NVidia and bought a Radeon. I couldn't be happier.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
Unhappy with the current state of ATI's Linux drivers? Add to the ~20,000 signitures already found on this online petition
Step 1: Get a Matrox card.
c ard
Step 2: Install any operating system you want, any version, any distro.
I don't mean just relatively mainstream ones like Linux, either.
Step 3: It Just Works. No, really, it actually does just work.
Seriously, Matrox cards are good stuff. They maybe don't have all the flashy
features that excite the everything-must-be-overclocked-including-my-sound
crowd, but they're very solid, well-specified, and compatible with everything
that will even think about running on PC hardware. Every time I've tried to
use any other brand of graphics card (GeForce, NVidia, whatever), I've ended
up regretting it. Display glitches and jumps, shoddy drivers, general
flakiness... bah. I've NEVER had a problem with a Matrox card, EVER, unless
you count that an old vintage-1998 Mystique doesn't do enough 3D acceleration
to make recent 3D games happy (go figure).
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
For anyone who actully gives a crap about performance and feature support, free drivers aren't an option and never will be thanks to patent issues.
:(
For example, the reason UT2K3 only worked with NVidia cards for quite a while (until the binary ATI drivers were released) was because to achieve acceptable quality/performance, UT2K3's developers HAD to use S3 Texture Compression, which is patented and the patent licenses ATi and NV have don't allow them to include S3TC support in open-source drivers. That's just one example of why free drivers will not be an option for a long time.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Comment removed based on user account deletion
take apart the offical 'good' drivers for windows xp to look at how they work. once you understand them, it is easier to write a driver for linux, as you have something to base it on. please note that i have little experience disassembling or anything like that. I am merly speculating as to what could be done!
Mike
Livna produce rpms to make your life easy. At the moment I can see FC2 RPMS and I presume FC3 RPMS will appear in good time. They've been surprisingly slow at populating the FC3 tree.
jh
Nethack (and alot of other great games) run in the console! No need for fancy 3d hoohaa! And yes, I have a working 9600XT with the fglrx driver in Xorg 6.7. But then again I use Gentoo where just about everything is only an emerge away...
Yeah, maybe they can start on that once they get some Windows drivers that work.
It seems ATI has no problem abandoning the older hardware on windows, so I don't see them putting much effort into supporting hardware period in linux.
I just picked up a used ATI Rage II/PCI to add TV-in features to my PC, and discovered that it's not supporting in anything newer than Windows ME.
NVidia and others at least seems to support older cards a little better in newer OS's, and of course they've traditionally supported the alternate OS's (linux et al) better and longer than ATI.
What about the Prism http://www.sgi.com/products/visualization/prism/?
Did anybody test one of these?
Might the Raedon-driver profit from SGI?
I currently have two systems running ATI cards, as I have been a big fan of them in the past (no longer though. Would I like a card with SM3.0 and better performance? Why yes I would). One system has the AIW 9800Pro, and the other (the Shuttle system) has a Sapphire Radeon 9800Pro 256MB. I never had problems with the AIW card, although ATI's drivers can be a pain. The tuner worked perfectly from day one. However, I just bought the HDTV Wonder card for my Shuttle system (gotta get one before the broadcast flag!), and THAT was a real nightmare. I uninstalled and reinstalled the catalyst drivers, as well as those for the HDTV wonder a half dozen times, to no effect. DTV worked TV didn't. Finally, burried on their website, ATI has a bit about how their drivers are flawed, and a path variable had to be set in the environmental variables before it would work. You'd think they could fix something like that in ten minutes, but the updated drivers on their website are no better than the ones that ship with the card. I'm really disillusioned regarding ATI, and will probably start buying NVidia if they don't get it together. I shouldn't have to waste three hours because they can't make their driver set a path variable.
I use FreeBSD as a desktop and I'm forced to use NVIDIA too.
NVIDIA drivers are really nice nowdays, I never had a crash or an instant reboot as I had with the first drivers they made for FreeBSD (back to 4.6 or 4.7-RELEASE)
NVIDIA drivers might not be open source, but I'd rather use a closed-source, working driver (NVIDIA) than a open-source, screwed up driver (ATI).
ATI only looses by not having good open source drivers, as more and more people switch to free operating system these days. Most of them also need to upgrade their system, so why not but NVIDIA along?
Hi there sweetie lover boy. Ol' Ike here would love to trade you karma for a BJ. ;P (smooch!)