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ATi Drivers for Linux that Work?

Posted by Cliff on from the what-have-you-done-in-this-situation dept.

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."

9 of 132 comments (clear)

  1. Buy an nvidia card by jpmkm · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:Buy an nvidia card by Curtman · · Score: 4, Insightful

      For anyone who prefers a free driver, nvidia isn't even an option. The open source ATI driver is very good, and Xorg CVS now has Gatos for ATI All In Wonder cards merged in. ATI should be putting big resources behind Xorg, because its reputation in the Linux/FOSS community hinges on the fate of that driver.

      With the willingness of the Xorg team to finally address some of the issues people have been bitching about all these years, ATI has an opportunity to be the leader in Linux graphics drivers again. We need to point this out to ATI very loudly, and invitingly. These ATI are teh suxxors stories don't help one bit.

    2. Re:Buy an nvidia card by Ibn+al-Hazardous · · Score: 5, Insightful

      He didn't exactly say "ATI are teh suxxors". He said that performance of the ATI drivers are not up to par. I assume he speaks of 3D performance - 'cause if he does, he's very right. Why can't we say what's obvious? Because you are afraid we'll miff someone with a big ego?

      As for Nvidia drivers not being free, well ATI drivers for cards later than 9200 (IIRC), that have any 3D support, are not free either. And they will never be, because there is intellectual property in them that doesn't belong to ATI (says ATI). So, this guy will use a non-free driver no matter what.

      If he would want both 3D and the AllInWonder features - he will have to alternate between different drivers (ie he will have to restart X). That's ATI's support for you.

      I have recently been shopping for a video card - and I was very tempted by a 9600AiW; but when I got a hang of the problems - it turned out that the MSI5900XT was a much better buy, since I run Linux exclusively.

      --
      Yes, I am a biological organism. All rumors to the contrary are just that, rumors.
  2. Anandtech recently did (another) article on this by bersl2 · · Score: 4, Informative

    http://www.anandtech.com/linux/showdoc.aspx?i=2302

  3. I agree by DarkDust · · Score: 4, Informative

    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...

  4. Rage3D by HRbnjR · · Score: 4, Informative

    The best forum to read/ask this topic is at Rage3D.

    They have howto's, patches, and some ATI dev's even post there.

  5. Tips on getting ATI drivers to work by manjunaths · · Score: 4, Informative

    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 /lib/modules, you will see the ATI drivers directory fglrx/. Go to the build_mod/ directory and do a ./make.sh.

    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 ./make_install.

    3. After this cd to your kernel directory where fglrx.ko is installed and delete it.

    4. Then cd to /lib/modules/fglrx/build_mod/2.6.x and delete everything except the Makefile.
    I do a
    rm -f *.o *.ko *.GCC3 *.c *.h

    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 /var/log/XFree86.0.log, it should say DRI initialization successful. I have used this procedure to get acceleration working at both work (firegl card) and home (radeon 9600). Both on intel and nforce chipsets. But you may need a little more hacking around to get it working.
    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.
  6. Re:Anandtech recently did (another) article on thi by BoomerSooner · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Here's what I did:
    telinit 3
    fglrxconfig
    cd /etc/X11
    mv xorg.conf xorg.conf.bak
    ln -sf xf86Config -4 xorg.conf
    telinit 5
    (for mouse)
    mice = /dev/input/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.

  7. FC Drivers by mtippett · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.