Anyone got Radeon 9550 working? [resolved]

torklingberg · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 30 May 2004 Posts: 86

Note: This issue has been resolved, scroll down here

Has anyone got 3D acceleration with an ATI Radeon 9550 card? I want to know if it is worth trying any more.

The 9550 is actually just an underclocked 9600, so there should be no problem, but maybe the driver refuses just because the card is not in its list.[/b]

pandaxiongmao · Guru Joined: 29 Sep 2003 Posts: 478 Location: USA

Are you using AMD 64? AFAIK, ATI hasn't released any driver for AMD 64 based CPU yet.
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torklingberg · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 30 May 2004 Posts: 86

No, I'm not that brave yet. I have an Athlon64 and an Asus K8V motherboard, but I run it in 32-nit mode so far. If I can't even get 32-bit to work properly, I'm probably not ready for 64-bit yet.

Wedge_ · Posted: Sun Jun 27, 2004 2:15 pm Post subject:

If it doesn't recognise the card, but the chipset is supported, try specifying an ID yourself. Pick a 9500/9600 ID from the list here, then add a line to your XF86Config in the "Driver" section like this:

torklingberg · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 30 May 2004 Posts: 86

My specific problem is that I cannot load the fglrx kernel module, and I doubt an X setting can change that. Should I skip the kernel module and try with X settings anyway? Will X load the module for me?

Also I have no "Driver" section in my xorg.conf, and if I create one X says it is an invalid section name.

Wedge_ · Posted: Sun Jun 27, 2004 3:54 pm Post subject:

Ah, I didn't realise that you didn't have the module loaded. In that case, you're right, the ChipID setting won't alter anything. What is the output from "modprobe" when you try to load it? Also have a look at the last few lines of "dmesg" output after doing that.

torklingberg · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 30 May 2004 Posts: 86

Wedge_ · Posted: Sun Jun 27, 2004 6:44 pm Post subject:

Right...the reason X starts but you don't get 3D accel is because the fglrx module has to be loaded for that to work. The only thing I can think of to get around the module loading error is to actually edit the binary section of the driver and add the PCI ID of your card manually. Someone posted a procedure for doing this some time ago (see this post), so you might want to give it a shot. It's a pretty nasty fix though, so you could try getting in touch with ATI and asking them to add support themselves in the next driver.
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torklingberg · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 30 May 2004 Posts: 86

It worked! I love you man!

For anyone else with a 9550, this is how I did it: Note that when you are reading this, ATI might have included support for the Radeon 9550 in their Linux drivers, which would make this much easier.

In your kernel config, under "Device Drivers" --> "Character Devices" select "Enhanced Real Time Clock Support", "/dev/agpgart (AGP Support)" and support for your chipset as modules. I also selected "Direct Rendering Manager (XFree86 4.1.0 and higher DRI support)". Now, in your module autoload file (/etc/modules.autoload.d/kernel-2.6 for me) put rtc, agpgart and your chipset module (amd64_agp here).

Now the magic comes. emerge ati-drivers. It will look a bit like this:

torklingberg · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 30 May 2004 Posts: 86

Actually, it works is I start X with 'startx', but now if I start through gdm. Really strange. Also, if I start gdm from the console using '/etc/init.d/xdm start' from the console as root, the whole system will freeze.

Wedge_ · Posted: Mon Jun 28, 2004 11:32 am Post subject:

torklingberg · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 30 May 2004 Posts: 86

If you feel like checking them out, I put the logs here

What I did is this:
Boot the computer without gdm and log in as root.
I can now run '/etc/init.d/xdm start', and log in, but I get no 3D. This log is the file works_no3d.log
I can start gdm any number of times.

If I start with 'startx' I get 3D. Log is works_3d.log

Now, if I start gdm after X was started with startx, the screen goes black, and after a few seconds the computer is dead. Log is crash.log

Wedge_ · Posted: Mon Jun 28, 2004 3:00 pm Post subject:

Well, if you look at the "crash.log" and "works_no3d.log" files, you can see that the config file it's using is "//xorg.conf", which is unusual

Those two files also use the "radeon" driver rather than "fglrx" (look for all the lines starting with "RADEON"), and this driver does not support 3D accel on the newer radeon cards. The "works_3d.log" uses the standard config file location and loads the "fglrx" driver, and as you say, everything seems to work in this case.
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The Earth is the cradle of the mind, but we cannot live forever in a cradle - Konstantin E. Tsiolkovsky
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torklingberg · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 30 May 2004 Posts: 86

The reason was that I had an xorg.conf file in /, moved there as a temporary backup a while ago. Removing it fixed the problem.

That's a really strange bug. I'll go file it in bugzilla.

Wedge_ · Posted: Tue Jun 29, 2004 11:55 am Post subject:

torklingberg · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 30 May 2004 Posts: 86

For the forums searchers, it seems like the current ati-drivers (3.14.1) supports the 9550 chips, so the is no longer any need to hexedit the binaries.

Wedge_ · Posted: Wed Oct 13, 2004 9:45 pm Post subject:

And it only took them 4 months :roll:

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Per Ardua Ad Astra
The Earth is the cradle of the mind, but we cannot live forever in a cradle - Konstantin E. Tsiolkovsky
Gentoo Radeon FAQ