old ati card on xfree

[mingthefirst]

I need some help with an old ati card

[gatorex]

What is the output of glxinfo, if you see a line that says something like indirect. Then 3d acceleration isn't enabled.

Also, xorg-6.8 doesn't like ati cards too much

[mingthefirst]

[val]

ming: are you able to use transparency with xorg? Does it work okay?

I also have an ati on my laptop. I'd like to use transparency, but I don't care about my glxgears score. Does anybody know if this is possible? Can I use ati with the builtin kernel drivers with xorg?
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[emorphix]

ATI drivers do not work in xorg 6.8.0

Sucks for the laptop users with ATI
(like myself)
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[val]

^^^ Do you know if you can have transparency if you use the builtin kernel drivers? That's really what I'm asking....
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[emorphix]

I belive the Extension option is simply a function of Xorg 6.8.0 so with the dri module you will be able to draw the drop shadow (composite) and that does run somewhat *decent* however once you apply the transset setting it slows it down quite a bit, most due to no hardware rendering

In the end I feel it's really not worth it on the ATI cards, i'm running 6.8.0 on my laptop which has a ATI card not using the ati drivers, and did what you are pretty much asking, so first hand I don't highly recommend it due to the outcome not being as rewarding as you would think.

I run 6.8.0 with XFCE4 4.2 RC1 which has a built in composite manager on my desktop with a Nvidia 6800 OC with trans set it runs very smooth (however the transparentcy interfears with GL games/apps, I hope the ATI team can develop something that will get that type of performance especially when xorg fully develops the extensions options.
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[mingthefirst]

I unmerged xorg and install xfree, and it seems to be ok, but the problem is that everytime I try to do something like

[val]

Okay, thanks emorphix. That was the answer I was looking for.

It's all so confusing, and there are so many long threads out there, that it's really hard to sort out the information that is relevant to your own situation.

I guess I'll just try it out myself. I can always disable the extensions if they really slow stuff down....

Ming, I've had errors where it cant find libgl. Try to locate the file it cant find, then add that path to LD_LIBRARY_PATH.
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[emorphix]

Ming,

Why use XFree? Xorg 6.7.0 works fine with the ATI drivers, I suggest running those as well as looking at the ATI Radeon Sticky forum post there is a ton of information regarding the ATI cards in there, people have had problems that you are experiencing. The version of the driver my also effect the performance of your card.

Good luck.

Val,

No problem.
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[mingthefirst]

alright, can someone give a a link to a good tutorial, with drivers for an old card such as mine?

note that I don't even think my card is a radeon, it's like a rage something

[emorphix]

There is a great search function for the forum that you are posting on now.

Typing ATI would produce many results.

One of the most popular posts is this:
https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=224930&highlight=ati+sticky

That has a lot of information there regarding Rage cards as well.

Good luck.
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[val]

ming, as far as I know you can emerge the "ati-drivers" (there's a howto in the gentoo documentation) which will allow hardware acceleration of 3d. Or you can not emerge them and 2d graphics work fine. And 3d accelleration (ati-drivers) does not work with xorg 6.8. (sorry if I'm only telling you what you already know!)

In my experience, the ati-drivers cause a number of other problems such as causing the computer to freeze when you try to switch to a vitual terminal. This is one of the reasons I just don't use them. I need switching to vitual terminals working in order to be able to hibernate my laptop.

Unfortunately with the situation with the closed source ati drivers, certain things are just not possible. There are supposed to be some new drivers from ati coming out next month. Who knows how good they will be.

You can search around, but I understand your confusion. There's a ton of information on this board, but it's really hard to sift through!
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[emorphix]

Yes I had a ATI Radeon 9800 Pro the windows drivers perform way better than the linux drivers unfortunatley. To be even able to play a Unreal Tournmanet I had to use the 3.9.x drivers due to the latest drivers making it run like complete crap.

Funny thing is that my ati card decided to go up in smoke, one of the pins on the Mollex got burnt up, and the card no longer works, I sent a RMA request to ATI last week still no reply. I'm personaly never going to by anthing ATI prodcues ever again.
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[SnEptUne]

Old ATI card cannot use ATI's binary driver; use the kernel driver instead. ATI Rage 3D works fine under Xorg, but I am not too sure about how the direct rendering performs.
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