Newer ATI Radeon cards seem to not be supported -- Help?

LionMage

I seem to have made a mistake by buying an ATI Radeon 9600, mistakenly thinking that because ATI is more "open" with their documentation, I'd have support in XFree86. Guess what? I found out today that ATI never released docs for the Radeon 9600 / R350 chip. So the Radeon driver for XFree 4.3.0 won't work. ATI seems to have gotten into the business of making their own closed drivers, just like nVidia. But they don't officially support XFree 4.3.0; they've only officially released drivers for 4.1.x and 4.2.x. Those drivers are only compiled for an older glibc version, and are only available in RPM packages.

There are Radeon/FireGL drivers for 4.3.0 at this site: http://www.schneider-digital.de/html/download_ati.html
Again, though, these drivers seem to only work for an older glibc, and are only available in RPM format.

Soooo... should I ditch my ATI card for a (shudder) nVidia GeForce FX or something? Or is there a way to at least get 2D working on my Radeon 9600 Pro? At this point, I'd be happy with just 2D acceleration; 3D would rock, but I won't hold my breath.

ATI said a couple months back that they'd support XFree 4.3.0, but nothing has materialized since then. I'm thinking of picking up Red Hat 8 or 9 and installing it just to get the video card support... But obviously I'd much rather stick with Gentoo, especially since I invested so much time in getting Gentoo compiled and working.

a.zapatista · n00b Joined: 28 Apr 2003 Posts: 42

there is an ebuild in portage of version 2.9 of the ati drivers, i've installed it and it dosem't seem to use any rpms. It should support the radeon 9600 and does work with xfree 4.3

fusion · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 02 Nov 2002 Posts: 119

a.zapatista · n00b Joined: 28 Apr 2003 Posts: 42

oh sorry, the 9600 must be the r350. excuse me.
you could try to use the vesa drivers which should work for 2D but not accelrated 3D

LionMage · Posted: Wed Jun 25, 2003 5:01 pm Post subject:

sputnik1969

taikuri

sputnik1969

sputnik1969 · Posted: Fri Jun 27, 2003 12:44 am Post subject:

Cuardin · Posted: Fri Jun 27, 2003 8:15 am Post subject:

Is this from your Xfree log? I am very concerned since I am buying new hardware within a month and I want top quality 3D. And I really want to run a Microsoft/Intel/Cisco/Via/nVidia free system.

LionMage · Posted: Fri Jun 27, 2003 3:49 pm Post subject: I got it working!!!

Huzzah! I got my Radeon 9600 Pro working. The problem wasn't the ATI drivers. The problem was my kernel.

I had compiled my kernel wrong. I checked http://www.xfree86.org/4.3.0/DRIcomp4.html and took most of their advice.

What worked for me was compiling /dev/agpgart support as a module, and turning off DRM in the kernel. Rebooting and then re-emerging the ati-drivers ebuild seemed to do the trick. After a bit of config file tweaking, I got X11 running finally... And glxgears tops out around 673 FPS. Not great, but it's a start!

So yes, the Radeon 9600 Pro is indeed supported by the latest ATI drivers. A big "Thank You" to everyone who helped me out on this.

LionMage

sputnik1969

cptnoskill · n00b Joined: 28 Jul 2002 Posts: 6

I got my Radeon 9600 working under gentoo, with the ati-drivers!!!
I'm getting about 4100-4200 FPS in glxgears....

I had to recompile my kernel (remove the -drm) and go into my bios and change AGP support from 8x to 4x.. there is a patch to get 8x agp working.. but I haven't found it...

I'm just glad my card is working, Wolfenstein: ET works great... yea!!!

I should also add, I had to compile agpgart support into my kernel.. it wouldn't work as a module.

aquila · n00b Joined: 28 Nov 2002 Posts: 18

can anyone here give me a hand with getting the radeon 9600 to work with an nforce2 motherboard?

ex0 · Posted: Mon Jul 14, 2003 7:16 am Post subject:

I got a Radeon 9600 Pro as well and I'm having problems, I tried recompiling the kernel as you guys said but still no luck.

In bios I can't seem to change my AGP to 4x its greyed out and won't let me, cause it running at 8x be causing it to not work at all with these drivers? If so maybe I should try this patch.

phildrip · n00b Joined: 14 Jul 2003 Posts: 23

Aquila, you will have problems using the nforce2 chipset as Nvidia (in their infinite wisdom) have ensured that the standard agpgart module that you can compile from kernel source doesn't work with their nforce and nforce2 motherboards.

I do believe, however, that the 2.5 series of kernels (ie, the devel series) have workarounds that enable you to use agpgart with the nforce.

I haven't tried it, but that's the word on the street.

And ex0, if your 9600 pro is a 'Powered by Ati' board (ie, built by third party such as Sapphire) I think you need to disable the internal agpgart in the fglrx module (using fglrxconfig, or manually by editing the XF86Config file) and use the standard agpgart module. You may also need to use the agp_try_unsupported=1 option, ie:
modprobe agpgart agp_try_unsupported=1

Hope this helps
Phil

ex0 · Posted: Mon Jul 14, 2003 3:56 pm Post subject:

ok cheers, I'll give it a go