HOWTO: ATI Radeon Mobility 7500 and Sony GRX560 laptop

nrdu · n00b Joined: 17 Apr 2004 Posts: 66

There has been a lot of problems with this card, and all the information is just 'floating' around, bits and pices, but no one seams to have actualy put everything together. Well I got it working, reaching up to 1800fps (average about 1500 or so).

This was done on a Sony GRX560 using the 2.6 kernel (ck-sources) using Xorg. I dunno if it will work with the 2.4, or the normal dev-sources... I got it working, and stopped there.

Things that should be enabled in this kernel:

nrdu · n00b Joined: 17 Apr 2004 Posts: 66

For those coming over from Cedega with the EQ problem, here is the orig post about using this card with EQ:

https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=244967

For those that are Gentoo guys trying to get EQ working with this card here is the post over on Cedega:

http://transgaming.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=6331#6331

JoKerTheFirst · n00b Joined: 19 Jul 2004 Posts: 69 Location: Rome, Italy

Thanks nrdu, you saved my life

it worked like a charm on my system
Asus L3540 (L3800-S family) , P4 1400 MHz, 256 RAM, ATI radeon mobility 7500 64Mb RAM, using gentoo-dev-sources 2.6.9-rc1 and xorg-6.8.0-r1
now I can score up to ~1200 on glxgears (was 300)

nrdu · n00b Joined: 17 Apr 2004 Posts: 66

Wow, I didn't think anyone would be able to follow my 'hack' of a HOWTO.

I'm happy to hear this helped someone else tho.

nightblade · Posted: Sat Nov 20, 2004 1:05 am Post subject:

Just migrated from Xfree to Xorg.
Still have to fix synaptics functions, but apart from that everything works perfectly

Thanks for the hints, nrdu !
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dpl · Posted: Sat Dec 18, 2004 3:26 pm Post subject:

This was the awesomest ting I found yesterday. It took me about 20 minutes and I had glxgears topping 1300. That, is fantastic.

One note though, you don't need this bit:

PMT · Apprentice Joined: 19 Jan 2004 Posts: 212

An unfortunate note.

I followed your guide, since my 3d accel stopped after I reinstalled gentoo [hard drive crash].

Now, an interesting thing happens.

glxinfo says I have direct rendering, but whenever I try glxgears or any similar apps, my entire system hangs. SysRq-I and SysRq-K do nothing, and I cannot do anything but SysRq-SUB.

Nothing is reported at the time of the incident in /var/log/messages or /var/log/Xorg.0.log, so I'm at a loss.
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kdag · Posted: Wed Jan 19, 2005 11:29 pm Post subject:

well i didnt follow the instructions of this thread but im suffering the same exact problem.

as soon as i start glxgears X freezes

did you ( yea you, the one who posted above me ) solved your problem?

anyone has an idea of what can be wrong in my system?

i will reemerge xorg-x11 soon

thanks
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Fallen_Angel · n00b Joined: 13 Sep 2004 Posts: 57 Location: Germany

hi,

you have to downgrade x.org, because the new version is buggy

nrdu · n00b Joined: 17 Apr 2004 Posts: 66

nrdu · n00b Joined: 17 Apr 2004 Posts: 66

badgers · l33t Joined: 04 Sep 2003 Posts: 680 Location: Madison, WI

for those of you with the 7500 mobility on a laptop.
Can you suspend to ram?
Can you suspend to disk?

I have found some conflicting info on putting laptops to sleep with the 7500 mobility and it Waking back up correctly
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Athlon XP2500+
166mHz FSB
512 Meg PC3200 Ram running at 166mHz
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2.6.17 Suspend2 kernel with no scsi support

alexbota · n00b Joined: 19 Jan 2004 Posts: 7

badgers · l33t Joined: 04 Sep 2003 Posts: 680 Location: Madison, WI

could you detail a little more about your config.
I had read one post that you had to switch to a virtual console before suspending.
I am glad to hear you can suspend to ram.
Did you disable the ACPI in the kernel?
_________________
Abit KD7-S
Athlon XP2500+
166mHz FSB
512 Meg PC3200 Ram running at 166mHz
LiteOn DVD dual Layer burner(hdc)

2.6.17 Suspend2 kernel with no scsi support

alexbota · n00b Joined: 19 Jan 2004 Posts: 7

jlmcp · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 27 Apr 2005 Posts: 134

This was a valuable thread! Thanks for posting!

From what I can tell, my 7500 is working properly. Glxgears is outputting:

1500 frames in 5.0 seconds = 238.600 FPS
1375 frames in 5.0 seconds = 275.000 FPS
1375 frames in 5.0 seconds = 275.000 FPS
1500 frames in 5.0 seconds = 238.600 FPS
etc...

One (noob) question I have is: how do you know what video options will work with your graphics card in xorg.conf? Is this documented somewhere? Just an educated guess? Are there other options that I could enable for the 7500?

Just curious.

Jake
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secondae · n00b Joined: 24 Sep 2004 Posts: 4

serjster · n00b Joined: 04 Sep 2005 Posts: 1

Hi, Does DRI give the same performance as if it would be with ati drivers ? What about the chipdID thing? Why cant it work with the 7500, what if u somehow edited the bios cheating the ati drivers? But maybe the chipsets are really different like in architecture and this will never work..
I almost cant play quake 3 with my ati 7500 in linux.. it makes me wanna go back to windows :\.

JellyTot · n00b Joined: 08 Oct 2005 Posts: 3

Thank you very much, nrdu. You helped me avert another weekend of headaches. My Mobility 7500 works fine now.

capira · Posted: Sun Jan 15, 2006 12:39 pm Post subject:

Thank you very much as well, nrdu. The laptop is working now like a charm!!!

Kurous · n00b Joined: 16 Jun 2004 Posts: 50

Does anyone have this card working with modular xorg??? I have DRI and OpenGL set up, but any opengl apps I run segfault. I have T40 laptop.
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Kurous · n00b Joined: 16 Jun 2004 Posts: 50

I'll take that as a no. :cry:

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dizzy · Posted: Fri May 12, 2006 6:52 am Post subject:

@Kurous

This thread is a little old, so I don't know if you still got this problem or not. I'm using this card with modular xorg. No problem with opengl. Mind you the only test I've done is with glxgears, so it might not apply to your prob.

sirformatalot · n00b Joined: 03 Feb 2006 Posts: 38

dizzy,
just wondering what kernel you're using- have you tried this card with Xgl? modular xorg 7.0 i presume ? my x crashes with any moderate video loads but i haven't really tried to figure out what the problem is yet- i'm lazy. what video driver are you using for this card? how'bout xorg.conf?

dizzy · Posted: Sun May 14, 2006 3:38 pm Post subject:

@sirformatalot

I'm using gentoo-sources-2.6.16-r7. I also used x11-base/x11-drm-20051223 instead of the kernel's. I've read that there are problems with this card in Xgl, so I have not try it yet. Yes, I'm using modular xorg 7. The driver for the 7500 mobile is just "ati". It used to be "radeon" in xorg 6.8.x. IIRC.

If setup correctly, it should give you ~1500 FPS in glxgears.

My xorg.conf