getting ATI Radeons to work on Gentoo for AMD64

fesodes · n00b Joined: 19 Feb 2004 Posts: 4

Hi

I just purchased a AMD64 system with a Radeon 9800XT. But when I checked at ATI's website, there is no Radeon drivers for 64bit Linux so what should I do? Anyone here got their Radeons to work with Gentoo in 64bit mode?

secondshadow · Guru Joined: 23 Jun 2003 Posts: 362

You can use VESA with XFree 4.3.0...which works...but the 60Hz refresh rates give me headaches so I went ahead and built 4.3.99 (4.4 RC2) last night and the radeon drivers seem to work great. Don't try radeon drivers on 4.3.0...you will get hard locks. I found that out the hard way. I read that some apps don't compile against X4.4...but I've not had problems yet....built k3b just a minute ago and it works find. I'm building mozilla as we speak. Give it a shot if you can't deal with low refresh rates, otherwise VESA works fine.

vash · n00b Joined: 13 Jul 2002 Posts: 59

Can we get some steps to get either VESA working or the Radeon drivers working? I just built my A64 box with the latest LiveCD and cannot get xfree-drm to compile (numerous errors posted already in the Gentoo forums) and would like some form of X.

vash

molander · Posted: Thu Feb 19, 2004 7:55 pm Post subject:

Just use DRM from the kernel and it should work fine. VESA is too slow for me. The redrawing is too slow. I get 1300fps on my radeon 9200 in glxgears. (2.6 kernel and 64 bit native)

vash · n00b Joined: 13 Jul 2002 Posts: 59

thumper · Guru Joined: 06 Dec 2002 Posts: 552 Location: Venice FL

molander · Posted: Thu Feb 19, 2004 8:49 pm Post subject:

fesodes · n00b Joined: 19 Feb 2004 Posts: 4

"You can use VESA with XFree 4.3.0...which works...but the 60Hz refresh rates give me headaches so I went ahead and built 4.3.99 (4.4 RC2) last night and the radeon drivers seem to work great. Don't try radeon drivers on 4.3.0...you will get hard locks."

I'm new to Linux so I don't really understand what you mean by "built 4.3.99(4.4 RC2) and the radeon drivers seem to work great". What is 4.3.99(4.4RC2)? Is that a version of XFree or are you talking about Radeon drivers? Also, where did you get the Radeon drivers? You using the 32bit ones or did you make yourself a 64bit version?

thumper · Guru Joined: 06 Dec 2002 Posts: 552 Location: Venice FL

XFree 4.3.99 is the release candidate for Xfree 4.4, See http://packages.gentoo.org/ebuilds/?xfree-4.3.99.902-r2
It's hard masked in the /usr/portage/profiles/package.mask file.

I'm using the XFree version 4.3.99 and the radeon driver, I have mine built as a module, I guess I'm going to have to live with the speed, I just found this in the XFree log:

(WW) RADEON(0): Direct rendering not yet supported on Radeon 9500/9700 and newer
cards

I guess I should consider myself lucky, I found this also:

(II) RADEON(0): Acceleration enabled

And I use 1600x1200, and it feels ok, better than my Rage 128 on my Athlon 1Ghz.

But that glxgears thing bugs me...

George

molander · Posted: Thu Feb 19, 2004 9:40 pm Post subject:

secondshadow · Guru Joined: 23 Jun 2003 Posts: 362

well...I wouldn't consider my CFlags to be too agressive to begin with

CFLAGS="-O3 -pipe -fomit-frame-pointer"

The athlon64 technotes specifically mention that you will have lockups while using the xfree 4.3 radeon drivers so if you don't get them then consider yourself lucky. 4.3.99 seems quite stable in my opinion. I had it running for 4 hours earlier...no problems at all.

absinthe · Posted: Fri Feb 20, 2004 5:17 am Post subject:

there's no reason to set aggressive CFLAGS on the x86_64 gcc backend. I would bet anyone a box of donuts there is no difference in performance between -O2 and -O3 right now.

<rant>

This will change when Intel releases their "x86-64" compatible chip" and complicates the gcc backend by making it all CFLAGS-stupid like the i686 stuff is... by adding SSE3... and who knows what else. Buncha embrace & extend weenies.

Also, regarding Intel's recent statement: "64-bit irrelevant for home PC's now" ... when you filter out the marketing language, what they're really saying is:

"x86-64 is cool, but we don't have anything that competes with it in active production yet. Oops. So we're going to attempt to derail AMD's success with soundbites in the news media downplaying the significance of 64-bit desktops. We plan on producing a copy of AMD's idea soon. Once we make the chip, only then will 64-bit desktops be worthwhile."

"Oh, and IA-64 is on its way to becoming one of the world's colossal R&D failures. Oops. But we'll ride this slow-moving trainwreck right through anybody who's brave enough to buy into it."

</rant> :lol:

secondshadow · Guru Joined: 23 Jun 2003 Posts: 362

I could use a box of donuts. Any specific app to use as a test-case?

absinthe · Posted: Fri Feb 20, 2004 7:16 am Post subject:

llew · n00b Joined: 17 Nov 2003 Posts: 35

Can anyone please post a howto for getting radeon cards to work in an amd64 environment, without vesa/fb driver, of course.

- XFree Version
- Kernel Config
- XF86Config
- Which Drivers? - (emerge ati-driver, emerge xfree-drm, emerge nothing...)

What to merge, which cards work, which wouldn't (r100, r200,r300)

Thanks!

endpoint · n00b Joined: 14 Nov 2003 Posts: 11