New Radeon8500-9700 drivers

TripKnot · Apprentice Joined: 29 May 2002 Posts: 213

Saw on /. that ATI has released updated drivers that infinally include XVideo and S3TC support, ie UT2003 is now playable on these cards.

I'll report back if I have any problems

TripKnot · Apprentice Joined: 29 May 2002 Posts: 213

Minus some problem downloading the drivers from ATIs site with phoenix in linux (worked fine in wondows with phoenix). The drivers install much like with the older 1.4.3 drivers.

Remember, when compiling your kernel to make AGP a module and compile in DRI support but no drivers below that.

microbrain

Am I the only person in the universe for which these drivers don't compile?
(pwd = /lib/modules/fglrx/build_mod)
# ./make.sh
ATI module generator V 2.0
==========================
probing for VMA API version...
cleaning...
patching 'highmem.h'...
patching 'drmP.h'...
patching file drmP.h
compiling 'agpgart_be.c'...
compiling 'agp3.c'...
compiling 'i7505-agp.c'...
compiling 'firegl_public.c'...
In file included from firegl_public.c:219:
patch/drivers/char/drm/drm_proc.h: In function `FGLDRM_proc_init':
patch/drivers/char/drm/drm_proc.h:87: parse error before `)'
firegl_public.c: In function `firegl_proc_init':
firegl_public.c:287: parse error before `)'
firegl_public.c: In function `firegl_proc_cleanup':
firegl_public.c:335: parse error before `)'
firegl_public.c: In function `firegl_stub_open':
firegl_public.c:361: parse error before `)'
firegl_public.c: In function `firegl_stub_getminor':
firegl_public.c:398: parse error before `)'
firegl_public.c: In function `firegl_stub_register':
firegl_public.c:441: parse error before `)'
firegl_public.c: In function `firegl_cleanup_module':
firegl_public.c:537: parse error before `)'
firegl_public.c:540: parse error before `)'
firegl_public.c: In function `vm_shm_nopage':
firegl_public.c:1804: parse error before `)'
firegl_public.c:1812: parse error before `)'
firegl_public.c:1831: parse error before `)'
firegl_public.c: In function `__ke_vm_map':
firegl_public.c:2125: parse error before `)'
firegl_public.c:2176: parse error before `)'
firegl_public.c:2209: parse error before `)'
firegl_public.c: In function `__ke_firegl_agpgart_available':
firegl_public.c:2376: parse error before `)'
firegl_public.c: In function `__ke_agpgart_available':
firegl_public.c:2388: parse error before `)'
firegl_public.c:2464: parse error before `)'
firegl_public.c:2472: parse error before `)'
firegl_public.c:2474: parse error before `)'
compiling failed - object file was not generated
<end output>

bummer dude.
_________________
"It's not stupid, it's advanced." -- Purple Tallest

TripKnot · Apprentice Joined: 29 May 2002 Posts: 213

Please, no one install these yet. They seem to be unstable. Switching to a different console with ctrl-alt-F[1-6] causes X to exit. I've also had the system spontaneously reboot when starting X and causing some file corruption. I'm going to play around a bit and see if I can figure this out. Insights wanted.

Edit: Oh yea and OpenOffice-bin no longer works, even with an unmerge/merge

Edit: Here's a cleaner install method:

platojones · Posted: Fri Nov 22, 2002 9:36 pm Post subject:

Wow, I'd love to hear if you've had any luck getting around the stability issues. I've got a radeon 8500 that's just begging to be accelerated :wink:

GentooNewbie · n00b Joined: 15 Jun 2002 Posts: 18

If you want acceleration I have been using the older 1.4.3 drivers with out any issues. Infact they are faster than the newer 1.4.3 drivers.

old = 2600 FPS glxgears
new = 2100 FPS glxgears

the older ones are named fglr200-glc22-4.2.0-1.4.3.i586.rpm
use rpm2tgz and install that way.

ProtectR · n00b Joined: 22 Nov 2002 Posts: 3

TripKnot · Apprentice Joined: 29 May 2002 Posts: 213

I cannot for the life of me figure this one out. someone with more knowledge is going to have to, or maybe we have to wait for another driver rev. That dropping out of X on console change is a total PITA.

Performance is a little bit worse as GentooNewbie mentioned. Glxgears went from ~2550 -> ~2350 for me. Also I noticed a replacement for glxgears called fgl_glxgears. Its basically a cube with the familiar glxgears demo on all the faces. It runs much slower, somewhere in the ~250fps here.

I'm really torn between the two drivers. I like the working xv in the drivers so I can have full screen vid but I never realised how much I switch to the console until this x dropping problem came up. It drives me nuts.

platojones · Posted: Sat Nov 23, 2002 5:18 pm Post subject:

GentooNewbie said: "If you want acceleration I have been using the older 1.4.3 drivers with out any issues. Infact they are faster than the newer 1.4.3 drivers."

Well, thanks for mentioning that. I tried those and they work great!

TripKnot: ATI seems to be somewhat weak in the driver development department. I've had ongoing issues with their Windows XP drivers for some time now. Minor stuff, but annoying all the same (i.e., DVD menus go black...this happened sometime after their second r200 driver release and they've never fixed it) Therefore, it would not surprise me at all if their linux drivers have issues. I do, however, at least commend them for the attempt and hope that their linux efforts will continue. It's really in their best interest after all. I think I'll skip this driver rev for now tho, and stick with these older but more stable drivers, even tho they don't have Xv

DRI for the r200 looks some ways off at this point, but there is light at the end of that tunnel. I don't think they will be very full-featured tho, since ATI is somewhat stingy with detailed technical info for open source developers.

Mr. Pointy · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 27 May 2002 Posts: 77

Do the ATI drivers work on XFree 4.2.1? The ATI website says only 4.1.0 and 4.2.0. I'm wondering though if they overlooked the newest version.

tyreth · Posted: Sun Nov 24, 2002 2:23 am Post subject:

Can someone explain to me clearly please the deal with ATI product drivers?

I've seen talk of different opensource drivers, DRI, the unified ones, etc, and it's all a mess of things I can't make heads or tails of. I'm used to nvidia - just leave graphics options out of the kernel then install the nvidia-kernel module.

What drivers are there for ATI? Which are better and worse? Which are open and closed? Which can be used for 3D gaming like quake3 and/or UT2k3?

Also, which of these drivers will let me play quake3 and or UT2k3 with a laptop with ATI cards, eg Radeon 9000?

Thanks for any help!

phelan · Posted: Sun Nov 24, 2002 9:55 am Post subject:

As far as I know there are three drivers for the 8500 and up:

XFree/DRI project (OpenSource)
The way to go for a clean system. With a stock XFree 4.2.x installation with a DRI project binary release you get rather slow 3D performance (1700 fps glxgears) and texture compression as needed by UT2003 has not yet been implemented (So you can't play it). Also XV (hardware scaling useful for movie watching) doesn't work.
With a complete CVS build of the DRI sources you also get a CVS build of the whole XFree tree. This results in additionally working XV support. This is the variant i'm running right now.

The DRI-Project: (An excellent Howto which describes the CVS tree compilation can be found on the documentation page)
http://dri.sourceforge.net

GATOS project (OpenSource)
The main goal of this project is to provide support for the All-in-one-Wonder cards. I used this one because it has working XV support. (The drivers works for non AIOW too). If you do not have an AIOW I suggest to use the DRI-CVS method as mentioned above because I never got 3D acceleration working with the GATOS drivers.

http://gatos.sourceforge.net

ATI official drivers (ClosedSource)
These are the drivers released from ATI. There are two versions:
The older one, which has faster 3D support (2500 fps glxgears) than the ones from the DRI project but also lack texture compression and even XV.
The new one (Nov 20), which includes texture compression and XV. Performance seems to be somewhere between DRI and the old ATI drivers. BUT: They are very buggy right now and in fact they actually don't work correctly. (They really should be marked as VERY BETA).

http://www.ati.com

Please report any errors or additional Information. All statements are based on my System: ATI Radeon 8500 (built by Ati), Athlon XP 1700+[/b]

tyreth · Posted: Sun Nov 24, 2002 10:46 am Post subject:

TripKnot · Apprentice Joined: 29 May 2002 Posts: 213

There is a driver feedback link on the linux driver page. I highly recommend everyone with one of these cards and is having problems to submit a problem report. Hopefully if they get enough responses they will release a fixed driver relatively quickly.

http://apps.ati.com/linuxDfeedback/

TripKnot · Apprentice Joined: 29 May 2002 Posts: 213

Just found out that X doesn't get dropped when logging in through xdm. Only when X is started with startx, maybe something significant there.

Edit: Err, sorry, I was wrong. It keeps the X session alive so long as you don't type or execute anything from another console. As soon as you do however, it restarts x again. <sigh> just when I thought I had found a way to use this drivers.

pascall · Posted: Mon Nov 25, 2002 3:29 pm Post subject:

Mr. Pointy : I am using the new drivers with Xfree 4.2.1. So they should work with any 4.2.x.

But they are plaged with problems, and performance is really bad (from first impression, no figure to confirm that yet) : they seem to give a much worse performance than the one you can with the catalyst 2.4 drivers for Window$ XP/2000.

Anyway I submitted feedback on the ATI site, hopefully as TripKnot said, if we are enough maybe they will react quickly.

By the way I think that everyone noticed that those drivers were developped by FireGL-Germany (the company they bought some time ago). Does anyone know if ATI-Toronto still plan to hire some linux tech guy to offer good linux drivers (I heard they would start offering good drivers starting January 2003) ?

GentooNewbie · n00b Joined: 15 Jun 2002 Posts: 18

Your welcome Platojones. I really want to use these driver because it enables DPMS support for my flat panel, but they are too buggy. I get artifacts when I run a app that uses the Xv extention. Will have to submit a feedback to ATI.

iancurtis · Posted: Sun Dec 01, 2002 5:18 am Post subject:

how do i know what version of opengl these drivers are using...i have a radeon 8500 and i thought these drivers use opengl 1.4 But fglrxinfo gives me opengl version 1.3...

display: :0.0 screen: 0
OpenGL vendor string: ATI Technologies Inc.
OpenGL renderer string: Radeon 8500 DDR Athlon (3DNow!)
OpenGL version string: 1.3.3477 (X4.2.0-2.5.1)

note: opengl-update 1.4 is merged.

xlyz · Veteran Joined: 27 Oct 2002 Posts: 1470 Location: Italy

just to let all you know that new ati drivers are available from ati site

not yet tried though

bye

TripKnot · Apprentice Joined: 29 May 2002 Posts: 213

The new ATI drivers ver 2.5.1 seem to fix the X dropping problem. Its nice to see ATI didn't sleep on this for 6 months.

pascall · Posted: Mon Dec 02, 2002 2:27 pm Post subject:

TripKnot : I tried them and indeed they seem to fix the X-virtual console problem : X no longer crashes when you CTRL + ALT + Fx...

Performance is still very bad with UT2003-demo (maybe comes in part from the fact that the openGL renderer used by Epic is worse than the Direct3D one), any hint form Nvidia users ? Let s hope that performance will be improved in the next driver release.

But at least we now have a decent working competitor to Nvidia on Linux...

Iancurtis : fglrxinfo gives the same... No idea why. I can t remember what was the output with the 2.4.3 driver set.

GentooNewbie · n00b Joined: 15 Jun 2002 Posts: 18

Because QuakeIII looks better and you can enable options you could before.

BonezTheGoon · Posted: Tue Dec 03, 2002 9:00 pm Post subject:

pvdbogaard · n00b Joined: 13 Dec 2002 Posts: 16

I got this latest ATI driver (2.5.1) working for an Club-3d Radeon 9000Pro. Used fglrxconfig to generate the config file. However I cannot get my second monitor to work: it either gets no signal, or it is an exact copy of the other monitor. Would like two independend monitor.Clues?
I tried the different option that fglrxconfig offers. No luck though

NiGHTSFTP · n00b Joined: 11 Oct 2002 Posts: 22

I get segfaulting going on with various games at various times.

Sometimes glxgears will segfault right away, sometimes it will start then crash, sometimes it will run for quite awhile then crash.

Same for tuxracer.

"Racer" game, wont load.

UT will sometimes start to show the opening fly-by demo (Loki 4.36) then, crap out. Or, just not load.

I dont know how to go about fixing the problem, anybody have any suggestions?

Edit (add specs):
Athlonb 1.4ghz, Radeon 8500LE (128mb), XFree 4.2.0, KDE 3.0....

If anybody wants any more info, just ask. (thanks)