ATi 9800 Pro & Fedora Core 3
 

Hi all:

My system is a 2.6Ghz P4 w/ 2Gb RAM on an Asus P4P800-Deluxe mainboard. I have an ATI Radeon 9800 Pro (128Mb) dual head video card running an NEC LCD1970GX flat panel and a Hitachi 19" CM751 Monitor.

I recently installed FC3 and am very pleased with it so far. I've managed to install software and configure the system in such a way that I'm tempted to toss Windows out the...um...window and stick with Linux full time.

My problem is this. I'm running the 2.6.11 kernel with the ver 8.12.10 drivers from ATI. I have monitor spanning and am looking at a glorious 2560x1024 desktop. When I run a screensaver though, I notice my system bog down to a slow crawl. I assume that I'm getting jack for 3D acceleration. I have no other way to test it though as I don't play games. Anyhow, I got it into my head to find a better driver for my video card and I read that the linva.org site had some really good ones. I downloaded thier latest ATI driver (ati-fglrx-8.12.10.1-0.lvn.1.3.i386.rpm ) and installed it. I discovered that I no longer could get monitor spanning to work (I could select it and then upon restarting "X", I was back to cloned monitors) and my system was even slower than it was before (scrolling through web pages was a chore for instance).

Am I fighting a losing battle here or is there hope for us ATI/Linux users? I'm not a complete noob when it comes to linux, but I'm no expert either. Any help would be appreciated..

Cheers

You may be fighting a loosing battel with ATI and the 2.6.11 kernel. They may not yet support 2.6.11 ? I do have a working FC3 with ATI 9200 & 9200SE with frame rates of 2000 & 1100 respectively (using glxgears)

You said you installed the ATI drivers but did not say that you reconfigured your /etc/X11/xorg.conf.

IS the fglrx module being loaded when you boot your system ? you can check what modules are loaded by typing "lsmod"

If fglrx is being loaded then you can see if your system is using direct rendering by typing "glxinfo"

If your system is in direct rendering mode you can check its frame rate by typing "glxgears"

Try the instructions on this page to install the ATI drivers.

http://transgaming.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2163

Thanks for the replies guys...
 

glxgears produces this result...

# glxgears
Xlib: extension "XFree86-DRI" missing on display ":0.0".
1715 frames in 5.0 seconds = 343.000 FPS
1560 frames in 5.0 seconds = 312.000 FPS
1680 frames in 5.0 seconds = 336.000 FPS
1680 frames in 5.0 seconds = 336.000 FPS
1560 frames in 5.0 seconds = 312.000 FPS
1680 frames in 5.0 seconds = 336.000 FPS
1680 frames in 5.0 seconds = 336.000 FPS
1680 frames in 5.0 seconds = 336.000 FPS
1560 frames in 5.0 seconds = 312.000 FPS
1561 frames in 5.0 seconds = 312.200 FPS

I have no idea what that first statement means. I think it might have to do with the fact I'm running two displays and one isn't being accelerated?

As for reconfiguring my X11.conf file, no I didn't touch that. I don't recall seeing anything about it on the ATI drivers page...but then again, I may have skimmed over it too quickly and missed it.

glxinfo produces this:

glxinfo
name of display: :0.0
Xlib: extension "XFree86-DRI" missing on display ":0.0".
display: :0 screen: 0
direct rendering: No
server glx vendor string: SGI
server glx version string: 1.2
server glx extensions:
GLX_ARB_multisample, GLX_EXT_visual_info, GLX_EXT_visual_rating,
GLX_EXT_import_context, GLX_OML_swap_method, GLX_SGI_make_current_read,
GLX_SGIS_multisample, GLX_SGIX_fbconfig
client glx vendor string: ATI
client glx version string: 1.3
client glx extensions:
GLX_EXT_visual_info, GLX_EXT_visual_rating, GLX_EXT_import_context,
GLX_ARB_get_proc_address, GLX_ARB_multisample, GLX_ATI_pixel_format_float,
GLX_ATI_render_texture
GLX extensions:
GLX_EXT_visual_info, GLX_EXT_visual_rating, GLX_EXT_import_context,
GLX_ARB_multisample
OpenGL vendor string: Mesa project: www.mesa3d.org
OpenGL renderer string: Mesa GLX Indirect
OpenGL version string: 1.2 (1.5 Mesa 6.2.1)
OpenGL extensions:
GL_ARB_imaging, GL_ARB_multitexture, GL_ARB_texture_border_clamp,
GL_ARB_texture_cube_map, GL_ARB_texture_env_add,
GL_ARB_texture_env_combine, GL_ARB_texture_env_dot3,
GL_ARB_transpose_matrix, GL_EXT_abgr, GL_EXT_blend_color,
GL_EXT_blend_minmax, GL_EXT_blend_subtract, GL_EXT_texture_env_add,
GL_EXT_texture_env_combine, GL_EXT_texture_env_dot3,
GL_EXT_texture_lod_bias
glu version: 1.3
glu extensions:
GLU_EXT_nurbs_tessellator, GLU_EXT_object_space_tess

visual x bf lv rg d st colorbuffer ax dp st accumbuffer ms cav
id dep cl sp sz l ci b ro r g b a bf th cl r g b a ns b eat
----------------------------------------------------------------------
0x23 24 tc 0 24 0 r y . 8 8 8 0 0 16 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 None
0x24 24 tc 0 24 0 r y . 8 8 8 0 0 16 8 16 16 16 0 1 0 None
0x25 24 tc 0 32 0 r y . 8 8 8 8 0 16 8 16 16 16 16 1 0 None
0x26 24 tc 0 32 0 r . . 8 8 8 8 0 16 8 16 16 16 16 1 0 None
0x27 24 dc 0 24 0 r y . 8 8 8 0 0 16 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 None
0x28 24 dc 0 24 0 r y . 8 8 8 0 0 16 8 16 16 16 0 1 0 None
0x29 24 dc 0 32 0 r y . 8 8 8 8 0 16 8 16 16 16 16 1 0 None
0x2a 24 dc 0 32 0 r . . 8 8 8 8 0 16 8 16 16 16 16 1 0 None


Once again, I have no idea what any of it means really other than the basic "This is loaded and this is the current state of things on your system".

/sbin/lsmod gives me this:

/sbin/lsmod
Module Size Used by
nls_utf8 6081 0
ntfs 179728 0
autofs4 22597 0
sunrpc 138885 1
ipt_limit 6465 10
iptable_mangle 6721 0
ipt_LOG 11073 8
ipt_MASQUERADE 7489 0
iptable_nat 25597 1 ipt_MASQUERADE
ipt_TOS 6337 0
ipt_REJECT 11073 1
ip_conntrack_irc 75729 0
ip_conntrack_ftp 76497 0
ipt_state 5825 6
ip_conntrack 45481 5 ipt_MASQUERADE,iptable_nat,ip_conntrack_irc,ip_conntrack_ftp,ipt_state
iptable_filter 6849 1
ip_tables 25025 9 ipt_limit,iptable_mangle,ipt_LOG,ipt_MASQUERADE,iptable_nat,ipt_TOS,ipt_REJECT,ipt_state,iptable_fil ter
video 19653 0
button 10577 0
battery 13253 0
ac 8773 0
md5 8129 1
ipv6 259681 10
joydev 13569 0
uhci_hcd 35289 0
ehci_hcd 37197 0
hw_random 9557 0
i2c_i801 12493 0
i2c_core 25665 1 i2c_i801
emu10k1_gp 7617 0
gameport 8641 1 emu10k1_gp
snd_emu10k1 95045 3
snd_rawmidi 28129 1 snd_emu10k1
snd_seq_device 12493 2 snd_emu10k1,snd_rawmidi
snd_ac97_codec 73145 1 snd_emu10k1
snd_pcm_oss 55153 0
snd_mixer_oss 22465 2 snd_pcm_oss
snd_pcm 92741 3 snd_emu10k1,snd_ac97_codec,snd_pcm_oss
snd_timer 28741 2 snd_emu10k1,snd_pcm
snd_page_alloc 13765 2 snd_emu10k1,snd_pcm
snd_util_mem 8641 1 snd_emu10k1
snd_hwdep 13281 1 snd_emu10k1
snd 57765 13 snd_emu10k1,snd_rawmidi,snd_seq_device,snd_ac97_codec,snd_pcm_oss,snd_mixer_oss,snd_pcm,snd_timer,sn d_hwdep
soundcore 13217 2 snd
sk98lin 163873 0
floppy 62289 0
dm_snapshot 21477 0
dm_zero 6465 0
dm_mirror 25885 0
ext3 131401 2
jbd 61401 1 ext3
dm_mod 60741 6 dm_snapshot,dm_zero,dm_mirror
sbp2 26825 0
ohci1394 37849 0
ieee1394 307705 2 sbp2,ohci1394
ata_piix 13125 0
sata_sil 12613 0
libata 49093 2 ata_piix,sata_sil
sd_mod 22337 0
scsi_mod 129801 3 sbp2,libata,sd_mod

I'm gonna look over that transgaming page and see what I can decipher...

Thanks and if you got anymore ideas, feel free to send them my way.

Cheers

I too am having problems with the ATI driver 8.12.10 on Linux 2.6.11. When I try to rebuild the module, it gives me a bunch of errors and I don't get 3D accel as a result either. Yet another waiting game... :(