Sorry for the double-post, but this had to be done since the other thread is going in all different directions.

OK, I got a nice ATI Radeon 9500 PRO card from Sapphire. Everything runs fine except for 3d games and such, esp. Chromium and Tux Racer, which are exteremely choppy and slow. I figured it must be a problem with the drivers.

So, first I head over to www.ati.com to look for official, closed-source drivers. Turns out they only support up to XFree86 4.2. I need drivers for XFree86 4.3 (comes with rh9).

I got a piece of advice from this forum to use the ati.2 drivers from gatos.sourceforge.net. Frist I backed up my X11R6 folder, and tried those...still no luck. BTW I'm testing all these with Chromium and Tux Racer.

So, I get a link from another member here to check out the latest version of ATI drivers that supposedly support XFree86 4.3 (http://www.schneider-digital.de/). I tried these, too, to no avail.

However, that .zip had a really thorough readme, and I tried some of the things it said to get 3d working. Tried everything and STILL Chromium and Tux Racer run like complete crap. I tried reconfiguring my XF86Config file many times, and when i restarted X, i got the command line and the good ol' "X Server can't start, trying fresh configuration" screen...its just not working! So, now I'm stuck with this incredible card and an incredible machine, a copy of Q3Arena, and nothing to do...

NOW WHAT!? any help or just a smack in the face will be appreciated.

BTW the readme says to check the drivers by typing # fglrxinfo and to make sure the settings match:
Mine reads:

Uhmm... I've never used the ATI provided modules, but I've been twisiting XFree a lot lately for my cruel purposes and have gotten the Matrox Drivers to load properly for 4.3.0 that were compiled for 4.2.0. I also used the 4.2.0 XFree native tdfx module on a 4.3.0 install as the new tdfx module creates all sorts of nightmares (haven't tried the DRI component of either though as these are 2 xinerama boxen), so for 3d hardware acceleration it might barf all over the place, but if ATI is giving you a precompiled binary little lib file, its easy enough to copy in, change the driver in XF86Config, and gun up X and find out if it horks...

Cheers,

Finegan

err...sorry, but you kinda lost me...how do you change the driver in my XF86Config file?

Well... look down at the card section, for instance:

Say Driver is set to "ati" but needs to be set to "fglrx", just make certain there's a:

/usr/X11R6/lib/modules/dri/fglrx.so
/usr/X11R6/lib/modules/drivers/fglrx_drv.o

At least I think that's there names...

And X should load it, as far as I understand it anyway... At least hacking older tdfx and mga drivers into an X-install, that's all I had to do... oh and I forgot, I actually got DRI to work fine (one head of course), the day I got bored and wanted to play tux racer, and everything was running on XFree 4.3.0 and 4.2.0 compiled drivers. Your mileage with an ATI may vary, who knows what wackiness is in those libs.

Cheers,

Finegan

erm...the only thing i found under there was:
so...now what do i do?

radeon is the current driver, the XFree86 one, I figured you could download the ATI drivers, force install them and see if that worked... hopefully they give you the kernel source for the kernel side of the AGP module... hmm, or hopefully at least a stripped module binary.

Cheers,

Finegan

i already tried the official ati drivers, when i try to run the rpm, redhat says they're already installed. They came with rh9. i dont see how much good reinstalling the XF86 4.2 drivers will be...

Hmmm... I grabbed the RPM from ATI and took a look at what it would unpack where, there's a lot of goop with this kid, and this thing is so not built for rh 9.0 yet, but it could be, here's the whole file list:

bob@tyler:~/mess$ rpm2cpio fglrx-glc22-4\[1\].2.0-2.5.1.i586.rpm | cpio --list
./lib/modules/fglrx/build_mod/agp.h
./lib/modules/fglrx/build_mod/agp3.c
./lib/modules/fglrx/build_mod/agp_backend.h
./lib/modules/fglrx/build_mod/agpgart.h
./lib/modules/fglrx/build_mod/agpgart_be.c
./lib/modules/fglrx/build_mod/firegl_public.c
./lib/modules/fglrx/build_mod/firegl_public.h
./lib/modules/fglrx/build_mod/i7505-agp.c
./lib/modules/fglrx/build_mod/libfglrx_ip.a.GCC2
./lib/modules/fglrx/build_mod/libfglrx_ip.a.GCC3
./lib/modules/fglrx/build_mod/make.sh
./lib/modules/fglrx/fglrx.2.4.18-14-SMP.o
./lib/modules/fglrx/fglrx.2.4.18-14.o
./lib/modules/fglrx/fglrx.2.4.18-14bigmem-SMP.o
./lib/modules/fglrx/fglrx.2.4.18-17.7.x-SMP.o
./lib/modules/fglrx/fglrx.2.4.18-17.7.x.o
./lib/modules/fglrx/fglrx.2.4.18-17.7.xbigmem-SMP.o
./lib/modules/fglrx/fglrx.2.4.18-17.8.0-SMP.o
./lib/modules/fglrx/fglrx.2.4.18-17.8.0.o
./lib/modules/fglrx/fglrx.2.4.18-17.8.0bigmem-SMP.o
./lib/modules/fglrx/fglrx.2.4.18-3-SMP.o
./lib/modules/fglrx/fglrx.2.4.18-3.o
./lib/modules/fglrx/fglrx.2.4.18-3bigmem-SMP.o
./lib/modules/fglrx/fglrx.2.4.18-4-SMP.o
./lib/modules/fglrx/fglrx.2.4.7-10-SMP.o
./lib/modules/fglrx/fglrx.2.4.7-10.o
./lib/modules/fglrx/fglrx.2.4.7-10enterprise-SMP.o
./lib/modules/fglrx/fglrx.2.4.9-31-SMP.o
./lib/modules/fglrx/fglrx.2.4.9-31.o
./lib/modules/fglrx/fglrx.2.4.9-31enterprise-SMP.o
./lib/modules/fglrx/fglrx_info.txt
./lib/modules/fglrx/make_install.sh
./opt/kde3/share/applnk/fireglcontrol_kde3.desktop
./usr/X11R6/bin/LICENSE.GPL
./usr/X11R6/bin/LICENSE.QPL
./usr/X11R6/bin/fgl_glxgears
./usr/X11R6/bin/fglrxconfig
./usr/X11R6/bin/fglrxinfo
./usr/X11R6/bin/fireglcontrol.qt2.bz2
./usr/X11R6/bin/fireglcontrol.static.bz2
./usr/X11R6/lib/libGL.so.1.2
./usr/X11R6/lib/modules/dri/fglrx_dri.so
./usr/X11R6/lib/modules/drivers/fglrx_drv.o
./usr/X11R6/lib/modules/linux/libfglrxdrm.a
./usr/share/applnk/fireglcontrol.kdelnk
./usr/share/gnome/apps/fireglcontrol.desktop
./usr/share/icons/ati.xpm
./usr/share/pixmaps/ati.xpm
./usr/src/fglrx_panel_sources.tgz
./usr/src/fglrx_sample_source.tgz

So, from that I guessed right on the module names, but it looks like if you were to force install this RPM, you would then have to cd over to the /lib/modules/fglrx/build_mod directory and run the make.sh script so as to make the kernel module for your kernel, then possibly unpack those two .tgz's and see if you can build the utilities against your system, although I doubt that would be entirely necessary.

In short, I think this could be hacked together from what they give you, but damn would it be a headache.

Cheers,

Finegan

a headache for a guru let alone a one-month linux newb =P

i got lotsa help around though, but i'll just wait anyways

If the drivers I linked you to are really installed [the XFree-4.3.0 compatible from the german site] you need to run #fglrxconfig [...clearly explained in Ati's limited documentation] to write a new Ati compatible XF86Config-4 file.
Hacking the existing config just won't do it [...it could but support would be incomplete] as Ati don't recognize/use the same "Options".

And those drivers _are_your_only_option_ for HW accel with a r300 series radeon on XFree-4.3.0.

Once you got the config part down, if you still have problems, you may try loading the fglrx module manually prior to "startx" [...through rc.local for instance].

Refer to /var/log/XFree86.0.log for errors <EE> or warnings <WW> encountered at X initialisation.

And there's been quite a few discussions on radeon over the past few weeks, do yourself a favor and use the search.
...be it only so you can pinpoint your problem more accurately and ask the right questions.

i've been using fglrxconfig after every attempt i make at this, and i've used it multiple times after trying the schneider ones. I thought i said in the first post here that X rejected all my settings...i would ctrl-alt-bkspc and it would shut down X and not restart it sticking me in the command line interface with some error to the effect of "X failed to start, trying with a fresh configuration now"...so it just wipes out all my setttings anyways

The problem may be that fglrxconfig is writing an XF86Config, not an XF86Config-4. XFree86-4.x.x will use the -4 config by default if it is present on your system.

All,

I'm a newbie so please excuse stupid questions, but I've been having similar problems with 3D. TuxRacer hogs all of my processor. I'll put my components list below...

I'm using Mandrake 9.1. I've reviewed the posts on this subject and still am a bit mystified as to what action to take. I opened my XF86Config-4 file and this is what it shows under the Video "Device section"

Section "Device"
Identifier "device1"
VendorName "ATI"
BoardName "ATI Radeon"
Driver "radeon"
Option "DPMS"
EndSection

As you see below I have an A7N8X mobo. I'm wondering if the issues with the ASUS board are more my problem here than the video card. I have not yet tried to install any drivers for the ASUS board. I bought what I thought was a pretty powerful system overall, and to this point I have seen many things take up more system resources than I would have thought. The 3D is just one example...

Any ideas guys? Thanks...





--------------------------------------------------
AMD AthlonXP 2400+
1G Kingston HyperX PC3000 DDR RAM
Saphire (ATI) Radeon 9500 PRO 128 Mb
NForce2 ASUS A7N8X Deluxe Motherboard

Yeah, your problem is the nforce2 chipset.
AGP support for nV cards only [...through their proprietary graphics drivers], they're supposedly working to extend support

ok I'll attack the nforce chipset then... Thanks.

What do you mean by extending support?