best driver for ATI Mobility Radeon 7500 (M7)?

random_string · 09-17-2006, 01:12 AM

ok so i did a net install of sarge on my laptop and everything was as smooth as usual up until ive hit the video acceleration.
ive heard rumors of ati issues but never thought i would have to deal with it. boy, was i wrong.
anyway my xfree86 4.3.0 came with just "ati" driver and not "radeon" as for some other people... so i used "ati" initially
3d stuff works but not usable.
tuxracer barely displays the menu and glxgears reports 150fps... which is as bad as it can be.
i went straight ahead and downloaded fglrx driver (8.28.1) from ati.com and built a package. after playing around with configurations for hours and getting 0 result i looked at the hardware support list and sadly my card (Mobility Radeon 7500) is not listed. the exact error i get from xfree86

Code:

EE no device found
no screens found

i am confident that i have performed everything properly, but it makes not difference since my card is not supported anyway.
now i have heard of some projects out there that produce these magic drivers, but with a bit of googling i was unable to find any of that goodness.
please dont tell me that this card is too old cause i play UT 2004 on windows at 1024x768.
i just need to know the best possible driver out there and where to get it. or any ideas as to how make the current (xfree86's "ati") driver perform tolerably.
thanks, ill be waiting for that sugestion.
Vlad

random_string · 09-17-2006, 01:45 AM

a little update:
although if i run
dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xfree86
it does not show "radeon" on the list, it still accepted it when i manually entered it in XF86Config-4.
i noticed absolutely no difference between the two, the results they produce are the same, so for me "ati" = "radeon" in xfree86.
looks like i need some other driver.

rickh · 09-17-2006, 01:50 AM

Yes ... ati=radeon

I would recommend that you install Etch instead of Sarge. You get xorg instead of Xfree86. The ati driver works smooth as silk on my ATI Express 200.

The Debian people have made changes of some sort to glxgears tho. They probably didn't change anything in Sarge, but when I run it now it shows 50 fps ... That doesn't mean what it used to ... My system is flying, and 3d effects are fantasic.

random_string · 09-17-2006, 12:26 PM

etch is not exactly stable yet and ive had some compiling issues from using libraries from the testing repositories (etch stuff).
i can prolly get xorg if i really wanted to but that is not the issue here. ATI NO LONGER SUPPORTS THIS CARD, meaning i need need to look for such driver elsewhere. and no, my system is far from flying right now, and it should.
any takers?

random_string · 09-17-2006, 06:53 PM

this is what lspci reports:

Code:

0000:01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc Radeon Mobility M7 LW [Radeon Mobility 7500]

and i converted that into

Code:

PCI:1:0:0

for the video card's bus identifier in the xfree86 configuration.
it really seems like fglrx driver does not detect my card at all since its not on the list it supports (although Mobility Radeon 9000 is supposed to be M7 chip as well which is on the list)
what do other people with Mobility Radeon 7500 use? something that can at least pull linux quake 3...

random_string · 09-19-2006, 12:55 PM

oh for smack's sake doesnt anyone know what driver to use for the most popular mobile video chipset ever?

J.W. · 09-19-2006, 11:10 PM

You need to use the radeon driver. The basic fact of the matter is the ATI's support of Linux does not exactly cover their complete product line, and without them offering specific Linux drivers for this card, its performance will be weak compared with Windows, for which they do offer drivers. As you stated yourself, ATI doesn't support this card - blame ATI, not Linux. FWIW here's what I'm using

Code:

default@dhcppc1:~> /sbin/lspci | grep ATI
0000:01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc Radeon Mobility M7 LW [Radeon Mobility 7500]

and here's a snippet from my xorg.conf

Code:

Section "Device"
  BoardName    "Radeon LW"
  BusID        "1:0:0"
  Driver       "radeon"
  Identifier   "Device[0]"
  Screen       0
  Option       "Rotate" "off"
  VendorName   "ATI"
EndSection

3D is enabled, TuxRacer is playable, but it's nothing to write home about. One random question, does the radeon module appear in the output from lsmod?

random_string · 09-24-2006, 08:45 PM

yes "radeon" is the first module that lsmod reports.
my configuration was nearly identical to what you had (you had some board name and vendor stuff) our bus identifier is identical.
X works, glxgears work but have very low fps. TuxRacer is still not playable (i can barely move the cursor in the menu meaning even 2D acceleration is too weak). i pretty much gave up on this thing at this point...
oh btw i dont blame linux at all... just hardware developers for not providing decent support for hardware that we buy from them.
my true question is... is there any other driver out there?

random_string · 10-03-2006, 02:54 PM

ok... so it works now. after a complete reinstall. (long story)
anyway etch is not ready for any use (i get segmentation faults on anything non debian that i try to run which points to the version of libc6... which is of course testing and ive been through this with sarge before (adding testing repositories to a stable system is a very bad idea)).
anyway i think the ATI driver messed up my mesa libraries so reinstalling those would have fixed the issue.
i can play tuxracer at very decent fps now. quake3 runs very well too.
but heres the deal - the xorg driver on etch could not render reflections and is very low fps. everything that runs looks fine.
on xfree86 on sarge everything is faster and reflections are rendered almost properly but it lacks any more advanced features so it won run any game that uses stencil buffer and aa. so no UT2004, doom3 and quake4 for now... which i play just fine on windows.
ill try the xorg for sarge though.
more later.
oh btw it would be great if anyone knows an alternative driver.