Problems with ATI Radeon HD 2400 Pro graphics card
 

I have recently just built a new PC, installing the ATI Radeon HD 2400 Pro graphics card. I installed Ubuntu 9.04 and had the system working the 3d graphics were working well and the desktop effects looked good. But then realised that the version I put on the system was the 32 bit version (d'oh, picked up the wrong CD).

The installation worked without any hassle but I cannot get the graphics card working other than the generic output that the installation gave me. I installed using the proprietary drivers through System > Admin > Hardware Drivers the driver appeared to install and then asked me to reboot the system. Upon reboot after the Ubuntu progress bar was complete I was left with a blank screen, no sound (so I am assuming Ubuntu didn't load).

I then went through the recovery mode and tried xfix but this did not resolve the issue so I removed the driver.

I then tried to download the driver from the ATI website, but, after installation (again this appeared to be fine) I was faced with the same blank screen again on startup when the X windows screen was loading.

After searching through Google I tried Envy, but this produced a black screen with a red and green mess at the top on startup.

I have searched through Google for a few days now to no avail. I find it odd that the card and driver were fine in Ubuntu 9.04 32 bit, however I am having no success in 64 bit.

Please help.

I came into fatal rendering problems with an (old) Ati Radeon card and 9.04 and found some incompatibility with certain card types, see http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1128649&page=2

And I did try also the fglrx driver, intended for newer cards, but then I got blackout effects like you describe. (However, this may be a good solution for a new card??)

But I simply put in the XAA row in xorg.conf which resolved my problem very fine! Like this:

Hope this will give some help or ideas!

Thanks for your reply Toreric, sorry for the lack of response as I have been on holiday for the past few weeks.

I made sure that there were no drivers installed, Fedora was running in VESA mode and then installed the ATI driver, then I added the line as you suggested, here is a copy of my current (not working) xorg.conf:

This simply loads Fedora, the progress bar reaches 100% and then after a couple of minutes of a black screen restarts the computer. Here is my original xorg.conf, this gives me better graphics, however I cannot enable the 3D effects and is only slightly better than VESA mode:

I hope that somebody is able to help.

Check if Option "AccelMethod" "XAA"
makes any difference compared to Option "XAA"

Another acceleration method (EXA) is the default, not fully working on every device, though. Thus the XAA works better.

These are my notes on upgrading Kubuntu from 'hardy' to 'jaunty':

Rendering not good. Later (end July 2009) it was entirely destroyed, after my experimenting with 'fglrx', which supports only newer ATI graphic ...

'lspci -k' shows
...
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc Radeon Mobility M7 LW [Radeon Mobility 7500]
Kernel modules: radeonfb
...
- 7500 is fairly old.

Another line
Option "AccelMethod" "XAA"
put into 'xorg.conf' brought the solution, see excerpt below from another net conversation ("your" refers to someone else):

"
AMD has moved support for older chips completely to the open source driver. This includes the RV250 chip, so your card won't work with fglrx.

There are some reports of the older chips having problems with EXA acceleration which recently became the default with the open source driver.

Try adding this to the Device section of your xorg.conf:
Option "AccelMethod" "XAA"
(There may already be an AccelMethod line in there - if so, edit it so that it says XAA instead of EXA.)"
"

I input the line Option "AccelMethod" "XAA" as you suggested but this made no difference.

However I did come across an interesting behaviour by the computer. When I replaced the xorg.conf with the previous version which had been working, Fedora simply did the same thing: black screen and then rebooted the machine. I did not get it back working untill I logged in to the command line and not only removed the ATI driver but also fglrx. Is there a problem with fglrx running on the 64 bit systems?

I am hoping that somebody else has experienced this and knows a cure, I am currently simply using a 32 bit Ubuntu and a restricted graphics mode Fedora.