The newest drivers from ATI? They were released looks like last week or so. Been a while since I last went round and round with ati and 3d acceleration.....do the new drivers actually work (esp with new cards like radeon 9800, x850, etc etdc) ? or are Livna's drivers still better and easier to get working?

I installed the previous version on 07 February with no problems. I just checked the ATI web site. It says that the current release is 8.22.5. The version that I installed is 8.21.7.

I can say that this was the easiest version to install ever. I have been using an ATI Radeon 8500 ever since it was the newest ATI board. I had experienced a world of problems installing previous versions of the ATI drivers. When I installed the 8.21.7 drivers I couldn't believe how easy it was. I just followed the instructions on the web site.

There is a new configuration utility called aticonfig. Once the drivers are installed you just run the aticonfig utility with the --initial parameter. Believe it or not, it's just that simple. I have to believe that they have kept this new and improved installation utility with the latest release. I recommend making a backup of your /etc/X11/xorg.conf and /etc/X11/XF86Config files before you run aticonfig. In my system (SuSE 9.2) the xorg.conf file was just a link to XF86Config. After I ran aticonfig the xorg.conf file was a real file.

The release that I installed also happens to be the first release of the ATI drivers that didn't slow down screen updates in 2d (regular desktop). The OpenGL performance appears to be good as well.

so 3d acceleration actually works for you then?

What about on newer cards? specifically the 9800pro 256 with the 256bit memory interface and the X850XT?

I can only infer that 3d acceleration works by way of noticing that I don't have any problems.

I can't speak on the issue of using the drivers with the newer ATI cards. There have been so many requests for help in these forums, each mentioning one specific ATI card, that I would suggest searching for these posts via the LQ advanced search page. Maybe one or more of the people who have responded to these requests have included information about their experience with using these drivers on newer cards.

As for me, I have become an enthusiastic advocate of Nvidia products. I am particularly fond of their motherboard chips and their graphic drivers for Linux. I get suspicious if I mix Nvidia motherboard chips with an ATI graphic card and then have any problem so I purchase the Nvidia graphic card mostly to match the Nvidia motherboard chips.

heh actually strangely enough one of the biggest conflicts ive ever seen between a graphics card and a mobo chipset was between an nvidia chipset and nvidia card :P

anyway i wasn't really looking for specific advice on installing drivers for those cards just wanting to know if ati's own drivers have gotten any better(when compared with say livna's) for those higher end cards thats all

yea they have a grafical UI if you do the install in x and everything. Im running Fadora core 4 on a gateway mx7525

this sytem is a AMD moble athlon 64 with a ATI chipset
it has a moble x600 thats a PCIE card
PCIE everything really

and the new drivers do work.


same issues with 2.6 kernel tho that previous ones have had.

i have other posts on here outlineing more of the issues if you wanna take a look.