Yet another ATI Hardware Acceleration

BuckRogers01 · 09-18-2005, 03:04 PM

Hi, and welcome to yet another ATI hardware acceleration problem.

My problem is this: I own an ATI X850 XT Platinum Edition PCI Express Graphics Card. I have tried several times in different linux distros to get hardware acceleration. My best attempt was in FC4, where once installing ATIs proprietry drivers I got a streaky screen. But, all other attempts have failed.

So, my question is this: Does anyone know how to get Hardware Acceleration on an ATI X850 XT PE PCI-E Graphics Card. Im running Gentoo linux, with the 2.6.11 kernel. I havent tried anything yet, as all my previous attempts ended with no working xorg and no way of fixing it, however, I am prepared to go thru the installation process as many times as it takes to get H.A. working.

So, does anyone know where I should start as to getting Hardware Acceleration. Some of my problems I think are related to the fact that my gfx card is PCI Express, and is not actually listed under the supported gfx cards on ATI's site (for their proprietry driver). It is however I think in the X800 family, so therefore there shud be support.

Does anyone have any ideas on how I should get Hardware Acceleration on my graphics card.

Thanks in advace, Buck.

P.S. Heres my lspci output:

Code:

0000:00:00.0 Memory controller: nVidia Corporation CK804 Memory Controller (rev a3)
0000:00:01.0 ISA bridge: nVidia Corporation CK804 ISA Bridge (rev a3)
0000:00:01.1 SMBus: nVidia Corporation CK804 SMBus (rev a2)
0000:00:02.0 USB Controller: nVidia Corporation CK804 USB Controller (rev a2)
0000:00:02.1 USB Controller: nVidia Corporation CK804 USB Controller (rev a3)
0000:00:04.0 Multimedia audio controller: nVidia Corporation CK804 AC'97 Audio Controller (rev a2)
0000:00:06.0 IDE interface: nVidia Corporation CK804 IDE (rev a2)
0000:00:07.0 IDE interface: nVidia Corporation CK804 Serial ATA Controller (rev a3)
0000:00:08.0 IDE interface: nVidia Corporation CK804 Serial ATA Controller (rev a3)
0000:00:09.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation CK804 PCI Bridge (rev a2)
0000:00:0a.0 Bridge: nVidia Corporation CK804 Ethernet Controller (rev a3)
0000:00:0b.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation CK804 PCIE Bridge (rev a3)
0000:00:0c.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation CK804 PCIE Bridge (rev a3)
0000:00:0d.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation CK804 PCIE Bridge (rev a3)
0000:00:0e.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation CK804 PCIE Bridge (rev a3)
0000:00:18.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] HyperTransport Technology Configuration
0000:00:18.1 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] Address Map
0000:00:18.2 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] DRAM Controller
0000:00:18.3 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] Miscellaneous Control
0000:01:08.0 Network controller: RaLink Ralink RT2500 802.11 Cardbus Reference Card (rev 01)
0000:01:09.0 RAID bus controller: Silicon Image, Inc. SiI 3114 [SATALink/SATARaid] Serial ATA Controller (rev 02)
0000:01:0a.0 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Texas Instruments TSB82AA2 IEEE-1394b Link Layer Controller (rev 01)
0000:02:00.0 Ethernet controller: Marvell Technology Group Ltd. 88E8053 Gigabit Ethernet Controller (rev 19)
0000:05:00.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc R480 [Radeon X850XT Platinum (PCIE)]
0000:05:00.1 Display controller: ATI Technologies Inc R480 [Radeon X850XT Platinum (PCIE)] (Secondary)

bobbens · 09-19-2005, 11:27 AM

With that new of a card, the only chance of you getting hardware 3d acceleration is with ATI's fglrx driver, and if your card isn't supported yet just complain to them and wait, nothing you can really do. The open source driver only supports up to 9200 i think, and newer need the official one, which is pretty far from being great. Until they get it supported you can pretty much just keep it without 3d, not really anything else you can do (unless you feel up to the challenge of rever engineering a driver, which is pretty impossible).

BuckRogers01 · 09-19-2005, 11:42 AM

Well I think it is classed under the X800 series cards, so how do I go about installing ATi's fglrx driver. (worth a try anyway)

Cheers, Buck

bobbens · 09-19-2005, 11:47 AM

Well you can try their "self extracting and compiling thing", but i've never tried that and it looks big and ugly so i dont even want to try to. Other then that there is this howto i wrote a while back. Of course you should try to get the latest driver and use same technique (should still be valid with rpm's), since you have gentoo you might have to do it another way, but this is the "debian way" (sorry have never had luck with gentoo, tried it once but the binutils were broken so i got no where). Don't even know if you can use rpm's, if you cant at all, try looking around the gentoo forums or something.

BuckRogers01 · 09-19-2005, 12:05 PM

A bit off topic, but...

I would really recommend Gentoo. I wet from FC4 to debian, which I thought was impressive (untill I noticied that I had still hardly any controlm over what really happened, and I didnt know how things worked or interacted, but then someone recommended Gentoo, which I took one look at it and turned it right down, until I noticed the documentation...

The docs for Gentoo is somewhat amazing. EVERYTHING is documented, from how to get X org set up to setting up OpenMosix clustering.

I also found the Debian was always out of date, and even tho it was stable it felt old.

Now I use Gentoo because of it's on-the-edge side to technology. Even tho it uses cutting edge software it seems really stable, and portage (Gentoo's v. of apt-get) is brillient. Because everythin is compilied from source, it means that my 64bit processor is taken full advantage off. Also gentoo gives you COMPLETE control over what you install.

Overall I would highly recommend Gentoo to you, as it did wonders for me.

Anyway, back to topic...

I can use RPM's, but I just need to set it up because the application tree appears empty at first (which means almost all dependancies fail!)

P.S. If you try Gentoo, just follow the well documented installation instructions and yur system will be set up in no time.

P.S P.S. They're just bringing out a graphical installer for Gentoo which will remove any remaining pains from the original way

bobbens · 09-19-2005, 12:20 PM

I had no trouble installing gentoo, but i tried going with unstable (which debian unstable is remarkably stable for me) and as soon as i did an emerge world (or however it was) i found out i couldn't compile anymore, so i ran to the gentoo forums and it turns out that the binutils were broken in the latest update, so i grabbed a binary and waited until the next update was ready. I updated again and guess what? Binutils broken again, and it happened one more time, and after a week of compiling things (mind you this was on my pII 450mhz when i only had one cpu on it) i to get binutils broken i quickly took out my debian CD and got it running in a sec.

I actually do compile alot of things in debian (mainly the programs i use most), and don't find it to be that "out of date" especially the unstable branch which has recently updated to x.org. I don't have any problems, i can install really fast when needed to, plus it's a system i'm familiar with and have no problems at all moving around.

Once i get another test machine (due to fate my last one died) i'm going to try to get freebsd or some other pure unix working on it and then convert my server to that if i get good results, i'm also thinking about testing slackware, but i dont think ill test gentoo again for a while, just doesnt do it for me. (of course i probably screwed up choosing unstable, i'm guessing it's the debian experimental equivalent, but not sure).

I've also heard that gentoo's compile system is actually very inefficient unless you really know what you are doing and get the entire "flag" system down, because otherwise you are probably not speeding up your computer, maybe even slowing it down and taking a long time to compile.

I don't think gentoo is much better documented then debian, although it is flavour of the month (well actually been a bit longer), but i have no problem getting new things working in debian. So far the only thing i have giving me headaches is my mp3 player, but i'm pretty sure it's the mp3 player's fault, because well, it just plain sucks, but i have my wacom working fine, external hdd, and all sort of usb gimmicks working perfectly. Only project i still have to do is get a PCI graphic card and AGP working together so i can get 3 screens working and have 3 different images on each, but i don't think that would be easier in gentoo.

Of course i could be wrong, but just experience and what people say (of course most of it is taken from debian forums, but they argue it well) i don't think gentoo is for me.

Now back to your problem, well if you can install the rpm the "gentoo" way just follow the latter steps in my guid (i might have made it too basic though). You just have to compile the module, get the symlinks done and then get a working x.org. Not too hard, you just cant forget any step. BTW the rpm should overwrite the xlibmesa opengl software driver.

BuckRogers01 · 09-21-2005, 11:42 AM

Gentoo does it for me, Debian does it for you (that why all these distros live).

I'll follow ur guide. I'll prob just extract the files and cp them manually, or find a way to replicate using emerge

Cheers, buck

billyc · 09-26-2005, 08:34 AM

I have a x800xt radeon and the only way i could get hardware acceleration was with Mandriva Limited Edition 2005 club version it has the ati drivers all ready built into the kernel.What ever is newer with mandriva now as long as it is the club version should work. Check it out
on mandrivas site. Mine is 64 bit also.
Billyc

BuckRogers01 · 09-26-2005, 01:15 PM

Th reason Mandriva works is because is the club edition isnt free, which means they can include commercial software from 3rd party suppliers (ie ATI). I just need instructions on how to set up HW Accel. on a gentoo system, using the fglrx drivers ati supply, not the open source ones.

Anyway, hopefully I will be getting a NVidia 7800GT, so that should solve my misery