Radeon 7000 Driver

Quercus · 12-05-2003, 10:53 PM

I'm as green as it gets here, so please bear with me. I'm looking for a driver for my Radeon 7000 VE - I'm running Slackware and XFree86 4.3.0. According to the XFree86 web site, the latest version includes a "radeon" driver that supports my hardware www_xfree86_org/4_3_0/radeon_4_html (since I'm new here, the system won't let me place a URL, so this ugly thing is the only way I could include a reference to the xfree86 radeon howto. the _ are really .). But when I use the configuration utility for xfree86 in KDE, I only see "Radeon QD", "Radeon QE", "Radeon QF" and "Radeon QG", but no "radeon."

So are all these simply the same thing? Do I have to do anything special to get the general radeon driver?

I hope someone can clear this up for me.
-thanks

Scruff · 12-06-2003, 06:19 AM

You'll need to obtain the drivers from here
ATI is also putting out a Radeon driver for Linux now, but I can't vouch for that one. I have 3D acceleration with the one from the link above. Here is a thread that I looked at to get the steps necessary to get it working properly.

Good luck! Come back if you have any problems.

Quercus · 12-06-2003, 12:31 PM

Thanks, Scruff. I'll see what I can do.

Nevertheless, I'm still wondering about that XFree86 driver. What do I need to do to get this driver that is supposedly included in my distribution to work?

Scruff · 12-06-2003, 12:42 PM

Well, I have never heard of anyone actually using that driver. The 1000's of posts here regarding the Radeon all point to that driver from schnieder.de, or the driver from ATI's site. But, after a quick search it seems it is supposed to provide 3D acceleration, albeit somewhat generically. You can try the command "xf86config" and go through the options. It's fairly straightforward, and I think it asks for the driver you would like to use. I just edit my config file, so I'm not sure, but... First, type: glxgears and make note of the FPS that you get. Then go through the config. Make sure you know the specs on your monitor first. Specifically, the horizontal sync, and vertical refresh rates. After that do glxgears again to see if it helped with 3d accel at all. Honestly, I don't think it's going to happen without going through the steps in the link I gave you, but it's worth a try.

Quercus · 12-06-2003, 01:14 PM

Well, I just used the "Radeon QE" driver and it seems to be working just fine, although I still don't know what the difference is between that and the more generic "Radeon" driver refered to in the XFree86 documentation.

Nevertheless, I've got my higher screen resolutions, got my higher refresh rates and I'm happy for now. I don't yet need top of the line 3D performance as I've got my XP box for that. Maybe someday I'll come back to this and tweak it more, but not today. I've got things to do. Thanks for the help.

blade00 · 12-09-2003, 03:12 PM

i have a radeon 7000 and also need a driver. i went to you're recommended site, and looked for a driver but couldn't find one, so i tried both, neither work, i can't start x... which one is supossed to be used for the 7000?

i am also using slack 9.1

Scruff · 12-09-2003, 04:42 PM

Any of the FireGL drivers as long as they match your version of XFree, which in your case is 4.3.0.

If you created the new file with fglrxconfig as the instructions said, you can just rename that one so X will use your old file: mv /etc/X11/XF86Config-4 /etc/X11/XF86Config-4~

Otherwise, check see if you have a backup XF86Config file in /etc/X11. It will prob look like this: XF86Config~
If you do, do: mv /etc/X11/XF86Config~ /etc/X11/XF86Config

blade00 · 12-09-2003, 05:34 PM

well i did go back to my old one, and i tried just using the driver fglrx in the XFree86Config file, then it gave an error saying it cannot find any displays and shuts down.

Scruff · 12-09-2003, 06:08 PM

Ok. I just uploaded my XF86Config file here: http://sfsullivan.org/xf86config.txt

Compare the relevent graphic sections with your own. If they look basically alike (aside from hardware differences) then you may not have the driver installed properly. Most likely, you just don't have X configured properly.

A problem I had with my config/hardware, was where it specifies (in XF86Config-4) the PCIBus address to find my radeon at was incorrect (looks something like "PCI BusID 3,0,0"). I changed it and got it working. You can do the command 'dmesg' to get the correct address for your vid card, just sift through it till you find it

PbO · 12-10-2003, 02:47 AM

To use the "radeon" driver in XFree 4.3 with my Radeon 7200 (IIRC?), all I had to do was change the "Device" info. in the "Graphics Device Section" to read "Radeon" and the "Driver" to read "radeon'. Then I just had to change the Device line in the Screen section to read "Radeon" as well, which was the "Indentifier" in the "Device" info. of the "Graphics Device Section".

As an aside, glxgears gets anything from 177 - 260 fps. Is this reasonable, or should I be getting the other drivers.

Scruff · 12-10-2003, 07:00 AM

For 3D acceleration you should use the other drivers. I get like 1500fps with a Radeon 9000 on glxgears.

PbO · 12-10-2003, 07:18 PM

I've just posted my own issues with my Radeon 7200 over at http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...readid=124731, but the last bit might be relevant here. For information at http://www.ati.com/developer/altoschart.pdf seems to indicated that the Radeon 7200, and thus also the Radeon 7000, is only supported for 2D and 3D by the OpenGL DRI drivers. 2D and 3D support with the ATI drivers is only for the Radeon 8500 and higher cards.

Scruff · 12-10-2003, 08:44 PM

After readong PbO's last post, I started looking around for a bit more specific info in the 7000 series cards, and it looks as if the kernel module (DRI) is the only option for those cards. I swore I remembered reading ALL radeon cards were supported by that fglrx driver from schneider-de! Apparently I was mistaken. Sorry! Though it seems that DRI would provide 3D acceleration for the 7000.

I got some info from http://www.cubik.ca/archives/xfree86/msg00008.html
The person responding to the original poster claims to be the guy that maintains XFree for the Red Hat distro and sounds like he very well may be.

Again, I apologize for the mistake. My vid card/linux knowledge basically only extends to the driver I am using successfully (after much effort

), so hopefully someone else can pick up here and get you up and running.

thegeekster · 12-10-2003, 08:47 PM

This is the card that I use. I still new to the Linux world, but here's what I've found so far that works for me.

In the KDE Control Center (under Slackware 9.1), I set the graphics driver to Generic > ati (from Control Center > Peripherals > Display) which seem to do the trick, and here's the graphics section in my XF86Config file:

Code:

# **********************************************************************
# Graphics device section
# **********************************************************************

# Any number of graphics device sections may be present

Section "Device"
    Identifier  "VESA Framebuffer"
    Driver      "ati"
    #VideoRam    4096
    # Insert Clocks lines here if appropriate
vendorname "Generic"
boardname "ati"
EndSection

As for the 'VideoRam' value, my card has 32MB, but I'm not sure what the value in the config file is, whether it's in bytes or kilobytes. Otherwise I would uncomment that line with the appropriate value.

Also, when I installed Gentoo a while back, I had to install the xfree-drm drivers using the variable VIDEO_CARDS="radeon" when compiling with portage, not the ati-drivers. ................The ati-drivers was only for the "Accelerated ATI Radeon 8500+ / FireGL graphic for XFree86". The other was for "Accelerated graphics for ATI Radeon up to 9200, Rage128, Matrox, Voodoo and other cards for XFree86."

HTH
---thegeekster

thegeekster · 12-10-2003, 10:51 PM

Quote:

As for the 'VideoRam' value, my card has 32MB, but I'm not sure what the value in the config file is, whether it's in bytes or kilobytes. Otherwise I would uncomment that line with the appropriate value.

Nevermind, I found the answer to this in 'man XF86Config':

Code:

       VideoRam  mem
              This optional entry specifies the amount of video ram that
              is installed on the graphics board. This  is  measured  in
              kBytes.   In most cases this is not required because the X
              server probes the graphics board to determine  this  quan-
              tity.   The  driver-specific documentation should indicate
              when it might be needed.

So, uncommenting this line is not always necessary, unless specified by your particular driver doc..........