Will my ATI X1950PRO AGP card work now? solved

Husse · Post by **Husse** » Wed Oct 24, 2007 6:20 am

Welcome to Mint U5tabil
The really new ATI drivers just being released it seems
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=a ... =887&num=1
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=a ... =821&num=1
I don't think Envy is ready for them, but it is always possible to install "by hand"

Lolo Uila · Post by **Lolo Uila** » Wed Oct 24, 2007 7:04 am

It will work with the ATI "fglrx" 8.34.8 driver in the Ubuntu repositories. It won't work with any of the newer drivers on the ATI website (not up to 8.41.7 anyway). It will also not work with the default open-source driver (you have to use "vesa" until you get the "fglrx" driver installed.

Use the following commands to install the driver:

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sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install linux-restricted-modules-$(uname -r)
sudo apt-get install xorg-driver-fglrx
sudo depmod -a

EDIT: You can also use Synaptic to install the driver.

and then use the Restricted Drivers Manager to select and configure the driver, or from the terminal enter:

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sudo aticonfig --initial
sudo aticonfig --overlay-type=Xv

Now check your xorg.conf file:

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sudo gedit /etc/X11/xorg.conf

and look for these lines:

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Section "Extensions"
        Option  "Composite" "Disable"
EndSection

Section "ServerFlags"
        Option  "AIGLX" "off"
EndSection

If you don't see them, add them to the end. Now save/close everything and restart your computer. When you're logged in again, open a terminal and try:

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fglrxinfo

The output should look someting like this:

tim@Mint-XPC:~$ fglrxinfo
display: :0.0 screen: 0
OpenGL vendor string: ATI Technologies Inc.
OpenGL renderer string: Radeon X1950 Series
OpenGL version string: 2.0.6334 (8.34.8)

If you see the words Mesa, Tungsten or SGI in the output (or you get an error) you are not using the ATI driver.

If that works, then try this to see if direct rendering is working:

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glxinfo | grep direct

The output from this should be, direct rendering: Yes

If anything above fails, go here for help:

http://wiki.cchtml.com/index.php/Troubleshooting

Good luck!

Aloha, Tim

PS: Your other option is to test the new 8.42.3 driver that was just released:

Click here to download...

This one is not even on ATI's site yet, and I have NOT tested it myself (I am planning to try it when I get some time later this week).

EDIT to correct a typo and add the line about Synaptic...

Husse · Post by **Husse** » Wed Oct 24, 2007 11:28 am

Lolo Uila is the guy when it comes to ATI. However he may have missed the release of the 8.42.3 driver mentioned in the first link in my post above. It's stated to have

This release is tested for all ATI Radeon GPU products from the R300 to R600 series.

and frankly I'm at a loss for how the 9150 fits in here
But there is a rapid development right now!

Lolo Uila · Post by **Lolo Uila** » Wed Oct 24, 2007 8:23 pm

The 8.34.8 driver from the Ubuntu repository DOES work with the AGP X1950. Just the newer ones don't (up to 8.41.7).

I am using the 8.34.8 driver now with my AGP Radeon X1950 Pro 512MB with Celena. The guide I posted above should work with either Mint Celena or Cassandra (Ubuntu Feisty). If you want a solution that works now, try what I said above. Or you can wait a few days until I have time to test the new 8.42.3 driver and report back.

And Husse, I did see the new driver (even posted a download link for it) just haven't tested it yet so I posted what I know works. I have Celena, Xgl and Beryl running very nicely with the 8.34.8 driver from the repository. The new 8.42 driver is supposed to support AIGLX which would eliminate the need for Xgl, so I'm looking forward to testing it. Just haven't found the time yet.

Aloha, Tim

Lolo Uila · Post by **Lolo Uila** » Thu Oct 25, 2007 11:52 pm

I tried the new driver today, and it's not ready for prime time.

The "normal" driver install procedure still doesn't work with the AGP versions of the X1k series cards (tested with an AGP X1950 Pro). However, with some additional tweaking I was able to get it to load (fglrxinfo and direct rendering tests are correct).

Beryl & Compiz do run under AIGLX now - no Xgl needed - but...

(...you knew it was too good to be true, right?)

Video overlay is completely hosed with Beryl/Compiz active. Videos flicker badly and are completely unwatchable.

Scrolling in windows and applications (like Firefox) is slow. Not too bad in windows, but annoyingly slow in Firefox.

I tried both the default Ubuntu versions of Beryl & Compiz, as well as the latest versions from Treviño's repository (Beryl 0.3.0 & Compiz-Fusion). Same issues.

[sigh] back to the old driver and Xgl for now.

Lolo Uila · Post by **Lolo Uila** » Fri Oct 26, 2007 6:28 am

The driver in the Ubuntu repository is currently the older 8.34.8 version. It's quite a bit older, but it works. I suspect the reason it hasn't been updated is probably the issues with the AGP cards that all the newer drivers have.

If you have any trouble getting the driver running, try adding these to your /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist file:

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# EDAC modules to fix false PCI-E detection
blacklist i82875p_edac
blacklist edac_mc

# sometimes causes fglrx to fail and mesa drivers to load
blacklist ati-agp

And after you get the driver running, check out my posts in the following thread for info on getting Xgl & Beryl/Compiz running:

http://www.linuxmint.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=5909

And yes, ntfs access seems to be working well. I have not had any problems reading or writing to ntfs partitions, except the write access can be a bit slow sometimes.

Aloha, Tim