Talk:ATI Mobility Radeon 7500

Hi, is there a way to use dri, drm and opengl with this card?

Functionality of ATI Mobility Radeon 7500

I have a Thinkpad R50 with the ATI Mobility Radeon 7500, currently running Gentoo Linux. (and dual-boot with WinXP)

Direct rendering works with both radeon and ati (gatos) drivers, though the radeon is significantly (20%-30%) faster. I have not tried fglrx.

TV-out works with both VESA and ati (gatos) drivers, though both have problems. Using the VESA driver there is no acceleration, and the system is not fast enough to act as a mythfrontend without dropping frames rather badly. Using the ati driver performance is acceptable, but the colors are washed out (practically gone) and the contrast is "odd". The image looks kind like the old "posterization" photo process, where contrast is mostly reduced, but past a certain scale becomes extreme.

In either case, I had to use atitvout to activate the svideo. It complained about VBE, but did the job. I was not able to get both displays working simultaneously.

Only use external display

I can't figure out how to configure X.org to only use the external VGA display. Xinerama works fine, but I don't want both displays enabled. Also, it turns off both when I close the lid. Anyone figure this stuff out? Kkinder 21:57, 24 August 2006 (CEST)

HAL bug

According to this bug report, Ubuntu is not giving the radeon video card its proper permissions. Using:

Section "DRI"
 Mode 0666
EndSection

Does not work anymore.

Check your own permissions under /dev/dri/card0 . If it reads crw-rw----, then you need to set your permissions to 666.

Create the file: /etc/udev/rules.d/45-dev-dri-permissions.rules and add:

KERNEL=="card[0-9]", MODE="0666"

Restart the X server and you should get better 3d performance!

Alternate xorg.conf

Using a Thinkpad T30 with an ATI Mobility Radeon 7500, the recommended xorg.conf file gives me an average of 250 FPS with glxgears on Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy Heron). The following xorg.conf setup gives me about 1200 FPS. The major trade-off is a reduced default depth of 16.

Section "Device"
  Identifier "ATI Technologies Inc Radeon Mobility M7 LW [Radeon Mobility 7500]"
  Driver "radeon"
  BusID "PCI:1:0:0"
  Option "AGPMode" "4"
  Option "XAANoOffscreenPixmaps"
  Option "AGPFastWrite" "true"
  Option "EnablePageFlip" "on"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
  Identifier "Generic Monitor"
  Option "DPMS"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
  Identifier "Default Screen"
  Device "ATI Technologies Inc Radeon Mobility M7 LW [Radeon Mobility 7500]"
  Monitor "Generic Monitor"
  DefaultDepth 16
  SubSection "Display"
    Depth 16
    Modes "1024x768"
  EndSubSection
EndSection

Section "DRI"
  Mode 0666
EndSection

A second alternate works well with Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty) with desktop effects turned on (although you may need to reduce the number of effects in order to have things run smoothly.)

Section "Device"
	Identifier	"Configured Video Device"
	Driver 		"ati"
	BusID		"PCI:1:0:0"
	#Option		"GARTSize"	"64"
	#Option		"AGPMode"	"4"
	#Option		"DPMS"
	Option		"AccelMethod"	"XAA"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
	Identifier	"Configured Monitor"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
	Identifier	"Default Screen"
	Monitor		"Configured Monitor"
	Device		"Configured Video Device"
	Option		"AIGLX"		"true"
EndSection

In reference to Alternate xorg.conf

I have the exact same configuration as above and the settings work great. The only issue is that if I try to enable Desktop Effects on Ubuntu, I end up with blank white screens for new windows (for example, opening up a terminal just opens up a white box). I also lose my minimize/maximize buttons. This can be fixed by changing the DefaultDepth to 24, but then I go back to my original problem of slow performance. Does anybody know how to solve the issue with the blank screens without having to increse the depth setting?

Desktop Effects

Does anybody know why Desktop Effects are disabled when using the recommended xorg.conf on Ubuntu? If you are referring to 9.04, it appears to not pick the best settings for the radeon 7500 by default. See the second alternate above. The key seems to be using XAA with the AIGLX option. With these settings, you should be able to enable desktop effects.

Not enough ram

Because Desktop Effects are no fun with 16 or 32MB VRAM? --Zhenech 14:17, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

drirc

You can try if the drirc trick as documented here ATI Mobility Radeon 9000 does anything. --Tonko 20:08, 14 May 2009 (UTC)