Fglrx

ATI drivers for Linux

Linux ATI driver for select Radeon, FireGL and Mobility boards

How much is the speed gain versus the opensource drivers?

- On the old drivers, I've noticed appx 40% speed gain with ATI fglrx vs open source drivers. However, there are issues with freezing/garbage after suspend, garbage when resizing desktop (ctrl-alt-plus, ctrl-alt-minus), and garbage while using VMware. The current 8.14.13 has shown 400% improvement over using "radeon" or "ati" in xorg.conf. 1200FPS glxgears! (note that glxgears isnt a benchmark tool, its so simple that its value is without any meaning... you can only compare glxgears using the same drivers/machine, if you change any of then you can have higher/lower values and in real life programs/games happend the opposite. Think in the car engine rpm, higher rpm in the same car usually its a faster car, change anything and its meaningless. ie: gears, truck, wheel size, etc make it useless)

Project Homepage / Availability

http://www.ati.com/support/drivers/linux/radeon-linux.html

Status

Current version: 8.14.13 (9th June 2005)

Problems & Help

Driver Version 8.8.25: The following patch may be needed for kernels >= 2.6.10: http://www.rage3d.com/board/showthread.php?t=33798874

Driver Version 8.8.25: For kernels >= 2.6.11-rc1 try the following patch: http://www.gehirn.org.uk/wiki/images/8.8.25-kernel-2.6.11+.patch

If the ATI driver works only without the hardware acceleration, take into consideration that fglrx_dri.so was linked against libstdc++.so.5 which may not be present if your system uses gcc-3.4. To fix this, compile gcc-3.3.5 and copy libstdc++.so.5* to /usr/lib and update the dynamic linker cache.

Troubles using software suspend : when the computer comes back of suspend, X only displays a garbaged image and the computer is frozen. You have to install vbetool and use it to save/restore the video card state. If you use swsusp2 scripts you just have to uncomment "EnableVbetool yes" in /etc/hibernate/hibernate.conf. Tested with kernel 2.6.10, Debian packaged ATI drivers and swsusp2 patch on a IBM Thinkpad T42p.

This does not seem to work on the T43: The machine displays a sligthly garbaged image and is frozen upon resume. (It does work as long as the fglrx kernel driver is not inserted.) (Tested on kernel 2.6.12-rc6 with suspend2 2.1.9 and ATI driver version 8.14.13.)

Troubles with large RAM : The driver (version 8.14.13 tested on a T43) does not seem to be able to cope with large amounts of RAM: with 512 MB it works, with 1.5 GB it crashes the machine as soon as X is started. The problem is present only if the fglrx kernel module is loaded, but independetly of whether "CONFIG_HIGHMEM" is enabled (I.e. the actual amount of RAM available to the system does not seem to matter, but rather how mauch RAM is physically installed.).

Packages

• Debian Packages: http://xoomer.virgilio.it/flavio.stanchina/debian/fglrx-installer.html
• SuSE Packages: ftp://ftp.suse.com/pub/suse/i386/supplementary/X/ATI/
• Gentoo # emerge media-video/ati-drivers
• Fedora Packages: http://rpm.livna.org -- # yum install kernel-module-fglrx-$(uname -r) ati-fglrx

Useful links

• ATI Linux Driver FAQ
• ATI Proprietary Linux Release Notes (for 8.12.10)
• ATI Radeon Linux How-To
• Rage3D Linux Discussion Forum
• Radeon Driver Forum at Driverheaven
• Gentoo ATI Radeon FAQ
• Unofficial community ATI bugzilla Very newly setup (!) bugzilla, which might grow to be a source for information about ATI bugs. Might then be monitored by ATI guys ([1], [2]). We will see how this develops.

ThinkPads that may be supported

Supported chips, as found in select IBM ThinkPads:

• ATI Mobility FireGL 9000
  • T40p
• ATI Mobility FireGL T2
  • R50p
  • T41p, T42p
• ATI Mobility FireGL V3200
  • T43p
• ATI Mobility Radeon 9000
  • R50, R51
  • T40, T41, T42
• ATI Mobility Radeon 9600
  • T42
• ATI Mobility Radeon X300
  • R52
  • T43