How long should I wait? I cant handle it no more...

[jscurtu]

I bought me a ATI HD3650 AGP RV635 graphiccard a while ago, my decision for that was because I was reading alot about AMD giving out the specs for OpenSource drivers..... And I was stuckup with nvidia...
What I didnt know is that I prabably bought me one the worst linux supported cards I can get....

I know that it takes time to develope OpenSource drivers, so I am kinda stuck on fglrx, but for me Catalyst 9.1 was way to bugy and now 9.2 is like a big disaster, the worst fglrx so far... I had to deinstall it..
I am forced to use the free radeon driver wich gives me about the same performance like the vesa driver, because I cant handle the fglrx mess anymore..

What can I do? I really dont want to buy me a new graphic card...
Does anyone know when there will be a decently 2d/3d Support with RadeonHD and RV635 chips?

I am using Arch Linux and KDE4.2 (kdemod) could it be the distro? Would a popular Distribution like Kubuntu or Fedora be better? Does ATI support them better??

[bridgman]

We test each driver release on Ubuntu (along with RHEL and the SuSE distros), so one of those would probably give you an easier time.

Are you running the 6xx-7xx support branches of radeon / radeonhd and drm (which have Xv and EXA hardware acceleration for your GPU today) or just the code from master ? We're planning to merge the 6xx-7xx branch into master soon, so for today you can either build from the 6xx-7xx branches or just wait a bit for the code to fetch up in master.

[DarkFoss]

I just bought the his version of the card last Sunday to replace my old x800pro..so far I've had little issues running either the 9.1 or now the 9.2 fglrx drivers, despite that I can't set the agp aperature to 512 to match the memory of the card ..highest my bios supports is 256. runs at 8x v-link enabled as well as fast writes... I'm running Mandriva 2009.0 64bit kde 4.2 and a 2.6.28.7 kernel on this motherboard

For what it's worth runs fine in Windows Xp 32 bit with the 9.1 hotfix drivers too.

I downloaded the driver from ati and used the --buildpkg option rpm's built and installed fine. I watch movies with the plf version of mplayer smplayer frontend and use the xv(0-ATI Radeon Avivo Video) setting..AIGLX and composite enabled but I don't use the 3-d desktop.. UT2K4 runs very well using the stat fps option I'm seeing about a 25+ boost in fps over my old card.. there is some slowdown in heavy action with multiple bots onscreen.. only real performance hit over my old card is trying to run EverQuest with wine pretty much a slideshow in the guild lobby.. perhaps it's a matter of tweaking wine somehow..

Anyways is your powersupply good enough ? Also what chipset is on your motherboard ?.. Seems most people reporting issues wind up running an Nforce2 motherboard.

[jscurtu]

@ bridgman

Thanks for your answer, I am using the drivers that my distribution offers, the xf86-video-ati 6.10 or the xf86-video-radeonhd 1.2.4 ...
If there is a version with Xv and EXA hardware acceleration, i am willing to check it out... can you give me more info on that??

Thanks

Anyways is your powersupply good enough ? Also what chipset is on your motherboard ?.. Seems most people reporting issues wind up running an Nforce2 motherboard.

Sure Powersupply is 400W, I dont play any games so, it is enough...
My Mainboard is using a Via K8M800/VT8237 ...

[bridgman]

Here's the best writeup I have seen so far :

http://www.x.org/wiki/radeonhd%3Ar6xx_r7xx_branch

The main point to remember here is that you need to pick up code for both the X driver (radeonhd or -ati) and the drm in order to get working acceleration. Installing a new ddx driver is easy but sometimes people have trouble installing a new drm (since it is a dynamically loaded kernel module).

If you have trouble getting the accel code to work, going on the appropriate IRC channel (#radeonhd or #radeon) will usually find someone who can help.

[PuckPoltergeist]

The main point to remember here is that you need to pick up code for both the X driver (radeonhd or -ati) and the drm in order to get working acceleration. Installing a new ddx driver is easy but sometimes people have trouble installing a new drm (since it is a dynamically loaded kernel module).

That really should not be a problem. Insmod is your friend (for testing). Anybody, who is able to build drm and radeon kernel module, should also be able to load this by hand. The main problem is to not conflict with the fglrx driver. I run also into this, when I didn't rebooted for testing after fglrx has been loaded.

[jscurtu]

Okay...... I installed Kubuntu today and tried Catalyst 9.2 on it, I still have the same problems so I deinstalled it again and I am back to OpenSource driver..

Now I am wondering is there any pre-compiled packages of the r6xx_r7xx_branch for ubuntu intrepid? or a good guide? Ubuntu dont have the directory
/lib/modules/YOUR_KERNEL_VERSION/kernel/drivers/char/drm/

[cyrus_mc]

Okay...... I installed Kubuntu today and tried Catalyst 9.2 on it, I still have the same problems so I deinstalled it again and I am back to OpenSource driver..

Now I am wondering is there any pre-compiled packages of the r6xx_r7xx_branch for ubuntu intrepid? or a good guide? Ubuntu dont have the directory
/lib/modules/YOUR_KERNEL_VERSION/kernel/drivers/char/drm/

The directory under Ubuntuu is /lib/modules/KERNEL_VERSION/kernel/drivers/gpu/drm and /lib/modules/KERNEL_VERSION/kernel/drivers/gpu/drm/radeon. Copy the drm.ko and radeon.ko to the respective directories.

[steefjeqv]

Okay...... I installed Kubuntu today and tried Catalyst 9.2 on it, I still have the same problems so I deinstalled it again and I am back to OpenSource driver..

Now I am wondering is there any pre-compiled packages of the r6xx_r7xx_branch for ubuntu intrepid? or a good guide? Ubuntu dont have the directory
/lib/modules/YOUR_KERNEL_VERSION/kernel/drivers/char/drm/

Tormod Volden provides the updated open source drivers for Ubuntu (a big thank you to him for doing that).

https://launchpad.net/~tormodvolden/+archive/ppa

Greetings,
Steven

[jscurtu]

Okay I managed to compile everything and set it up....
But after restarting I only got a screen full of graphic glitches that reminded me of my Atari 2600 :-)
I googel'd alittle and found out that the r6xx r7xx branch has no AGP support "PCIe only" ..
Now I dont want this card anymore cause I actually do work on my LinuxPC and with Linux only.. Can someone perhabs tell me a good supported non-nvidia AGP card for Linux? That would be great, thanks...