[wellylug] ATI Video card
Robin Hinde
robin at hindesite.co.nz
Thu Mar 25 17:56:13 NZST 2004
On Thu, 25 Mar 2004 14:41, Rob Giltrap wrote:
> I am thinking about picking up a cheap ATI Radeon 7000 32MB PCI video
> card for my PC (which currently has integrated graphics with no AGP)
>
> Is there anything I need to worry about on the Linux side of this to get
> it working?
Yes, be aware that the radeon driver for Xfree86 expects to see an AGP
adapter, you have to pass a specific parameter to the driver to make it work
if you are using DRI. It will run under the vesa driver without messing
around, but you don't get 3D acceleration then. It is possible that later
releases of XFree86 (4.3, 4.4) and radeon drivers have fixed this problem,
but I doubt it. It is documented in the radeon manpage.
I have an ATI 7500 64MB PCI card, it took me ages to figure this out, but once
I had that sorted, it runs just fine, excellent frame rates (for my purposes,
anyway). I like the adapter because it is quiet (no fan) and I don't have any
AGP slots available. I think it was (at the time I bought it) about the
fastest video card available that didn't have a fan.
The only time this reccurs as an issue is when booting from some LiveCDs, if
they try to load the radeon driver, X window won't start, system locks up,
you have to power down to restart.
Here's the relevant section in /etc/X11/XF86Config-4:
Section "Device"
Identifier "device1"
VendorName "ATI"
BoardName "ATI Radeon"
Driver "radeon"
BusID "PCI:0:14:0"
Option "DPMS"
Option "ForcePCIMode" "yes" <--this is the relevant option
EndSection
I haven't got TV out working, not having any urget requirement for it, but I
think there might be legal issues there, apparently related to Macrovision's
IP in relation to the copy protection scheme used in the devices. This might
restrict OS driver development, in which case the only driver development
involving TV out will probably come from ATI, and I don't know if they have a
current Linux driver for low end Radeons.
Hope that helps
-=rjh=-
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