Gentoo Linux ATI FAQ

1. Hardware Support

Many ATI boards (but not all) are supported by xorg-x11, at least for the 2D accelerated features. The 3D support is provided either by xorg-x11, or by ATI's closed source drivers. ATI's closed source driver only supports R600 and newer GPUs. Older GPUs will use the mature xorg-x11 driver.

GPU	Common Name	Support
Rage128	Rage128	xorg
R100	Radeon7xxx, Radeon64	xorg
R200, R250, R280	Radeon8500, Radeon9000, Radeon9200	xorg
R300, R400	Radeon 9500 - x850	xorg
R500	Radeon X1300 and higher	xorg
R600	Radeon HD 2000 series	ATI DRI, xorg
RV670	Radeon HD 3000 series	ATI DRI, xorg
RV770	Radeon HD 4000 series	ATI DRI, xorg

I have an All-In-Wonder/Vivo board. Are the multimedia features supported?

The board's multimedia features are supported by the GATOS project. These drivers have been merged into the Xorg tree. You don't need to use anything special; x11-drivers/xf86-video-ati will work just fine.

I'm not using an x86-based architecture. What are my options?

X11 support on the PPC or Alpha platforms is quite similar to x86 X11 support. However, ATI's closed source drivers are not supported on the PPC or Alpha, so you cannot use the 3D features of the R300 Graphics Processing Unit (GPU). If you have such a board and want it supported by X11, contact ATI and ask them to release the specifications for your system's GPU. The closed source driver for the AMD64 was released, so AMD64 users can now enjoy the same features as x86 users.

Important: To enable agpgart support for certain AMD64 chip sets, you have to disable support for the K8 IOMMU.

I have a laptop. Is my ATI Mobility model supported?

It should be, but you may have a configuration issue due to the OEM PCI id that such chips may have. In most cases, you may have to write the configuration file yourself.

2. Installation

Packages

There are two ways of getting drivers for your ATI card:

The xorg-x11 ebuild provides the X11 implementation
The ati-drivers ebuild provides the ATI closed source X drivers and kernel modules

If you want to use ATI's internal agpgart support instead of the Linux kernel one, the agpgart driver and the chip set specific driver (in your kernel configuration) must be built as modules or not at all.

Note: Please read the Hardware Acceleration Guide for more information on installing drivers for your ATI graphics card.

Configuration

You may not need to manually create xorg.conf or modify it. Try running without it first. You can also use the Xorg auto configuration option:

Code Listing 2.1: Autoconfiguring X

# X -configure

For more information on how to get a basic xorg.conf configuration file, please refer to the Gentoo X Server HowTo.

Note: You can use aticonfig if you have installed the ati-drivers package.

Note: PPC users could use the Xorgautoconfig stand-alone configuration tool by emerging the Xorgautoconfig ebuild, but isn't required.

Important: If you're using ati-drivers, then you'll need to disable radeonfb (and probably any other framebuffer drivers) in your kernel config, as it conflicts with the built-in framebuffer in ati-drivers.

Switching to OpenGL

Once X is installed, configured, and running, it can use the ATI OpenGL libraries:

Code Listing 2.2: Running eselect

# eselect opengl set ati

3. More Resources

Please read the Hardware Acceleration Guide for more information on configuring your ATI graphics card.

More information on Gentoo Linux and the ATI Radeon binary drivers can be found on the Wedge Unofficial Gentoo ATI Radeon FAQ.

The contents of this document are licensed under the Creative Commons - Attribution / Share Alike license.

Updated November 30, 2009

Summary: This FAQ should help users avoid some common installation and configuration issues related to DRI and X11 for ATI boards.

Luca Barbato
Author

Jorge Paulo
Editor

Tiemo Kieft
Editor

Joshua Saddler
Editor

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