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Gentoo Linux ATI FAQ

Content:

1.  Hardware Support

Is my AMD/ATI board supported?

Many AMD/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 AMD's closed source drivers. AMD's closed source driver only supports R600 and newer GPUs. Older GPUs will use the mature open source 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 - X1950 xorg
R600 RadeonHD 2000 series AMD DRI, xorg
RV670 RadeonHD 3000 series AMD DRI, xorg
RV770 (R700) RadeonHD 4000 series AMD DRI, xorg
R800 RadeonHD 5000 series AMD DRI, xorg
R900 RadeonHD 6000 series AMD DRI, xorg

Note: The Radeon Feature Matrix at x.org lists the open source driver support level for each part of the graphics card hardware.

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

You don't need to use anything special for the board's multimedia features; 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, AMD/ATI's closed source Catalyst drivers are not supported on the PPC or Alpha, so you will have to use the open source drivers. The Catalyst drivers are only available for x86 and AMD64. The open source xorg-x11 drivers should work well on all architectures.

Important: To enable agpgart support for certain old AMD64 chipsets, 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 such cases, you may have to write the configuration file yourself.

2.  Installation

Packages

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

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

If you want to use AMD/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 AMD/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: PPC, AMD64, and x86 users can use the xac stand-alone X configuration tool by emerging x11-misc/xac, but isn't required.

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

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 AMD/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 AMD/ATI graphics card.

More information on Gentoo Linux and the AMD/ATI Radeon binary drivers can be found on the Wedge Unofficial Gentoo ATI Radeon FAQ, and on the Unofficial AMD Linux Driver Wiki.



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Page updated March 1, 2011

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

Luca Barbato
Author

Jorge Paulo
Editor

Tiemo Kieft
Editor

Joshua Saddler
Editor

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