Ati Cards on Linux

Any of you guys use an ATI card in Linux? I hear the drivers are coming along nicely and i was wondering if
anybody has had any luck running games decently on Linux and what fps you getting etc

lemme know......

I have an older ATI Mobility Radeon X1270 in my laptop, which is my primary machine, since I'm on the road far more than I'm home. When I bought it, Ubuntu 9.04 was in alpha testing. So I had 8.10 installed on it. 9.04 came out and broke everything, because the newer Xorg was not compatible with ATI's proprietary driver. This prompted me to switch to Debian 5.0, because the open source radeon drivers were just plain awful. That changed about January of last year, someone seemed to put their foot on the accelerator and they started to rapidly improve, then hit a plateau right around June or July.

I'm happily using Ubuntu now, I just have to enable the xorg-edgers PPA to get the latest drivers, after that, most of everything is comparible to the old fglrx drivers I was using in Hardy Heron then later Debian 5.0. In some respects, the open source performs better, in others, not as good. In Urban Terror, with Lenny and fglrx I was getting 50-60 fps with the graphic settings turned all the way up. Now, I have to turn them all down to get half that framerate.

this article pretty much echoes my experience:

The Open-Source ATI Driver Is Becoming A Lot Faster

It's a hell of a lot better than it was years ago. I have a ATI HD3870, still an olderish card now I guess. Open Source drivers are great for desktop effects and maybe some lightweight Urban Terror (about 25-60 fps depending on the area etc), but that's about their limit at the moment in terms of games etc.

Proprietary are also a bit better, native Linux games like the aforementioned Urban Terror run crazy fast and I mean I can actually run the likes of TF2 and Left 4 Dead without excessive hitching but to be honest, for WINE gaming, I'm still thinking of getting an NVIDIA (and as they also put out blob drivers for FreeBSD, ATI do not)

thanx for the info guys

According to these benchmarks with these particular ati cards.... Urban terror runs very very well with the latest opensource drivers but particulary the official ones. They compare it
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=amd_r500_expanded&num=6

especially with the X1xx series.... crazyyyyy frame rates.
I get about 91fps on my Nvidia 7800GTX

I might buy one of these cards in the near future

kaddy wrote:thanx for the info guys

According to these benchmarks with these particular ati cards.... Urban terror runs very very well with the latest opensource drivers but particulary the official ones. They compare it
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=amd_r500_expanded&num=6

especially with the X1xx series.... crazyyyyy frame rates.
I get about 91fps on my Nvidia 7800GTX

I might buy one of these cards in the near future

I'm getting 30-40 fps with graphic detail turned down and resolution down to 800x600 on Ubuntu 10.04. With catalyst 9.3 installed on Debian stable, I was getting >60 fps at 1280x800 with full detail. I get about the same with the Windows version running in XP. I have the latest Gallium drivers installed, must be my ancient GPU. Compared to where the open source drivers were a year ago, I can't complain. Who ever has been working on them has done a great job.

It wouldn't surprise me if the Open Source drivers overtake the official ones sometime in the future, which would be pretty cool.

I reckon the particularly more modern Radeons go pretty well, as even my older 3870 is renown for being a bit funny with drivers, games etc even though it's a decently capable card. So perhaps ATI has good future in Linux after all. I'm still tempted to get an Nvidia in the short term though

I'm running on my laptop ATI 5870 everything Linux runns no worries but running windows games through it or any other emulator most of the graphics dont show up so I just bought a Asus G53JW with a nvidia 460.

My advice stick with nvidia.

I actually just ordered a GTX 460 myself, I'm curious as to how it will play some games in Wine compared to my old ATI 3870

Most windows games seem to better support nvidia graphics maybe because tighter couplink between the nvidia hardware and the application or game. And less reliance on native operating system drivers.

I recently built this box with an MSI motherboard which has an integrated ATI HD 4200 video chip. My last box was day-before-yesterday technology, with a Via 8* series chip. The processor on it was fast, but only single core, clocking in at about 2.8 Ghz. Because it was socket 'A,' I could not do any better than what it has. The old computer did not go full screen very well, and when it did, the videos were too jumpy and jerky to enjoy. This new set-up has ended that problem.

Since I'm really not a gamer, all I really want to do is watch videos, especially Kaddy's videos on YouTube, and make off-the-wall comments about them. For this purpose, I think I have enough graphics power.

But since one really never has enough computing power, anyway, I think in the future I'm going to buy a card with the Radeon HD 6570 GPU. Then, if I can overcome my abhorence of gaming, I might actually start playing some more manly games than mah-johngg and chess.

I'm rocking a massively powerful ATI right now! Running great in Linux/Ubuntu. I'll post the specs later.

ATI HD 6850 worked fine with video output, but HDMI audio output was a heap of shite in Ubuntu 11.04
Im about to try it out in XBMC Live to see if I can get anything beyond stereo output.

This new computer has been driving me insane

LoL Tim will delete and Ban you Quids if he see's you contributing to my forums Lmao.
He has with some other people

oldposdells wrote:I'm rocking a massively powerful ATI right now! Running great in Linux/Ubuntu. I'll post the specs later.

Just out of curiosity, what driver are you using? Are you using the proprietary driver that's in the Ubuntu repos or are you using the opensource radeon driver? I've heard that many ATI users are having issues with 11.04 and Unity with the proprietary drivers (although there is a workaround involving disabling vblank synching in OpenGL in the compiz settings manager).

I'm using an ATI Radeon 4350 right now. I know it's not exactly the most powerful card in the world, but I really haven't had any issues with it. Right now I'm using the proprietary fglrx driver on Fedora 15 KDE. I did use the opensource radeon driver when I was using Gnome shell, and it worked really well for me. Although I don't do any "official" testing, sometimes I install a game or two under the opensource driver just to see how things look. When I was playing with Gnome shell and the open source radeon driver I installed Super Tux Kart to do an informal test of the driver, and while I don't have any official FPS count, it was very playable and the everything looked the way it should. But, of course each person's individual experience will be different. The open source radeon driver is known to work better with the older/weaker cards. If you have a top of the line ATI, you'd probably be better off with the fglrx driver.

In any case, I think the days of Linux users avoiding ATI are gone.

It's not that powerful just making a joke. But I'm using the Proprietary drivers. I have no problems with it. I get a solid 125 FPS on Urban Terror with it. On the Open driver I get 95... At this point there open drivers are no where near as good as the proprietary drivers. That's just my opinion.

I just chucked Ubuntu 11.04 on my Sony Vaio laptop, because Windoze 7 took a dive..

Anyway it has an ATI Mobility 5145 which ran well and smooth with Unity with the open source drivers...HOWEVER, I installed the proprietary drivers because the open source ones don't have power management and my video card was just screaming along at full fan speed the whole time and was loud

The blob drivers aren't quite as smooth as the open source drivers for some 2D stuff, like compiz effects, but eh, good enough.

eldersnake wrote:I just chucked Ubuntu 11.04 on my Sony Vaio laptop, because Windoze 7 took a dive..

Anyway it has an ATI Mobility 5145 which ran well and smooth with Unity with the open source drivers...HOWEVER, I installed the proprietary drivers because the open source ones don't have power management and my video card was just screaming along at full fan speed the whole time and was loud

The blob drivers aren't quite as smooth as the open source drivers for some 2D stuff, like compiz effects, but eh, good enough.

Regarding the blob drivers not being as smooth, from what I've read it seems that the fix for that is to install the compizconfig-settings-manager. Once installed, run it and go to "OpenGL" and by default the "Sync to VBlank" option is going to be enabled. Disable it.

Then reboot. Seems to work for a lot of people.

Oooooh really, thanks man, I'll have to try it

Anyone had any luck fixing the stupid black screen when recording fullscreen games crap?

almigi wrote:

eldersnake wrote:I just chucked Ubuntu 11.04 on my Sony Vaio laptop, because Windoze 7 took a dive..

Anyway it has an ATI Mobility 5145 which ran well and smooth with Unity with the open source drivers...HOWEVER, I installed the proprietary drivers because the open source ones don't have power management and my video card was just screaming along at full fan speed the whole time and was loud

The blob drivers aren't quite as smooth as the open source drivers for some 2D stuff, like compiz effects, but eh, good enough.

Regarding the blob drivers not being as smooth, from what I've read it seems that the fix for that is to install the compizconfig-settings-manager. Once installed, run it and go to "OpenGL" and by default the "Sync to VBlank" option is going to be enabled. Disable it.

Then reboot. Seems to work for a lot of people.

That worked great! Thanks!

I solved my ATI recording issues perfectly with a new nvidia card.
I would say I wish I had gone down nvidia route to start with, but that useless Gigabyte motherboard wouldn't work with nvidia cards... So I dunno either way I ended up loosing £70 (£10 on the ATI card and £60 mobo)

well im running on my laptop, but i have to use distros with older kernel suchac as debian 6 and ubuntu lts. everytime i try to run lets say oneiric or precise pangolin alpha, after install i get a black screen. i simply dont find any info on how to setup hybrid graphics.... any thoughts?