The ATI Dance...

[AcuraRBKG6]

Hey everyone. I've been searching for days as to how to *properly* install the ATI drivers for my FireGL V5000 card, but nothing has seemed to work. This is what I did.

 

First, I installed the kernel-source via urpmi to make sure that the driver installs relative to my kernel.

 

Next, I installed the RPM for Mandriva/2006 from the Official ATI drivers using rpm -Uvh --force (excuse me if I got the command slightly wrong, but I did use the force option).

 

I went into init 3 and used aticonfig --initial, but no 3D acceleration was used. This was the output of glxinfo |grep render

 

[root@localhost share]# glxinfo |grep render

Loading compatibility GL library /usr/X11R6/lib/libGL.so.1.4.502

direct rendering: No

OpenGL renderer string: Mesa X11

 

glxgears reports

[root@localhost share]# glxgears

Loading compatibility GL library /usr/X11R6/lib/libGL.so.1.4.502

4769 frames in 5.0 seconds = 953.738 FPS

4827 frames in 5.0 seconds = 965.381 FPS

4840 frames in 5.0 seconds = 967.828 FPS

 

and fglrx_config doesn't even load!

 

Should I remove the driver and start from scratch? If so, how do I do that?

 

Thanks in advance

 

-C

[ianw1974]

I would remove using System/Configuration/Packaging/Remove Software. Choose the All option and type in ati to filter for it, and hopefully it will list the driver. Or, if you remember the filename of the rpm you downloaded, try part of this filename. But it should work. Normally fglrx is good to search for I think.

 

Then, I would use the easy-urpmi link at the top of this page to add the main, contrib, jpackage, plf-free, plf-nonfree and updates sources. You need all of these, I always add them all.

 

Then I would do this:

 

urpmi dkms-ati

 

this will install the dkms and ati stuff, and it should do it all for you completely. Make sure, that your display was configured for the fglrx driver within the display settings before you do all this, and you should be perfectly fine hopefully.

[AcuraRBKG6]

Thanks for the (very prompt) reply.

 

I tried to remove the ati-xorg package, but it states that it needs dkms-ati to be removed. So then I tried to remove that, but it says that it is needed by ati-xorg.

 

How do I go around these dependencies?

 

edit: forget the last post.

Edited May 11, 2006 by AcuraRBKG6

[AcuraRBKG6]

The problem has been solved. glxgears now reports FPS of well over 2000.

 

Thank you very much, Ian!

[AcuraRBKG6]

Hey again.

 

Thinking that glxgears is reporting a pretty-high FPS rate (>3500 FPS), I decided to take the initiative to play Tux Racer as a test.

 

The performance was horrid. It was probably going 0.5 FPS instead of the 3500 FPS that I thought I was achieving.

 

What could possibly be the problem here? glxinfo reports that direct rending is on and run by the card itself. Could it just be that my card is really bad under Linux?

 

I am running Mandriva Linux 2006 Free.

 

Thanks once again!

 

-C

[ianw1974]

Do you have mesa installed:

 

urpmi Mesa

 

it's case sensitive so type Mesa and not mesa.