Radeon

radeon is a family of the X.Org graphics drivers for modern ATI Radeon graphics cards. This article details how to configure the kernel and your userspace in order to use the radeon driver.

See also the radeon article on the unofficial Gentoo Wiki.

Kernel
You need to activate the following kernel options, note that you don't need to enable AGP Support if your card doesn't sit in a AGP slot:

Firmware
There is IRQ microcode for r6xx/r7xx/Evergreen/Northern Islands Radeon GPUs and APUs. KMS may not work without it. It can be installed with:

Make sure firmware for your model (check available ones in /lib/firmware/radeon) is included in kernel:

Below is a list of the firmware files needed for each family of cards: radeon/R600_rlc.bin radeon/R700_rlc.bin radeon/CEDAR_me.bin radeon/CEDAR_pfp.bin radeon/CEDAR_rlc.bin radeon/CYPRESS_me.bin radeon/CYPRESS_pfp.bin radeon/CYPRESS_rlc.bin radeon/JUNIPER_me.bin radeon/JUNIPER_pfp.bin radeon/JUNIPER_rlc.bin radeon/REDWOOD_me.bin radeon/REDWOOD_pfp.bin radeon/REDWOOD_rlc.bin radeon/PALM_me.bin radeon/PALM_pfp.bin radeon/SUMO_me.bin radeon/SUMO_pfp.bin radeon/SUMO_rlc.bin radeon/SUMO2_me.bin radeon/SUMO2_pfp.bin radeon/BARTS_mc.bin radeon/BARTS_me.bin radeon/BARTS_pfp.bin radeon/BTC_rlc.bin radeon/CAICOS_mc.bin radeon/CAICOS_me.bin radeon/CAICOS_pfp.bin radeon/CAYMAN_mc.bin radeon/CAYMAN_me.bin radeon/CAYMAN_pfp.bin radeon/CAYMAN_rlc.bin radeon/TURKS_mc.bin radeon/TURKS_me.bin radeon/TURKS_pfp.bin
 * RadeonHD 2000, 3000, and 4000 series
 * RadeonHD 5000 series
 * Radeon HD 6000 APU series (Fusion)
 * Radeon HD 6000 series

Driver
You can force X11 to use desired driver with:

Tuning
I couldn't find a summery of all options available so feel free to add to this.


 * Kernel parameters can be just added to the kernel commandline in grub.cfg or grub.conf
 * Environment variables could be put into a file like /etc/env.d/99radeon to have them initialized during boot
 * xorg.conf parameter are usual in the Device section for the card

Links

 * X.Org Wiki - radeon
 * X.Org Wiki - radeonhd (old driver project, deprecated in favour of 'radeon')