ATI FAQ

This article contains Article description::Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) to help users avoid some common installation and configuration issues related to DRI and X11 for AMD/ATI boards.

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 was available since the R200 GPUs, but support for current versions of X11 is limited. The last version of the Catalyst drivers fglrx had support only for R600 (since HD5000) and newer GPUs and X.org server 1.17. Older GPUs will use the mature open source xorg-x11 driver. For newer GPUs since GCN (Graphics Core Next) Generation 1.1 (Southern Islands and newer) drivers are provided as open source AMDGPU and closed source AMDGPU-PRO. Both have excellent 2D and 3D accelerated performance.

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; 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.

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.

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


 * The  ebuild provides the X11 implementation
 * The  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.

Configuration
You may not need to manually create or modify it if you are using the open-source radeon driver. Try running without it first. If this fails, you can use the auto-configuration option of X:

If you use the proprietary ATI drivers, you can get assistance for configuring X through the  application (which is part of the  package). See fglrx for more information.

For more information on how to get a basic configuration file, please refer to the X server guide.

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

External resources

 * Wedge Unofficial Gentoo ATI Radeon FAQ
 * Unofficial AMD Linux Driver Wiki