ATI FAQ

This FAQ should 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 only supports R600 and newer GPUs. Older GPUs will use the mature open source xorg-x11 driver.

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 Gentoo X Server HowTo.

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

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.

Acknowledgements
We would like to thank the following authors and editors for their contributions to this guide:


 * Luca Barbato
 * Jorge Paulo
 * Tiemo Kieft
 * Joshua Saddler