Unusual ATI radeon chip ID

[plastic_tree]

i had try to change my xconfig as in ur website...but found that my graphics seems a bit slower..(in the sense that when i drag and move a windows...it seems to be lagging...i not sure what is the problem...is tat any driver that we can try besides M6?...i refer to xfree86.org..they say the accelation is supported by the 'ati' driver...i not quite sure what is this mean..can u help me out?

[Bruce Copeland]

I think you're probably correct that window moving is faster with the VESA framebuffer driver, but refresh and other things seem slightly faster (and definitely cleaner startup) using the radeon driver. This makes sense. Different video drivers do various graphics operations differently and with different priorities.

What the XFree86 people told you is also correct IF you actually have the hardware the radeon driver was originally designed to drive. If you have a RadeonIGP 320M or 340M, you DO NOT have all the hardware this driver was designed for, and so you can't do hardware acceleration. The real problem is that there is currently no kernel drm support for the ATI agpgart host bridges that these RadeonIGP systems come with. Until ATI ponies up the specifications needed by the kernel developers for the ATI host bridges, things probably won't get better. I don't know if Xig sells proprietary drivers for RadeonIGP, but I doubt it.

Bruce

[comet82]

to Bruce,
i had just install mandrake 9.1 and i think radeon 340M is supported already, i am currently using the ati radeon driver...with the 3d accel too....may be u can try out mandrake 9.1.....hope can hear from u soon.....

[Bruce Copeland]

comet82:

Have you actually verified that acceleration is working? Typically you do that by running glxinfo and/or glxgears from the command line under X. If you see messages like 'XFree86-DRI missing' or 'direct rendering: no' under glxinfo, then acceleration is off.

Bruce

[comet82]

oh ya.....i got the message =( ....thanks for teaching me on how to do it...please post any update on the radeon igp 340M driver here if u have it....millon thanks =)

[Goran Koruga]

Hi.

Did you try thinkering with XF86Config options ?

You should be able to specify PCI ID, as noted here :

http://www.xfree86.org/~dawes/4.3.0/radeon.4.html

Goran

[Bruce Copeland]

Goran:

Most of the problem isn't really XFree86. Versions of XFree86 before 4.3.0 didn't correctly identify some of the Radeon IGP chipset IDs as radeons, but many of us managed to get around those problems by forcing another known Radeon ChipID in the XF86Config Device section. The real problem is that computers (mostly notebooks) with Radeon IGP video systems use host southbridges with ATI agpgart chips for which there is no agpgart/drm support in the kernel. Until ATI starts giving basic documentation about their agpgart setup to kernel drm developers, we're out of luck--at least as far as AGP is concerned.

Bruce

[Eduardo Moreno]

There is a experimetal XFree driver for IGP cards. Look here: http://www.mail-archive.com/xfree86@xfree86.org/msg03137.html

[Regis Boudin]

For information, I am currently testing the latest developpement shnaphot of XFree (4.3.99.4) with a IGP 340M (ChipID 0x4337). It seems to work well, the ATI pactch is included and supports IGP 320/330/340/350 chipsets plus their mobile versions.

The source is available at :
ftp://ftp.xfree86.org/pub/XFree86/develsnaps

Regis

[Chris Gunter]

Can you tell me how to or point me to the right place for updating to 4.3.99.x? I have the tarball and I'm very new to linux. Running SuSE 8.2 Pro.
Thanks