Unusual ATI radeon chip ID

[Bruce Copeland]

I have a recent HP Pavilion notebook that supposedly uses an ATI radeon mobility graphics adapter. I can run this adapter under Linux using the VESA framebuffer driver (with associated slow VESA performance), but I am unable to get any XFree86 radeon driver to work with this adapter because the radeon drivers don't recognize the chip ID (0x4337). Can anyone tell me what ATI model number (e.g. 7500, 8500, etc), chip type (e.g. M6, M7, etc.), and minor product ID (LW, LX, LY, etc.) are supposed to be associated with this graphics adapter? I think if I can get this information I should be able to modify the radeon driver code, and build a radeon driver that will work with this adapter.

[Vincent Stedema]

Hi,

It seems like it's a "powered by ati" chip, which has been modified by hp. Maybe you should post this question to the "workstations" forum and hope that an engineer from hp comes up with an answer...

Regards,

Vincent

[James Hubbard]

You probably have the ATI U1 (IGP 320M) graphics controller which seems to be some type of Radeon. There is no XFree support for it.

--James

[Bruce Copeland]

Actually it's an IGP 340M (at least judging by the info available from Windows XP). It looks like a radeon, smells like a radeon, and works like a radeon under Windows. I realize XFree86 doesn't support it, but I've looked at the radeon driver code, and there are only 3 very minor variants of radeon. The real problem is that the radeon driver code doesn't know about any chip with an id of 0x4337. If I can figure out which of the 3 minor variants this chip is like. It should be easy to add an entry for this chip to the driver code and rebuild a working driver.

[Robert_151]

Not sure if this will help have a ze4200 running a dual boot with XP Pro and Red Hat 8.0. I was able to use the mobile Radeon 9000 driver and it worked. All the others would not test properly. However, I still do not have the screen resolutions to fill the display working with the center half of the screen in X. Didn't matter which driver I used. What do you use for monitor type?

[Bruce Copeland]

Thanks for the info. I've been thinking about trying one of the newer drivers. Are you using the Radeon 9000 driver from the ATI web site or the Radeon 9000 driver from gatos.sourceforge.net?

I have had some success using the standard XFree86 radeon driver by forcing the ChipId to 0x4c59 (one of the known radeon M6 ids). But I am still unable to use hardware acceleration because none of the kernels (I use 2.4.20) recognize the ati host bridge (0xcab2) implemented by HP.

I use 'Generic Laptop Display Panel 1024x764' for my monitor ModelName. You can check out the rest of my configuration at

http://www.cybersym.com/pages/linux-ze4100.html

Bruce

[Robert_151]

Hello,
I am using the driver that came with the Red Hat 8.0 Xwindows setup. Not a very technical deduction unfortunately. I just played around selecting them in the graphical setup for X I would go to the to the next screen and test it out it was the only mobile Radeon I could get to work. Not very proficient yet at Linux just starting to figure it out so not very proficient at setting drivers still need the hand holding through the wizards. If you have any luck please let me know. Thanks Robert

[Bruce Copeland]

Thanks. It might be helpful to everyone if you could include a copy of your /etc/X11/XF86Config file. Also the lspci output for your system. [As root, type lspci -v > mylspci; then include a copy of mylspci.]

Bruce

[Robert_151]

Hello,
After looking at the information you were talking about looks like I owe an apology. Though in the XF86Config Identifier it says ATI Radeon Mobility 9000 it still is using the vesa driver(generic) and when I run Ispci command it shows unknown device 4336. Sorry for the confusion.

[Bruce Copeland]

That's OK. I'm well aware of the surprises that occasionally show up in XF86Config files produced by 'probing'. If you're still having trouble with your display appearance, you might want to temporarily replace your XF86Config file with the one I use currently. That might tell us something useful.

Bruce

[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

[Ryan_108]

Regis, which driver are you using, radeon? I just installed 4.3.99.6 and ran xf86config, plus tried to mess with the XF86Config file a lot, but still can't get 3d working correctly. With dri (not working), radeon, and glx enabled, glxgears gives me a max of 128 FPS. With 4.3.0 I think I had around 200 FPS. What parts of XF86Config did you modify?

- Ryan

[Brad Hill_2]

I beleive the latest revision of XFree86 only supports the 2D acceleration features of the IGP chipset. This basically only means you don't have to use VESA mode or explicitly tell XFree that you have another (compatable) chip. It still doesn't solve the problem everyone's trying to overcome here - although it does make scrolling windows (like web browsing) a lot smoother.