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List:       suse-linux-e
Subject:    [SLE] Several questions about seting up an ATI Radeon All-in-Wonder 8500DV - 3D, best drivers, FPS
From:       JW <jw () centraltexasit ! com>
Date:       2003-07-18 4:47:30
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Hello,

I've been running on a 4MB PCI video card for ages, and it's served me well 
right up through SuSE 8.1, however it gave up the ghost the other day (power 
outage with a back UPS to boot), so I took the opportunity to splurge and 
bought an ATI Radeon All-in-Wonder 8500DV.

My reasons for picking this card are:
1. I generally consider ATI and nVidia the 2 top makers, and like ATI's 
attitude toward Linux a little better than nVidia's. Also, I like that fact 
that ATI makes the whole card, whereas nVidia only makes chips - the actual 
card is alway made by someone else.

2. Even before my old card broke I had an eye on it, there was no 3D for the 
old card.

3. It's the "highest" model supported by the GATOS project (the 9000's are not 
quite there yet), and I'm wanting to fool around with video devices. I like 
all the inputs and outputs on the 8500DV. Plus DVI out and a FireWire port 
(haven't bought a FireWire card yet so that saved me ~$30) that supposedly 
works under Linux.

System specs: mainboard FIC AD11 w/Athlon XP 1500+, 256MB of DDR, lots of IDE 
hard drives, plain-jane CD-ROM, Sound Blaster Live! Platinum.

Before I installed the card I borrowed a spare Matrox G450 dual-head for a 
while. I noticed the following statement on one of the GATOS pages (or 
something related):

	At this point, if you built your kernel with the ATI Radeon module set to 'M' 
(instead of 'N') you should be able to test your installation using the 
default ATI drivers from XFree86 by running glxgears after restarting X. I 
seem to recall performance in the range of 900 FPS using the non-GATOS 
drivers. If you are getting performance in the sub-300 FPS range then DRI is 
not working correctly and you should check your X log for errors or issue the 
following command to start X: startx >& x.log and then checking x.log.

(I did look in my X log and didn't find any errors).

	After starting up X, type xdpyinfo to check that DRI and XVideo are loaded 
and running correctly. Then run glxgears to see DRI in action. On my AGP 
Radeon I was getting between 600 and 900 frames per second with the ATI.2 
drivers.

While still using just the default SuSE-supplied radeon drivers (no GATOS yet) 
I notides xdpyinfo |grep -i DRI does not show anything. Is that correct?

When I ran Sax2 for setup, the first thing that happened is that it popped up 
a message saying that OpenGL/3D support was not available with multiple 
display support. Well, this isn't a dual head card, though I don't doubt it's 
internal workings might appear that way. once inside Sax2 it shoed 2 Radeon 
entries (as if it saw 2 cards or chips) and 2 monitors. One monitor was 
pre-set at 640x480, so I guess that's the part that handles the TV overlay or 
something. Anyway, is all this normal? Has anyone got 3D support working on 
one of these?

Another bad thing right off the bat is the statement made about the FPS with 
"default XFree86 radeon drivers". Look at my glxgears for the Matrox G450:

Matrox G450 :
3739 frames in 5.0 seconds = 747.800 FPS
3732 frames in 5.0 seconds = 746.400 FPS
3740 frames in 5.0 seconds = 748.000 FPS
3739 frames in 5.0 seconds = 747.800 FPS
3739 frames in 5.0 seconds = 747.800 FPS
3740 frames in 5.0 seconds = 748.000 FPS
3738 frames in 5.0 seconds = 747.600 FPS
3741 frames in 5.0 seconds = 748.200 FPS

Now look at the ones for the Radeon All-in-Wonder 8500DV:
341 frames in 5.0 seconds = 68.200 FPS
401 frames in 5.0 seconds = 80.200 FPS
401 frames in 5.0 seconds = 80.200 FPS
400 frames in 5.0 seconds = 80.000 FPS
402 frames in 5.0 seconds = 80.400 FPS


Youch! That's quite a difference. Doesn't it seem like something is wrong? I 
have to say that in 2D mode everything seems to be 100% fine, but it seems 
like something can't be right here. I don't play games, but I'm hoping to 
fiddle around with FlightGear, which I belive should have pretty stiff 
requirements, no?

So I guess my first set of questions is, is all this no 3D support/low FPS 
normal for one of these cards with the default drivers that came with 8.1? Is 
the situation improved any with 8.2? I have 8.2 but I'm waiting to install it 
until I get a DVD/CD burner and another hard drive.

Next, I wonder if using the drive from ATI will make anything better? I have 
downloaded fglrx-glc22-4.2.0-2.5.1.i586.rpm. According to the web page this 
card is "fully supported" with these drivers. Not sure what that means. I 
wasn't able to determine what, if anything, is supposed to be better about 
the official ATI drivers as compared to the ones that come with XFree86. I 
assume the Radeon drivers that come with SuSE are just the XFree86 drivers?
Has anyone installed the ATI drivers? Are they likely to cause problems (it's 
a generic RPM, not SuSE-specific) or should everything be smooth as usual?

Third, has zanyone installed the GATOS drivers on SuSE, and if so, do you have 
any particular experiences to relate - things to watch out for, "don't do it" 
or any useful tips would be appreciated.

Hope all this makes sense. In case you're thinking "What is this guy trying to 
do?", I'm just trying to get the best setup possible with this card. I'm not 
afraid to try them all and mess things up a bit in the process, but I thought 
I may as well ask for help/suggestions from the pool of experience out there 
before plunging in :-)

Thanks,

	JW

-- 

----------------------------------------------------
Jonathan Wilson
Cedar Creek Software     http://www.cedarcreeksoftware.com



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