News: ATI Catalyst Drivers 10.2 Released. No Fedora 12 Support.

After almost a month, ATI has come up with a new version 10.2 of its Catalyst (fglrx) drivers. The drivers can be download from ATI Catalyst™ 10.2 Proprietary Linux x86 Display Driver Page. As AMD is famous for doing nothing but just incrementing versions of there software, even this version doesn’t support xorg-1.7.4. But if you still want to give it a try, you can download and try installing the driver. Otherwise mesa-experimental drivers are your friend. Checkout the post Fedora 12 and ATI Drivers and save yourself from frustration 🙂

And yes, lets wait for next version of ATI Drivers 🙂

 

News : ATI Catalyst Drivers 10.1 Released. Test them now!

After a long, really long wait, AMD has released the next version 10.1 of its ATI Catalyst display drivers (fglrx) for Linux. The drivers can be download from ATI Catalyst™ 10.1 Proprietary Linux x86 Display Driver Page. As previous version turned out to be a big turn off for Fedora community and AMD took a long time for releasing this, I hope they have fixed issues regarding new Xorg version. Fedora folks will really want this version to work, otherwise there will be *blood* 😀 You have got AMD graphics card? What are you waiting for? Download the drivers immediately and test the damn thing! And please let everyone know whether it works for you with details of your graphics card. You know where the howto for installation is ;) How To: Install ATI Catalyst (fglrx) Drivers.

I really hope that things turn out well and you don’t really get to this point. But if these drivers don’t work for you, proceed to the post Fedora 12 ATI Catalyst Drivers and checkout mesa-dri-drivers-experimental.

From the release notes for version 10.1,

Resolved Issues

  • [ATI CatalystTM Control Center] Display Manager Properties tab now properly shows a single mode instead of multiple modes when big desktop mode is enabled.
  • The operating system will no longer fail when switching between virtual desktops.
  • [RHEL 5.4 32-bit] [ATI CatalystTM Control Center] System now functions properly after selecting “Detect Displays” button and hot-plugging a HDMI display.
  • [Ubunut 9.10] X no longer fails after executing multiple Xserver generations with Xinerama enabled.
  • Hotplugging a HDMI monitor or toggling between LCD and HDMI no longer causes the system to stop responding.

Know Issues

  • [RHEL4-U8 32-bit] Corruption may be observed while starting Xserver on some ASICs.
  • Corruption may be observed after 90, 180 or 270 degree desktop rotation on some ASICs.
  • System may stop responding after switching to DC (battery) mode with CrossFireTM enabled and full-screen applications running.
  • System may become unresponsive after executing specific combinations of XRandR reflections and rotations.
  • The output log file may report the Engine Clock or Memory Clock values as 0 MHz on some systems.
  • [RHEL 5.4][ ATI CatalystTM Control Center] Applying customized TV modes might not work properly, pop up message requesting restart will not appear and customized format will not apply.
  • [Ubuntu 9.04 x86 64-bit] Some systems may become unresponsive during video playback with certain Dual Head configurations.
  • [ATI CatalystTM Control Center] Specific customized modes under the HDTV page may fail to apply on some systems.
  • [Ubuntu 9.04] With one DP monitor and one DVI monitor connected in clone mode, unplugging and re-plugging the DVI monitor may cause the system to deadlock.
  • Xserver may fail to launch after enabling CrossFireTM and restarting on some ASICs.
  • [ATI CatalystTM Control Center] Super Anti-Aliasing (16x) mode may not be available on some display adapters with CrossFireTM is enabled.
  • Display rotation may fail to apply from ATI CatalystTM Control Center with desktop effects enabled.
  • [RHEL] Enabling Xinerama may cause input devices (keyboard and mouse) to become inaccessible after restarting Xserver.
  • System may fail to return to console mode after enabling all adapters and exiting Xserver for multi GPU configuration on some ASICs.
  • ATI CatalystTM Control Center may report error when two displays of different maximum resolutions are set in clone mode.
  • [SUSE 11.1 64-bit] Enabling CrossFireTM might fail with some ASICs
  • Scaling setting changes may fail to retain after mode change, reboot or restarting Xserver.
  • [SUSE 11.2 x86] CrossFireTM might not be functional under specific configurations
  • [Ubuntu 9.10] CAL test “completemodulelist.txt” might not execute and throws segmentation fault.
  • [ATI CatalystTM Control Center] Some systems may intermittently stop responding when changing the scaling options.
  • [ATI CatalystTM Control Center] Applying “Size and Position” adjustments for Analog Monitors might not work properly.
  • [Ubuntu 9.04] Some video cards may stop video output signals when monitor has been powered off.
  • [ATI CatalystTM Control Center] Disabled display will become enabled after Xserver restart.
  • Flickering corruption might be visible while running OpenGL applications with CrossFireTM enabled on specific ASICs.
 

News: Will ATI Catalyst Drivers 9.12 work with Fedora 12?

AMD has released the next version 9.12 of its ATI Catalyst display drivers for Linux. The drivers can be download from ATI Catalyst™ 9.12 Proprietary Linux x86 Display Driver Page. As of now, I haven’t tried the drivers on Fedora 12 because supposedly my SMPS is broken 🙁 But since there were a whole lot of bug reports to AMD regarding xorg 1.7 and catalyst, they might have fixed it. Please try and let everyone know if these drivers work with Fedora 12. You know where the howto for installation is 😉 How To: Install ATI Catalyst (fglrx) Drivers.

Also, if these drivers doesn’t work, a lot of people are finding mesa-drivers-experimental a huge success over catalyst drivers. Don’t miss those experimental drivers. Checkout comments on Fedora 12 ATI Catalyst Drivers.

Anyway, let us know whatever works for you 🙂

 

How To: Configure Dual Display with ATI Radeon (fglrx)

As promised in my last post (News: ATI Catalyst Display Drivers 9.9 Released), I am back with a post on configuring dual display with ATI Radeon HD Graphics Card and proprietary catalyst (fglrx) drivers from ATI.

Hardware Used

Graphics Card: ATI Radeon HD 3200 (256MB, onboard)
Monitor 0: ViewSonic VG1930WM 1440×900 (19″ LCD, Connected via DVI port)
Monitor 1: Samsung SyncMaster 793S 1280×1024 (17″ CRT, Connected via VGA port)

Types of Dual Display

  • Mirror: Both screens have same content, identical refresh rate and resolution.
  • Clone: Both screens have same content but refresh rates and resolutions can be different.
  • Horizontal: Both screens can have different content, refresh rates and resolution. Screen 1 is left or right of Screen2.
  • Vertical: Same as horizontal. The only difference is that Screen1 is above or below Screen2.

In this post, we are interested in Horizontal setup with xinerama on. This way we can have two desktops allowing full screen modes on both of them and allowing us to drag and drop windows from one screen to the other.

Install ATI Drivers

If you don’t have ATI drivers installed already, follow this How To: Install ATI Catalyst (fglrx) Drivers on Fedora 11 (works for any version of ATI Catalyst drivers).

Generate xorg.conf file

If you don’t see the xorg.conf file at /etc/X11/xorg.conf, then you need to generate it to proceed to next step. Use the following command as root to generate one

[root@fedora ~]$ Xorg -configure

This command will generate the default xorg.conf file at /root/xorg.conf.new. Copy it to /etc/X11/xorg.conf.

[root@fedora ~]$ cp /root/xorg.conf.new /etc/X11/xorg.conf

Backup xorg.conf file

Backup your original xorg.conf file so that you can restore it in case the configuration doesn’t work the way you expected.

[root@fedora ~]$ cp /etc/X11/xorg.conf /etc/X11/xorg.conf.backup

Generate Configuration for Dual Display

Now we are ready to generate the configuration for dual display. Use the following command with appropriate arguments (in accordance with your hardware configuration)

# --screen-layout will place second screen on left of your first screen. Other possible values are right,above,below.
# --xinerama=on option enables you to have two different desktops and one of them being passive.
# You can drag and drop windows from one desktop to the other. Task bars appear only on one of the desktops.
[root@fedora ~]$ aticonfig --initial=dual-head --screen-layout=left --xinerama=on
# --resolution=_screen_number_,widthxheight
[root@fedora ~]$ aticonfig --resolution=0,1440x900 --resolution=1,1280x1024
# Set horizontal sync and vertical refresh rates for both monitors.
[root@fedora ~]$ aticonfig --hsync=0,30-60 --hsync=1,30-60 --vrefresh=0,30-60 --vrefresh=1,30-60

You can download my xorg.conf file via this link.

Reboot or Logout and Login Again

If you just setup your ATI drivers and configured the dual display, you need to reboot so that fglrx module can be loaded properly. If you rebooted after setting up the drivers, just logout and login again to checkout your dual display 🙂 If everything works fine, say thanks to me and if not blame ATI 😛

Adjust DPI for Normal Font Size

I faced a problem with my font sizes being too big while using xinerama. It was easy to fix by adjusting DPI. Go to System -> Preferences -> Appearance. Go to Fonts tab. Click Details located near the bottom right corner. On that window, try descreasing the “Dots Per Inch” value. Mine worked fine with 85 DPI.

Below is an image of my dual display setup. Click to enlarge.

Dual Display Configuration ViewSonic Samsung Using ATI Radeon Catalyst (fglrx)

 

News: ATI Catalyst Display Drivers 9.9 Released

AMD has released the next version 9.9 of its ATI Catalyst display drivers for Linux. The drivers can be download from ATI Catalyst™ 9.9 Proprietary Linux x86 Display Driver Page. I have already tried them with kernel 2.6.29.6-217.2.8.fc11.i586 and they seem to work fine without SWCursor hack. But I still see corruptions around cursor while moving cursor in a playing video or in Compiz. BTW I got dual display working with Xinerama turned on with this version. I’ll post a HowTo about the same very soon. I think it’ll take some more time before the drivers are completely stable. AMD has been doing a really good job in rolling out drivers at regular intervals.

Note : The installation process is same as version 9.8 and can be access at How To: Install ATI Catalyst (fglrx) 9.8 Drivers on Fedora 11.