Catalyst – Tech Stuff

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

Kulbir Saini — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 22:33:15 +0000

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

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

Kulbir Saini — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 02:45:47 +0000

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.

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

Kulbir Saini — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 10:57:32 +0000

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

News : ATI Catalyst Graphics Drivers 9.11 Released

Kulbir Saini — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 12:14:35 +0000

Looks like AMD was waiting for Fedora 12 : Constantine release. AMD has released the next version 9.11 of ATI Catalyst Display Drivers. The drivers can be download from ATI Catalyst 9.9 Proprietary Linux x86 Display Driver Page. I have downloaded and tested them already on my machine with ATI Radeon HD 3200 (onboard) card with kernel 2.6.29.6-217.2.8.fc11.i586. This version is supposed to work with 2.6.30+ kernels as even 9.10 was working. So, if you have already installed Fedora 12, don’t waste time. Test the drivers and let us know

Note1 : Installation Process : How To: Install ATI Catalyst (fglrx) 9.8 Drivers on Fedora 11.
Note2 : Dual Display Configuration : How To: Configure Dual Display with ATI Radeon (fglrx).

News : ATI Drivers 9.10 Working with 2.6.30+ Kernels

Kulbir Saini — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 22:07:55 +0000

AMD released the next version 9.10 of its ATI Catalyst display drivers for Linux nearly a fortnight ago. The drivers can be download from ATI Catalyst 9.9 Proprietary Linux x86 Display Driver Page. The good thing about this version is that a lot of people are reporting that they can get it working on 2.6.30+ kernels. These drivers are lifesaver for people want to keep everything upto date. The corruption around cursor is still present while watching videos or with compiz enabled.

Note1 : 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.
Note2 : If you want to configure dual display follow How To: Configure Dual Display with ATI Radeon (fglrx).

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News: ATI Catalyst Display Drivers 9.9 Released

Kulbir Saini — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 06:27:30 +0000

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.

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How To: Install ATI Catalyst (fglrx) Drivers

Kulbir Saini — Sat, 22 Aug 2009 16:01:37 +0000

Note: This How To is valid up to Catalyst Driver version 10.1.
Note: With minor changes this How To may work for other Linux distributions like Mandriva, Suse, Ubuntu, Red Hat, Cent OS etc.

Following the suggestions in comments on my last post about ATI Catalyst (fglrx), I tried to reinstall ATI drivers version 9.8 and finally it worked. I thought of noting down the the process in few simple steps which anyone can follow and get the drivers working on Fedora 11 with latest kernel versions.

Step 1 : Update Kernel, Install kernel-devel

Huge thanks to Richard Lloyd and mxyzptlk2063 for pointing this out.
This step is not necessary. You may like to stick to the kernel version you already have. In case you want the latest kernel, just use yum to get the latest kernel.

Note: Do not forget to update the kernel-devel package as well as its needed to compile the fglrx kernel module.

DONT UPDATE THE KERNEL. Instead stick to whatever kernel version you have. If you have 2.6.30.*, you are unlucky Get a kernel version 2.6.29.* and install the kernel-devel for the same.

With Catalyst Driver version 9.10 you can update kernel to latest version before installing the Drivers.

[root@fedora ~]$ yum update kernel
[root@fedora ~]$ yum install kernel-devel

Step 2 : Download Drivers

Download the ATI Catalyst 9.8 Proprietary Linux x86 Display Driver from ATI/AMD website.

Step 3 : Install Drivers

Install the drivers that you have downloaded using the following command.

[root@fedora ~]$ bash ./ati-driver-installer-9-8-x86.x86_64.run

Step 4 : Check Installation Result

Check the /usr/share/ati/fglrx-install.log file for result of installation. If there are no errors, proceed to the next step.

Note: You may see lines like this at the end of file

You must change your working directory to /lib/modules/fglrx
and then call ./make_install.sh in order to install the built module.
– recreating module dependency list
– trying a sample load of the kernel modules
done.

You can ignore these lines happily if they don’t contain any error message. You don’t really need to execute the command mentioned in those lines.

Step 5 : Blacklist radeon and radeonhd kernel modules

Add these lines to /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf.

blacklist radeon
blacklist radeonhd

Step 6 : Generate initial Xorg configuration file

Note: This step is optional with Catalyst Driver version 9.10, but it wont harm even if you execute this.

You have to generate the initial xorg.conf file which will use fglrx as display device.

[root@fedora ~]$ aticonfig --initial

Step 7 : Modify xorg.conf

Open your /etc/X11/xorg.conf file and add the following line to “Device” section (the one with fglrx as driver)

Option "SWCursor" "true"

Step 8 : Reboot

Reboot your machine. And you’ll have the latest ATI Catalyst drivers working on your Fedora 11

Step 9 : Testing

You can test your newly installed drivers and get the performance benchmarks for your graphics card using the commands below.

[saini@fedora ~]$ glxgears
[saini@fedora ~]$ fgl_glxgears

My graphics card is ATI Radeon HD 3200 (256MB, Onboard) and I get 1500FPS with glxgears and 300FPS with fgl_glxgears.

In case you messup things somewhere, you can uninstall the fglrx drivers using the following command

[root@fedora ~]$ /usr/share/ati/fglrx-uninstall.sh

Info: ATI Drivers 9.8 Doesnt Work with Fedora 11 (2.6.29+)

Kulbir Saini — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 02:04:27 +0000

After a night out I was about to go to bed when I saw the news that ATI has released a new version of ATI Catalyst 9.8 Proprietary Linux x86 Display Driver, its proprietary display drivers for Linux. I immediately downloaded the drivers to test with my Fedora 11 as I am getting more and more desperate to watch HD Movies Installed them on a manually compiled kernel 2.6.27 and the build failed Installed the latest kernel version (for fedora 11) 2.6.29.6.xxx and build failed yet another time. Switched back to 2.6.27 and tried to build again. This time build was successful. Everything worked as expected. I was getting 1500FPS with glxgears and 300FPS with fgl_glxgears. But after sometime display hanged inturn freezing the system. Hard reboot was the only solution and then this happened for a few times in a row. Now, I am back to radeonhd, waiting for yet another release of ATI drivers so that I can try them yet another time to see yet another failure

Update : Drivers are working now. Move on to How To: Install ATI Catalyst (fglrx) 9.8 Drivers on Fedora 11.

Info: ATI Drivers 9.7 does not work in Fedora 11 (2.6.29+)

Kulbir Saini — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 15:09:55 +0000

Yesterday, AMD released ATI Catalyst 9.7 Proprietary Linux x86/x86_64 Display Drivers. I happened to checkout the website today. Initially I was very excited about it hoping that these drivers will work with 2.6.29+ and I’ll be able to use my ATI Radeon HD 3200 which is lying dead since a fortnight or so. I downloaded the drivers immediately and switched to Fedora 11 default kernel. Installed the drivers and checked the install log located at /usr/share/ati/fglrx-install.log. And I saw a failure. AMD disappointed me, yet another time

In case you happen to screw your graphics display while trying to install ATI drivers, use the following command to uninstall fglrx.

[root@fedora ~]$ /usr/share/ati/fglrx-uninstall.sh

Well, I am back to square one. Have to wait for another month and I hope next release will have support for kernel 2.6.29+.

Update : Drivers are working now. Move on to How To: Install ATI Catalyst (fglrx) 9.8 Drivers on Fedora 11.