Radeon 9500 Pro and DRI

[Frox]

Well, i bought a Radeon 9500 Pro last week, and like so many other users with the later 9000 series cards, I get no direct rendering.
I e-mailed ATI asking if they're planning on making drivers for XFree 4.3 anytime soon and they just told me that all they have is what is posted there. They also have "no information on upcoming driver releases other than what is available there."
I feel a bit cheated with this response, especially since i payed $300 (Canadian) for the card! One would think a company would have some sort of long term business plan whether to support a platform or not, especially since it seems that nvidia has decent Linux support. I hate being left hanging like this.
Has anyone successfully (as in without all these errors i keep hearing about) gotten their 9500/9700 card working with XFree 4.3?
As far as i've gotten is a library conflict with the version of X that came with Mandrake 9.1.
Oh, and reformatting and re-installing Linux didn't work for me (unlike DemosthenesB). :p

Just another post to add to the "please ATI, better Linux support!" themed threads.

[mdwatts]

"Radeon 9500 Pro and DRI" would have been a bit more appropriate than "Grrr ATI'. I manually edited the subject.

Please review the JL Community Help Posting Guidelines. Thank-you

Also try searching the JL forums as ATI Radeon's have been discussed quite often.

[AlexPlank]

I have a Radeon 9500 pro nad XFREE 4.3 and I found some other drivers tat work flawlessly for me. It took me a while to figure out how to install the drivers though. I got drivers from another source... not ATI. DRI now works for me and frame rates are awesome. Just follow the README instructions included with the drivers from:
http://www.schneider-digital.de/html/download_ati.html

EDIT:
You will want:
glx1_linux_X4.3.zip

[Frox]

Sorry, i did look around the forum and none of the other threads really seemed to go anywhere as far as getting the card to actually work.
And the DRI project site says they only support up to the 9200s.
I will check out these other drivers when i get home tonight though. Can't complain if they do work. :)
Thanks!

[mdwatts]

They have drivers for the 9500 Pro at http://mirror.ati.com/support/driver.html

Would they help?

[Frox]

Those are for XFree 4.1 and 4.2. I'm running 4.3 by default in Mandrake 9.1. Trying to install those drivers results in library conflicts. The other threads also alluded to bizzare errors and crashes when forcing those to install on 4.3. Downgrading to XFree 4.2 would be a major hassle as all my software would have to be re-installed again. Unless there's some easy way to downgrade packages in Mandrake 9.1 that i don't know of.

I just saw another thread about ATI looking for a Linux programmer. At least they're making an effort for support.

[mdwatts]

Originally posted by Frox
Those are for XFree 4.1 and 4.2. I'm running 4.3 by default in Mandrake 9.1.

Sorry as I didn't know that. I neither have a ATI or use Mandrake. :o

[Frox]

Heh, no biggie :)
I'll try the drivers suggested by AlexPlank when i get home and post back with the results in case anyone else is wondering.

[mtbtreker]

While this doesn't help with the driver issue. It appears ATI is planning to provide better support for linux drivers. Found a link to it over on /.

http://jobsearch.monster.ca/getjob.asp?JobID=18431256&AVSDM=2003-07-09+08%3A15%3A00&CCD=my.monster.ca&JSD=jobsearch.monster.ca&HD=company.monster.ca&AD=http%3A%2F%2Fjobsearch.monster.ca%2Fjobsearch.a sp%3Fco%3Dxaticax%26ah%3Dhttp%253A%252F%252Fcompan y%252Emonster%252Eca%252Fatica%26aj%3DATI%2BTechno logies%252C%2BInc%252E&Logo=1&col=dltci&cy=&brd=1&lid=&fn=&q=

[AlexPlank]

I use mandrake 9.1 and the drivers worked for me.

[Frox]

Thank you AlexPlank!
I installed those drivers and now glxinfo says i have direct rendering, and my GL screensavers work fine now. I didn't get a chance to test drive it on any games yet, but here's hoping it'll work.
The only problem with it is that my monotor refresh rate (i think) is off, so a small amount of the edge is off the screen. I copied the modeline from the default Mandrake install, and it didn't help. Seems it's time to do some reading on XF86config.