Fedora10 and Radeon RV250 [Mobility FireGL 9000]

[reis3k]

Hello,
I'm a newbie and installed F10, but all the gui is moving slowy, and its disturbing level is getting high on Firefox 3. I've tried to figured out this problem through Ubuntu Forums, but the solution didn't work on Fedora.

My laptop is Dell Latitude D600, I got below info through "lspci -v" :

01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc Radeon RV250 [Mobility FireGL 9000] (rev 02) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
Subsystem: Dell Device 011d
Flags: bus master, VGA palette snoop, stepping, 66MHz, medium devsel, latency 32, IRQ 11
Memory at e8000000 (32-bit, prefetchable) [size=128M]
I/O ports at c000 [size=256]
Memory at fcff0000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=64K]
[virtual] Expansion ROM at fc000000 [disabled] [size=128K]
Capabilities: <access denied>
Kernel modules: radeon, radeonfb

I think Ati doesn't support Ati Radeon Mobility 9000 any more, and I couldn't apply the solution written at http://wiki.x.org/wiki/radeon. Could you please suggest a solution to this newbie. I can also open to another linux distribution suggestion (excluding ubuntu) if it will work smoothly. Thanks.

[johngflower]

Same problem as original poster. Any solutions?

[reis3k]

Yeah I found, just install openSuse 11.x :)

[Deonis]

did you check here ???? http://support.amd.com/us/gpudownload/Pages/index.aspx

[johngflower]

there, the oldest model they support is the Mobility 9600. We've got the 9000 model. Unless I can use this driver anyway?

[Hoyt]

Hello fellow users of (outdated) ATI hardware,
My principal computer uses the following AGP display card:

RV280 Radeon 9200PRO/9200/9200SE, M9+ Gigabyte, TW

For Fedora 10 (32) I have the following loaded

xorg-x11-drv-ati-6.10.0-2.fc10.i386
mesa-libGL-devel-7.2-0.15.fc10.i386
mesa-demos-7.2-0.15.fc10.i386
mesa-dri-drivers-7.2-0.15.fc10.i386
mesa-libGL-7.2-0.15.fc10.i386
mesa-libGLU-7.2-0.15.fc10.i386
mesa-libGLU-devel-7.2-0.15.fc10.i386

I downloaded "system-config-display" and generated an xorg.conf that I tweaked:


# Xorg configuration created by system-config-display + tweaks

Section "ServerLayout"
Identifier "single head configuration"
Screen 0 "Screen0" 0 0
InputDevice "Keyboard0" "CoreKeyboard"
Option "AIGLX" "true"
EndSection

Section "Module"
Load "dri"
Load "extmod"
Load "dbe"
Load "glx"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"

# keyboard added by rhpxl
Identifier "Keyboard0"
Driver "kbd"
Option "XkbModel" "pc105+inet"
Option "XkbLayout" "us"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
Identifier "Monitor0"
ModelName "ViewSonic A70"
HorizSync 30.0 - 70.0
VertRefresh 50.0 - 180.0
Option "dpms"
EndSection

Section "Device"
Identifier "Videocard0"
Driver "radeon"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
Identifier "Screen0"
Device "Videocard0"
Monitor "Monitor0"
DefaultDepth 24
SubSection "Display"
Viewport 0 0
Depth 24
EndSubSection
EndSection

Section "DRI"
Mode 0666
EndSection

Section "Extensions"
Option "Composite" "Enable"
EndSection


This seems to provide adequate performance with Google Earth,
glxgears (frame rate ~741/sec), and Firefox 3.x.

I think it is about the best that can be done.

[maxwax]

[B]Hello,
I'm a newbie and installed F10, but all the gui is moving slowy,

[INDENT]01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc Radeon RV250 [Mobility FireGL 9000] (rev 02) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])


Just upgraded from Fedora 9 to Fedora 10 on an Hp ZT3000 laptop with a radeon 9000 card.

The problem seems to be the default settings that the radeon driver is using. It forces a tremendous amount of load onto the CPU and doesn't seem to use the acceleration available from the graphics hardware. You can observe this by running a program that is visually demanding like evolution trying to load a web page or amule on its "Transfers" download screen. The app will function but the CPU gauge on any system monitor will be 100%. Also, 'top' will show Xorg as the CPU hog.

The solution, as provided by someone else in 2008 on this forum, was fairly simple:

1) Login to a console screen as root and run a new Xorg instance with a command similar to this:

# Xorg -configure :2

This will run a second instance of Xorg and cause it to generate an xorg.conf.new configuration file in the root home directory (/root)

2) Edit the configuration file and change this line:

Option "AccelMethod" # <str>
to
Option "AccelMethod" "XAA" # <str>

This tells the Xorg display system to use an older accelleration method that works well with the older radeon cards.

3) Copy the configuration file from /root to /etc/X11

# cp /root/xorg.conf.new /etc/X11/xorg.conf

note you're removing the .new suffix from the end.

4) Shutdown X by logging out

5) Log back in and test the performance.

This worked for me and I thank the others who post resolutions like this -- I had fears that Fedora 10 would be unusable for me because of this issue, but its completely fine now..

Hope this helps,

Maxwell Spangler
Research Triangle Park, NC

[reis3k]

Again if you install openSuse, remove the lines starting with "virtual" in the xorg.config, that's the only thing that I've done with it and have a good 3D acceleration. Of course, I don't play games and didn't enable desktop effects (KDE 4.x). The drivers coimg with openSuse is mesa. There is also 1click installation for Ati drivers, but I failed on that.

[johngflower]

Thank you for the help. I'll try them out in the weekend - the laptop is now at my mum-in-law's.