Ati mobility radeon 7500 3D in linux/Ubuntu

[deviant03]

Ive gotten really comfortable using Ubuntu the last few months but because of the lack of 3D support for the radeon 7500 I decided to switch back to Win XP. The only thing keeping me from solely using Ubuntu is being able to run MOHAA. I was wondering if anyone had any info regarding future support for this specific card under linux/Ubuntu. Or if there is a debian based distro that has full 3d support for this gfx card.

[23meg]

fglrx doesn't support this card, so it seems your best bet is to use the DRI drivers. i haven't had any luck with them so far; i'll give them another go once i'm able to completely back up my system. see this thread (http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=26148) for more info.

what fps do you get with glxgears?

[deviant03]

Look here (http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=30498). I think I am using the DRI drivers (?) but only get about 820fps in glxgears :-|

[deviant03]

Copied from Anandtech, I started the same thread there

I added a few lines to my xorg.conf:

Section "Device"
Identifier "ATI Technologies, Inc. Radeon Mobility 7500 M7 (RV200 LW)"
Driver "radeon"
BusID "PCI:1:0:0"
#newstuff
Option "RenderAccel" "true"
Option "AGPMode" "4"
Option "AGPFastWrite" "true"
Option "EnablePageFlip" "True"
EndSection

Changed the default depth to 16 under Section "Screen" and changed TCL mode in driconf to Software. My fps jumped from 600-800 to 1400+ in glxgears. At least Im on the right track. \\:D/

[23meg]

did you install the dri drivers using the .deb packages?

[deviant03]

Nope, all I did was add those lines under Device. Installed driconf and set the TCL mode. Yeah baby, Enemy Territory runs great :). Heres my xorg.conf if you are interested:


# /etc/X11/xorg.conf (xorg X Window System server configuration file)
#
# This file was generated by dexconf, the Debian X Configuration tool, using
# values from the debconf database.
#
# Edit this file with caution, and see the /etc/X11/xorg.conf manual page.
# (Type "man /etc/X11/xorg.conf" at the shell prompt.)
#
# This file is automatically updated on xserver-xorg package upgrades *only*
# if it has not been modified since the last upgrade of the xserver-xorg
# package.
#
# If you have edited this file but would like it to be automatically updated
# again, run the following commands:
#
# cp /etc/X11/xorg.conf /etc/X11/xorg.conf.custom
# sudo sh -c 'md5sum /etc/X11/xorg.conf >/var/lib/xfree86/xorg.conf.md5sum'
# sudo dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg

Section "Files"
FontPath "unix/:7100" # local font server
# if the local font server has problems, we can fall back on these
FontPath "/usr/lib/X11/fonts/misc"
FontPath "/usr/lib/X11/fonts/cyrillic"
FontPath "/usr/lib/X11/fonts/100dpi/:unscaled"
FontPath "/usr/lib/X11/fonts/75dpi/:unscaled"
FontPath "/usr/lib/X11/fonts/Type1"
FontPath "/usr/lib/X11/fonts/CID"
FontPath "/usr/lib/X11/fonts/100dpi"
FontPath "/usr/lib/X11/fonts/75dpi"
# paths to defoma fonts
FontPath "/var/lib/defoma/x-ttcidfont-conf.d/dirs/TrueType"
FontPath "/var/lib/defoma/x-ttcidfont-conf.d/dirs/CID"
EndSection

Section "Module"
Load "GLcore"
Load "bitmap"
Load "dbe"
Load "ddc"
Load "dri"
Load "extmod"
Load "freetype"
Load "glx"
Load "int10"
Load "record"
Load "speedo"
Load "type1"
Load "v4l"
Load "vbe"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Generic Keyboard"
Driver "keyboard"
Option "CoreKeyboard"
Option "XkbRules" "xorg"
Option "XkbModel" "pc104"
Option "XkbLayout" "us"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Configured Mouse"
Driver "mouse"
Option "CorePointer"
Option "Device" "/dev/input/mice"
Option "Protocol" "ImPS/2"
Option "Emulate3Buttons" "true"
Option "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
EndSection
Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Synaptics Touchpad"
Driver "synaptics"
Option "SendCoreEvents" "true"
Option "Device" "/dev/psaux"
Option "Protocol" "auto-dev"
Option "HorizScrollDelta" "0"
EndSection

Section "Device"
Identifier "ATI Technologies, Inc. Radeon Mobility 7500 M7 (RV200 LW)"
Driver "radeon"
BusID "PCI:1:0:0"
#newstuff
Option "RenderAccel" "true"
Option "AGPMode" "4"
Option "AGPFastWrite" "true"
Option "EnablePageFlip" "True"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
Identifier "Generic Monitor"
Option "DPMS"
HorizSync 28-49
VertRefresh 43-72
EndSection

Section "Screen"
Identifier "Default Screen"
Device "ATI Technologies, Inc. Radeon Mobility 7500 M7 (RV200 LW)"
Monitor "Generic Monitor"
DefaultDepth 16
SubSection "Display"
Depth 1
Modes "1024x768"
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Depth 4
Modes "1024x768"
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Depth 8
Modes "1024x768"
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Depth 15
Modes "1024x768"
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Depth 16
Modes "1024x768"
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Depth 24
Modes "1024x768"
EndSubSection
EndSection

Section "ServerLayout"
Identifier "Default Layout"
Screen "Default Screen"
InputDevice "Generic Keyboard"
InputDevice "Configured Mouse"
InputDevice "Synaptics Touchpad"
EndSection

Section "DRI"
Mode 0666
EndSection

[23meg]

oh, but without actually installing the dri package how are you running the "radeon" dri driver? i guess i'm missing something.

[deviant03]

I installed a fresh version of Warty then upgraded to Hoary. Load "dri" was already under modules so all I did was change the Driver "ati" to "radeon"(copying someone elses config from another thread).

[NeoChaosX]

Uh, I installed Driconf and set the TCL mode to software, but it caused problem a in TuxRacer - Tux has this permanent white shadow on him all the time! Turning TCL back to default fixed it for now.

[Mr Frosti]

I have been following this thread and all the links in it for a little while trying to setup the Radeon 7500 in my laptop to have direct rendering (hardware acceleration) for a while now. Running the command "glxgears" gave me about 230 - 250 FPS. I was able to tremendously increase this number. I just wanted to share what actually worked for me:

I downloaded the latest Radeon "snapshot" from http://dri.freedesktop.org/snapshots/. I extracted this using the command "tar jxf radeon###"

I then went to where I saved this file and typed "cd dripkg", then typed "sudo ./install.sh" in a terminal.

It walked me through installing the snapshot. I just used all of the defaults and hit enter until it told me it was finished. Then I edited the corresponding parts of my /etc/X11/xorg.conf file to look like this:


Section "Module"
Load "GLcore"
Load "bitmap"
Load "dbe"
Load "ddc"
Load "dri"
SubSection "extmod"
Option "omit xfree86-dga"
EndSubSection
Load "extmod"
Load "freetype"
Load "glx"
Load "int10"
Load "record"
Load "type1"
Load "v4l"
Load "vbe"
Load "radeon"
Load "xtrap"
Load "drm"
EndSection

and for my device I have this:


Section "Device"
Identifier "ATI Technologies, Inc. Radeon Mobility 7500 (M7 LW)"
Driver "radeon"
BusID "PCI:1:0:0"
Option "RenderAccel" "true"
Option "AGPMode" "4"
Option "AGPFastWrite" "true"
Option "EnablePageFlip" "True"
Option "UseInternalAGPGART" "no"
Option "backingstore" "true"
Option "AllowGLXWithComposite" "true"
EndSection

I restarted the X server by pressing Ctl+Alt+Backspace, and then when it restarted, I now have 1300+ FPS in glxgears.

Please note that this is ALL I did for a working system. I did not install the Debian DRI packages, or the source DRI packages. I hope that it was really that easy. Good luck!

[BoyOfDestiny]

To the confused fellow

http://www.x.org/X11R6.8.2/doc/radeon.4.html

radeon is the name of the open source driver. fglrx is the closed source binary driver. The next xorg will have "beta" support for r300 cards I hope. I'm not sure who names these things :)

[23meg]

my xorg setup was identical to frosti's except the "AllowGLXWithComposite" line and the "extmod" subsection and i was getting 1100 - 1300 fps in glxgears. now that i've added them it's gone down to 900 - 1100. actual game performance doesn't seem to be suffering though; Cube is still running ultra-smooth at 1400x1050.

however, i've experienced unbearably slow performance with some other 3d games such as Flightgear (and some more, whose names i can't remember now). on the exact same setup where Cube does 30-something fps at 1400x1050, Flightgear does 5 to 10 fps at 800x600. any ideas about the reason behind this?

[BobRyan]

I just recently updated the DRI package on my laptop to a 3-22-06 snapshot and I've seen framerates in the 2000 range from my system. I'm curious if everyone else has seen a big increase lately? My laptop is an inspiron 5100, p4-2.4, 512mb, 40gb, 7500 mobile. Quake 3 runs at relatively high settings at very playable framerates (I'm pretty sure they are higher than when I ran winxp a couple years ago).

[tobey]

Glxgears returns nothing here... Quite annoying as I cant see if changes I make have any impact at all...

is there something wrong with glxgears?

[Lomotron]

Glxgears returns nothing here... Quite annoying as I cant see if changes I make have any impact at all... ..is there something wrong with glxgears?

Yes, they have changed the behavior:
glxgears -iacknowlegethatthistoolisnotabenchmark
or simply
glxgears -printfps

will do the trick.

[BobRyan]

Hi, I've documented my experience getting the radeon 7500 in my laptop to give me about 2000fps in glxgears, up from around 220 before. http://www.8cylinder.org/i5100/ it's near the bottom

[br0adband]

Just thought I'd share my experience with Xubuntu and getting these DRI ATI drivers working.

I installed Xubuntu a few days ago and I'm happy to say it's running ok for now, still needs considerable tweaking but I'm getting there.

I'd wondered about the 3D acceleration for the Mobility Radeon 7500 (16MB) that I have in this Dell Inspiron 4150 laptop I'm using. xorg.conf has it listed like this, funny as it sounds:


Identifier "ATI Technologies, Inc. Radeon Mobility M7 LW [Radeon Mobility 9000]"

Not sure why it sees it as a 9000 but who knows.

So anyway, I do tons of searches here at the Ubuntu forums, the Rage3D forums, Google, etc etc... it gets boring sometimes and it's one primary reason Linux will simply never be as widespread as Windows - it's just too complicated for the average and even below-average user; hell, even diehard computer users get sick of stuff just not working without a great deal of effort.

For myself, I assumed (always a problem) that on this laptop manufactured in 2001 everything would be well supported by now in any modern and current Linux distro.

Boy I couldn't have been farther from the truth if I tried.

But anyway, I did find this thread about an hour ago, spent time reading it several times, hit the DRI page, grabbed the latest "radeon" snapshot there (from April 3rd, 2006) and gave it a whirl.

Suffice to say, knowing how to shut down the damned X server so you can actually install a video driver is a very good thing to know - but I didn't, and now I do. Xubuntu and most distros have that annoying habit of firing the X server right back up as soon as you Control+Alt+Backspace it to kill it. I found a tidbit with Google about changing the run mode to init 1 and that took care of it, followed by init 5 to bring it back up.

The install went off without a hitch, and upon re-running glxgears it went from an average of 650-ish to 950-ish, still not where some other people were reporting. I have a Pentium 4-Mobile (not a Pentium-M) 1.7 GHz so I'm trying to eek out every last drop of performance I can.

I fired up driconf and set it for HyperZ and the hardware TCL; it seems weird that software would be faster than hardware in that respect, but whatever.

Re-ran glxgears and it jumped to the 1600+ range. Good job, I thought, but then I remembered seeing BobRyan's comment about using the software TCL and so I redid the driconf with that option.

Current range is 1800+ so that's about as good as it's going to get I suppose. I use some of the "Device" settings from other posters so that my xorg.conf looks like this now:


Section "Device"
Identifier "ATI Technologies, Inc. Radeon Mobility M7 LW [Radeon Mobility 9000]"
Driver "radeon"
BusID "PCI:1:0:0"
Option "RenderAccel" "true"
Option "AGPMode" "4"
Option "AGPFastWrite" "true"
Option "EnablePageFlip" "True"
Option "UseInternalAGPGART" "no"
Option "backingstore" "true"
Option "AllowGLXWithComposite" "true"
EndSection

I doubt that I'll be able to get anything more from this setup presently, but if anyone can make any suggestions to get a few more bumps in the fps, don't hesitate to post here with the info.

Thanks to all who shared there knowledge and experiences, it helped me tremendously. Now I just have to get Quake 3 installed to see how well this Xubuntu thing can perform. :)

Have fun, always...
bb

UPDATE
HOLY CRAP BATMAN!!!

Just for kicks I decided to change the default color depth in xorg.conf from 24 to 16; let's face it, 16 bit is fine for most and color-banding isn't that bad most of the time. Besides, for sheer performances, it's faster than 24 bit will ever be.

Here are the results of just that one change:

11742 frames in 5.0 seconds = 2348.259 FPS

!!!!!!!! Wow. I'm satisfied now, most definitely. If you haven't tried it at 16 bit, go for it. I always play Q3 at 16 bit anyway, 32 bit... bleh :D

[linuxfanatic1024]

Use the included "ati" driver in Xorg. I get excellent 3D on my ATI Mobility Radeon 7000. DO NOT try fglrx. There is such a tendency to try that first... ugh... I hate proprietary drivers. ;)

[linuxfanatic1024]

UPDATE
HOLY CRAP BATMAN!!!

Just for kicks I decided to change the default color depth in xorg.conf from 24 to 16; let's face it, 16 bit is fine for most and color-banding isn't that bad most of the time. Besides, for sheer performances, it's faster than 24 bit will ever be.

Here are the results of just that one change:

11742 frames in 5.0 seconds = 2348.259 FPS

!!!!!!!! Wow. I'm satisfied now, most definitely. If you haven't tried it at 16 bit, go for it. I always play Q3 at 16 bit anyway, 32 bit... bleh :D
I usually run 16-bit too, but mostly because some games require it. It is faster than 24-bit, and it isn't that bad anyway.

[yioan]

Thanks all of you for your infromation!!!
By combining the aforesaid I got 2100 fps (from 300 fps). Just a note. I have not installed anything extra. dri was preinstalled. I just changed the configurations via the driconf tool and I inserted some lines under the ATI device.

[mmatt]

Actually, I noticed a massive performance drop in some apps at depth 16 (admittedly not glxgears, which improved by about 500 fps). Neverwinter Nights, for example, became almost unplayable. Other SDL apps also suffered. I guess the moral of the story is to test with many different apps and not depend on glxgears numbers!

Matt

[Coolbreeze...]

Well this post seems to be what I have been searching for for 2 days...I followed the steps in post #10 plus a few more for the newest Xorg (6.9 I believe). Any way all went well I hit CTRL-ALT-Backspace as he said and it went to a black screen with about 4-5 lines of text saying [OK] afterwards. Then it sat...I let it be for 4-5 mins and decided it was waiting for something(this may have been my mistake) anyway being a windows user I tried CTRL-ALT-DEL sure enough it said some stuff started to restart the it loaded to a command prompt (non-gui) Linux. I resterted again and it looks normal the loading bar went across a bit slow the it says


Starting Up...
Loading, please wait...
Kinit: name_to_dev_t(/dev/disk/by-uuid/4e9ae3bb-6b57-4135-babd-ccad41bbbe90) = sda5(8,5)
kinit: trying to resume from /dev/disk/by-uuid/4e9ae3bb-6b57-4135-babd-ccad41bbbe90
kinit: No resume image, doing normal boot...

Ubuntu 8.04.1 AJ-laptop tty1

AJ-laptop login:


That is my screen..please help I have 0 Idea what I did and what needs to be done. If you want I can post this somewhere else. Thanks!

[chewit]

Section "Device"
Identifier "ATI Technologies, Inc. Radeon Mobility 7500 (M7 LW)"
Driver "radeon"
BusID "PCI:1:0:0"
Option "RenderAccel" "true"
Option "AGPMode" "4"
Option "AGPFastWrite" "true"
Option "EnablePageFlip" "True"
Option "UseInternalAGPGART" "no"
Option "backingstore" "true"
Option "AllowGLXWithComposite" "true"
EndSection

I restarted the X server by pressing Ctl+Alt+Backspace, and then when it restarted, I now have 1300+ FPS in glxgears.

Please note that this is ALL I did for a working system. I did not install the Debian DRI packages, or the source DRI packages. I hope that it was really that easy. Good luck![/QUOTE]

I have a ATi Radeon 7000 (PCI), can these changes to Xorg be used with my PCI card, obv I can't use the AGP ones.

[4walters]

@CoolBreeze

Login via the CLI. Just type your username (hit enter) then enter your password when prompted. The Xorg.conf file has this text at the beginning:

# If you have edited this file but would like it to be automatically updated
# again, run the following commands:
#
# cp /etc/X11/xorg.conf /etc/X11/xorg.conf.custom
# sudo sh -c 'md5sum /etc/X11/xorg.conf >/var/lib/xfree86/xorg.conf.md5sum'
# sudo dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg

So let's give that a try except that you've altered the original /etc/X11/xorg.conf file so there shouldn't be a need to create a backup of it, but you can do so if you desire.

So type "sudo dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg" without the quotes, then enter your password when you're prompted. You should be golden. If that doesn't work, post the results along with a copy of the xorg.conf file generated and we'll go from there.

As a windows user making a transition to Linux I would suggest that you always read the man page before making major changes to your system configurations no matter what you read on the forums. No one will know your system better than you and its just a good practice to develop. You also might want to make a copy of your file before making changes to it, you can always delete it after you know you haven't borked your system. I hope this helps and good luck. BTW welcome to the Linux community.