ATI Radeon HD 4200 Issues

[ovid9]

Ok, I've done it now. In attempting to install drivers for my ATI Radeon HD 4200 gpu on my GIGABYTE GA-MA785G-UD3H motherboard, I've now gotten Hardy to only boot in low graphics mode. I'm farther behind than I was prior to attempting to use the GPU.

So, I went here http://support.amd.com/us/gpudownload/linux/Pages/radeon_linux.aspx?type=2.4.1&product=2.4.1.3.1&lan g=English and followed the instructions to install.

I rebooted, checked my hardware drivers, it wasn't enabled yet, so I enabled it, rebooted and ran into "low graphics mode" or choose my setup. I tried to choose my setup, to no success.

Any suggestions? I'd like to get the drivers installed, but heck, if I can't get them to work, how do I make them go away?

What do you helpful folks need to know?

[ovid9]

Ok, well, I used EnvyNG to get my normal screen back. BUT, I'd still like to know how to config my computer to use the ATI drivers for my GPU. Since, currently I can't use compiz and any 3d game looks like utter and complete crap.

Any suggestions?

[ovid9]

Still no luck actually "using" the drivers that are installed. Any help? I've poked around some more and it seems I did things correctly, but apparently I haven't

[nishant.singh28]

I have an HD 4570 mobility Radeon. I downloaded the driver ati******.run from the ATI site and typed in Terminal:
sudo sh <path to driver>/ati*****.run
Then Reboot.

[ovid9]

Thanks, I'll give that a shot. Can't do any worse than I'm already doing!

[adam814]

Enabling fglrx in the Hardware/Drivers wizard uses the version shipped with Ubuntu. Since you're using Hardy I imagine the included version is from early 2008 before the HD 4200 was supported by the drivers. If I recall from when I used Hardy fglrx at the time didn't support direct rendering (3D support) and compositing (Compiz) at the same time. The newer drivers should.

You should be able to run the .run file from the AMD site to get it working though. You might need to uninstall the xorg-driver-fglrx package(s) through Synaptic first just to be sure.

[ovid9]

You should be able to run the .run file from the AMD site to get it working though. You might need to uninstall the xorg-driver-fglrx package(s) through Synaptic first just to be sure.

I believe I did that, since it did say on the AMD site that you should have all the other drivers uninstalled. I'll double-check though.

What might be causing it to not recognize the newer drivers on startup though?

edit: Also, thanks for the info. I really just need to get around to making /home its own partition and upgrade to 9.04 or 9.10 but I'm finally getting 8.04 mostly how I like it. lol

[adam814]

Maybe you're specifying the wrong driver in /etc/X11/xorg.conf? Post the output from this:

grep Driver /etc/X11/xorg.conf

If it's not fglrx it should be to use ATI binary drivers. If it's ati or radeon or radeonhd it won't work as the ATI binaries overwrite parts of the mesa libraries i believe.

[ovid9]

Maybe you're specifying the wrong driver in /etc/X11/xorg.conf? Post the output from this:

If it's not fglrx it should be to use ATI binary drivers. If it's ati or radeon or radeonhd it won't work as the ATI binaries overwrite parts of the mesa libraries i believe.

Here it is!

Driver "kbd"
Driver "mouse"
Option "VendorName" "ATI Proprietary Driver"
Driver "vesa"

[adam814]

Edit the file and change the line that reads Driver "vesa" to read Driver "fglrx"

That will use the ATI driver if you have it installed.