Radeon HD 6450 installation

[rwschneider1]

Hello all,

I'm to install a Radeon HD 6450 graphics card in an HP Proliant ML150 G5. I've been at this for upwards of 6 hours and have read through 1-2 dozen forum posts, articles, and so forth that Google has turned up, so please be patient if I seem a bit confused. :)

Short back-story and current status:
I've tried installing this video card with a few different drivers; currently I'm attempting to use the AMD proprietary driver. I've downloaded the latest release, which was posted today. After getting a handful of dependencies, I was able to successfully run the installer (amd-driver-installer-catalyst-12.10-x86.x86_64.run).

With my current configuration (posted below), the X server still starts outputting to the onboard graphics card. It locks up when it reaches the Ubuntu logo, just before it should drop into a graphical login prompt. If I remove the xorg.conf file, it will run (very slowly) through the onboard VGA display adapter.

As you might know the card has dual outputs. I started out hoping to have a dual monitor setup, one running on the HDMI output, and one running on the VGA output. At this point, I would be more than happy to have a single monitor running on the VGA output for starters.

Please let me know if there is any way I can make it easier for you to help me.

Thank you,
-Rick



Information about my rig:

root@hackbox:~# uname -a
Linux hackbox 3.5.0-17-generic #28-Ubuntu SMP Tue Oct 9 19:31:23 UTC 2012 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

root@hackbox:~# lspci | grep 05
00:05.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 5100 Chipset PCI Express x4 Port 5 (rev 80)
05:00.0 VGA compatible controller: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] nee ATI Caicos [Radeon HD 6450]
05:00.1 Audio device: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] nee ATI Caicos HDMI Audio [Radeon HD 6400 Series]

root@hackbox:~# lshw -c video
  *-display
       description: VGA compatible controller
       product: Caicos [Radeon HD 6450]
       vendor: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] nee ATI
       physical id: 0
       bus info: pci@0000:05:00.0
       version: 00
       width: 64 bits
       clock: 33MHz
       capabilities: pm pciexpress msi vga_controller bus_master cap_list rom
       configuration: driver=fglrx_pci latency=0
       resources: iomemory:f0-ef irq:52 memory:fe0000000-fefffffff memory:faec0000-faedffff ioport:e000(size=256) memory:faea0000-faebffff
  *-display UNCLAIMED
       description: VGA compatible controller
       product: MGA G200e [Pilot] ServerEngines (SEP1)
       vendor: Matrox Electronics Systems Ltd.
       physical id: 0
       bus info: pci@0000:0a:00.0
       version: 02
       width: 32 bits
       clock: 33MHz
       capabilities: pm pciexpress msi vga_controller bus_master cap_list
       configuration: latency=0
       resources: memory:f9000000-f9ffffff memory:fbffc000-fbffffff memory:fb000000-fb7fffff memory:fbfe0000-fbfeffff

root@hackbox:~# fglrxinfo
Error: unable to open display (null)

root@hackbox:~# lsmod | grep fglrx
fglrx                4715211  10

Here are the (hopefully) relevant config files that you may ask for, with some supplementing information:

root@hackbox:~# cat /etc/modprobe.d/fglrx.conf
# This file was installed by fglrx-updates
# Do not edit this file manually

blacklist radeon
alias fglrx fglrx_updates
alias radeon off
alias lbm-radeon off

root@hackbox:~# lsmod | grep -i radeon
root@hackbox:~#

root@hackbox:~# rm /etc/X11/xorg.conf
root@hackbox:~# aticonfig --initial --nobackup --force
Uninitialised file found, configuring.
Using /etc/X11/xorg.conf
root@hackbox:~# cat /etc/X11/xorg.conf
Section "ServerLayout"
        Identifier     "aticonfig Layout"
        Screen      0  "aticonfig-Screen[0]-0" 0 0
EndSection

Section "Module"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
        Identifier   "aticonfig-Monitor[0]-0"
        Option      "VendorName" "ATI Proprietary Driver"
        Option      "ModelName" "Generic Autodetecting Monitor"
        Option      "DPMS" "true"
EndSection

Section "Device"
        Identifier  "aticonfig-Device[0]-0"
        Driver      "fglrx"
        BusID       "PCI:5:0:0"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
        Identifier "aticonfig-Screen[0]-0"
        Device     "aticonfig-Device[0]-0"
        Monitor    "aticonfig-Monitor[0]-0"
        DefaultDepth     24
        SubSection "Display"
                Viewport   0 0
                Depth     24
        EndSubSection
EndSection

Due to their ungodly length, I have attached the contents of dmesg and Xorg.0.log in a zip file. If you would prefer that I post them in the thread, please let me know and I will gladly do so.

[rwschneider1]

All-

After some more googling, I've discovered that there is an issue with the ML150 G5s. It appears that it does not support 64-bit GPUs due to the way that HP decided to construct their memory mapping.

This thread explains pretty clearly what is happening to my system, if anyone is curious. Looks like I'll have to figure something else out, or buy different hardware.

Thank you for your time.
-Rick