# Radeon HD 6310 - Which driver should I use?

## DarkSpir

Okay, here we go. I want to buy a AMD Fusion E-350 based system that comes with an Radeon HD 6310 GPU. Basically I want to use it to watch movies on my TV but it doesn't hurt to play some cames just because you can do it.  :Wink: 

My friend was like "Hey, don't buy this shit. AMD sucks at everything, use Intel. And ATI linux drivers suck, too. Use Nvidia." And I answered: "First: I don't have much money, Intel and Nvidia are both way too expensive for what they are doing. I need to get the most bang out of my bucks."

But the last part was nagging me so I googled around leaving with more questions then answers. Google tells me, that there are three drivers to get the Radeon running (okay, four. I just ignore the VESA way  :Wink:  ):

radeon

radeonHD

Catalyst

The first two are open source (except some "load firmware blob into the GPU at boottime"-issues), the last one is not. So I googled about the quality and got the following statements:

radeonHD: It's old, don't use it. radeon is now better in speed and quality, use that one (Gentoo-Wiki)

radeon: It can do things radeonHD can't do and radeonHD can do things radeon can't. And both suck at 3D. If you want 3D you should take a look at the properitary Catalyst driver which is bad at almost everything but good at 3D (Xorg-Website)

Catalyst: It's a properitary blob and every properitary blob makes problems in your open source system no one's going to solve or help you with (Common Knowledge and my experience from running Gentoo on my systems since 2004).

So, what should I do? radeon and hoping for the best? radeonHD? Catalyst and pray to portage that no update will break my system?

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## pigeon768

Just use radeon. It's stable. It's easy. It works.

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## hedmo

DarkSpir wrote:

doesn't hurt to play some cames just because you can do it. 

i think you mean games.so It's easy.as far as i know only fglrx is the only drivers that you can play games with.

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## DaggyStyle

[quote="DarkSpir"

radeonHD: It's old, don't use it. radeon is now better in speed and quality, use that one (Gentoo-Wiki)

radeon: It can do things radeonHD can't do and radeonHD can do things radeon can't. And both suck at 3D. If you want 3D you should take a look at the properitary Catalyst driver which is bad at almost everything but good at 3D (Xorg-Website)

Catalyst: It's a properitary blob and every properitary blob makes problems in your open source system no one's going to solve or help you with (Common Knowledge and my experience from running Gentoo on my systems since 2004).

So, what should I do? radeon and hoping for the best? radeonHD? Catalyst and pray to portage that no update will break my system?[/quote]

refinement:

radeonHD: don't use it, it deprecated.

radeon: excellent 2d experience,  decent 3d experience. virtually no HD acceleration but it is been worked on (based on shaders, not hardware acceleration due to DRM issues). does all what radeonHD does are much more.

Catalyst: crappy 2d experience, excellent 3d experience, no HD acceleration. we don't know when and if we will have HD  acceleration (when there will be, it will be hardware acceleration)

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## DarkSpir

So I guess for just watching movies, good 2D performance is more important than good 3D performance.

Thanks, DaggyStyle, your answer was very helpful.

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## epsilon72

I'm thinking of getting an E-350 based system.  Is the 2D acceleration with fglrx any better than, say, the awful performance of the binary nvidia driver with an 8400m gs?

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## robak

ok, so one year passed by. any new experiences on E-350 based systems?

I'm planning to get one, too, for a media system, most movie and audio playback. Did anyone have problems with mplayer and h264 content with an E-350 system?

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## theotherjoe

I am running a Gentoo x86_64 installation on a Lenovo X121e with E-450 APU

since a couple of weeks. Though the sound system is nothing to write home about

the radeon driver is doing fine (using KMS, actually) and it looks quite efficient.

Mplayer (xvid and h264 content) is using XVideo output and is behaving properly,

generating mean load of about 0.2 in top if there is no other load on the machine.

Overall I am quite happy with the hardware; well, it is not supposed to be a 

development system anyway.

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## robak

thanks a lot theotherjoe

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## atoussaint

In my case, I also have an E-350 system but I can't get radeon kms to work. All I get at boot is a corrupted screen and yet, the gentoo 12.1 livedvd work fine using the same firmware. I also have EDID probing compiled in my kernel (matter of fact, everything is compiled in except for a few modules). What did you do to get radeon kms working?

Alain

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## theotherjoe

alain,

here is a snippet from my kernel config

for a machine w/ radeon graphics for comparison

```
#

# Graphics support

#

CONFIG_AGP=y

CONFIG_AGP_AMD64=y

# CONFIG_AGP_INTEL is not set

# CONFIG_AGP_SIS is not set

# CONFIG_AGP_VIA is not set

CONFIG_VGA_ARB=y

CONFIG_VGA_ARB_MAX_GPUS=2

# CONFIG_VGA_SWITCHEROO is not set

CONFIG_DRM=y

CONFIG_DRM_KMS_HELPER=y

# CONFIG_DRM_LOAD_EDID_FIRMWARE is not set

CONFIG_DRM_TTM=y

# CONFIG_DRM_TDFX is not set

# CONFIG_DRM_R128 is not set

CONFIG_DRM_RADEON=y

CONFIG_DRM_RADEON_KMS=y

# CONFIG_DRM_NOUVEAU is not set

#

# I2C encoder or helper chips

#

# CONFIG_DRM_I2C_CH7006 is not set

# CONFIG_DRM_I2C_SIL164 is not set

# CONFIG_DRM_MGA is not set

# CONFIG_DRM_SIS is not set

# CONFIG_DRM_VIA is not set

# CONFIG_DRM_SAVAGE is not set

# CONFIG_DRM_VMWGFX is not set

# CONFIG_DRM_GMA500 is not set

# CONFIG_DRM_UDL is not set

# CONFIG_STUB_POULSBO is not set

# CONFIG_VGASTATE is not set

# CONFIG_VIDEO_OUTPUT_CONTROL is not set

CONFIG_FB=y

CONFIG_FIRMWARE_EDID=y

CONFIG_FB_DDC=y

# CONFIG_FB_BOOT_VESA_SUPPORT is not set

CONFIG_FB_CFB_FILLRECT=y

CONFIG_FB_CFB_COPYAREA=y

CONFIG_FB_CFB_IMAGEBLIT=y

# CONFIG_FB_CFB_REV_PIXELS_IN_BYTE is not set

# CONFIG_FB_SYS_FILLRECT is not set

# CONFIG_FB_SYS_COPYAREA is not set

# CONFIG_FB_SYS_IMAGEBLIT is not set

# CONFIG_FB_FOREIGN_ENDIAN is not set

# CONFIG_FB_SYS_FOPS is not set

# CONFIG_FB_WMT_GE_ROPS is not set

# CONFIG_FB_SVGALIB is not set

# CONFIG_FB_MACMODES is not set

# CONFIG_FB_BACKLIGHT is not set

CONFIG_FB_MODE_HELPERS=y

CONFIG_FB_TILEBLITTING=y

#

# Frame buffer hardware drivers

#

# CONFIG_FB_CIRRUS is not set

# CONFIG_FB_PM2 is not set

# CONFIG_FB_CYBER2000 is not set

# CONFIG_FB_ARC is not set

# CONFIG_FB_ASILIANT is not set

# CONFIG_FB_IMSTT is not set

# CONFIG_FB_VGA16 is not set

# CONFIG_FB_VESA is not set

# CONFIG_FB_N411 is not set

# CONFIG_FB_HGA is not set

# CONFIG_FB_S1D13XXX is not set

# CONFIG_FB_NVIDIA is not set

# CONFIG_FB_RIVA is not set

# CONFIG_FB_I740 is not set

# CONFIG_FB_LE80578 is not set

# CONFIG_FB_MATROX is not set

CONFIG_FB_RADEON=y

CONFIG_FB_RADEON_I2C=y

# CONFIG_FB_RADEON_BACKLIGHT is not set

# CONFIG_FB_RADEON_DEBUG is not set

# CONFIG_FB_ATY128 is not set

# CONFIG_FB_ATY is not set

# CONFIG_FB_S3 is not set

# CONFIG_FB_SAVAGE is not set

# CONFIG_FB_SIS is not set

# CONFIG_FB_VIA is not set

# CONFIG_FB_NEOMAGIC is not set

# CONFIG_FB_KYRO is not set

# CONFIG_FB_3DFX is not set

# CONFIG_FB_VOODOO1 is not set

# CONFIG_FB_VT8623 is not set

# CONFIG_FB_TRIDENT is not set

# CONFIG_FB_ARK is not set

# CONFIG_FB_PM3 is not set

# CONFIG_FB_CARMINE is not set

# CONFIG_FB_GEODE is not set

# CONFIG_FB_SMSCUFX is not set

# CONFIG_FB_UDL is not set

# CONFIG_FB_VIRTUAL is not set

# CONFIG_FB_METRONOME is not set

# CONFIG_FB_MB862XX is not set

# CONFIG_FB_BROADSHEET is not set

# CONFIG_EXYNOS_VIDEO is not set

# CONFIG_BACKLIGHT_LCD_SUPPORT is not set

CONFIG_BACKLIGHT_CLASS_DEVICE=y

#

# Console display driver support

#

CONFIG_VGA_CONSOLE=y

CONFIG_VGACON_SOFT_SCROLLBACK=y

CONFIG_VGACON_SOFT_SCROLLBACK_SIZE=96

CONFIG_DUMMY_CONSOLE=y

CONFIG_FRAMEBUFFER_CONSOLE=y

CONFIG_FRAMEBUFFER_CONSOLE_DETECT_PRIMARY=y

# CONFIG_FRAMEBUFFER_CONSOLE_ROTATION is not set

CONFIG_FONTS=y

# CONFIG_FONT_8x8 is not set

# CONFIG_FONT_8x16 is not set

# CONFIG_FONT_6x11 is not set

# CONFIG_FONT_7x14 is not set

# CONFIG_FONT_PEARL_8x8 is not set

# CONFIG_FONT_ACORN_8x8 is not set

# CONFIG_FONT_MINI_4x6 is not set

# CONFIG_FONT_SUN8x16 is not set

CONFIG_FONT_SUN12x22=y

# CONFIG_FONT_10x18 is not set

CONFIG_LOGO=y

# CONFIG_LOGO_LINUX_MONO is not set

# CONFIG_LOGO_LINUX_VGA16 is not set

CONFIG_LOGO_LINUX_CLUT224=y

```

edit: additionally, you will have to include the following set of firmware

blobs from sys-kernel/linux-firmware into the kernel config for the E-350/450:

radeon/PALM_me.bin radeon/PALM_pfp.bin radeon/SUMO_rlc.bin 

radeon/SUMO_pfp.bin radeon/SUMO_me.bin

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## atoussaint

Thanks you very much,

After a triple review of my kernel configuration, I came across some inconsistency and some option would prevent the inclusion of firmware in the kernel. It's compiling now and after a reboot, I'll be able to see if I manage to build a good configuration.

Alain

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