# Mobility Radeon HD 5870 Compatibility

## fallstoofast

Does anyone know how well this card will work on Gentoo or any other linux distribution? If not currently, how long does it usually take for ATI to release a version of fglrx that does.

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## disi

Currently the catalyst driver only works with xorg-server-1.6.5

Rumours say that AMD plans to release a new version, when Ubuntu 10.4 is released (which is april 2010).

The last driver from AMd took about 6 months to be released.

Open Source drivers still lack proper 3D support (with my r700 chip).

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## Raistlin Majere

On the amd/ati website , it only lists support up to mobility HD 4000 series

I know other people had issues with the mobility hd 5xxx cards not being supported yet.

I have no information as to when they will be supported.

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## fallstoofast

So I'm debating on whether to get a laptop with the GTX 285M or the HD 5870. I know that the HD 5870 has better hardware, but almost nonexistent driver support on Linux. The HD 5870 is also 55 dollars cheaper. I want to run Linux so I want to know how long it will take for linux support of the Mobility HD 5870.. Quite hard to decide.

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## ChrisJumper

I look up the driver-version, cause someone in the German Forum is looking for a Radeon HD 5870 driver, and on amd.com there IS a Catalyst Driver (10.3). Its released on 24. March 2010 :)

But its still not in Portage. Stay tuned!

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## Raistlin Majere

 *Quote:*   

> Ati precompiled drivers for r600 (HD Series) and newer chipsets
> 
> *ati-drivers-10.3 (25 Mar 2010)
> 
> 25 Mar 2010; Luca Barbato (lu_zero) +ati-drivers-10.3.ebuild:
> ...

 

It's in there now

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## kernelOfTruth

 *fallstoofast wrote:*   

> So I'm debating on whether to get a laptop with the GTX 285M or the HD 5870. I know that the HD 5870 has better hardware, but almost nonexistent driver support on Linux. The HD 5870 is also 55 dollars cheaper. I want to run Linux so I want to know how long it will take for linux support of the Mobility HD 5870.. Quite hard to decide.

 

you could bother someone on the net with an mobility 5xxx card to install the 10.4_pre catalyst driver for Ubuntu 10.04 and report whether it works fine or not 

there have been reports on phoronix' forums that mobility 5xxx cards somewhat work with it

besides that you can patch it to make it work with 2.6.33 (& 2.6.34-rc*) and it also works with xorg-server 1.7   :Razz: 

the driver is called ati-drivers-8.721

if you want to try out/use all, you could add gentoo-quebec overlay for convenience

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## sh4m.w0w

Okay, so I just got a brand new Asus Core i7 laptop, specifically the G73JH-RBBX05, which comes with an ATI Mobility Radeon 5870.   As much as I hate on ATI, the $1200 price tag for eight cores and 6gb RAM sealed the deal.

I couldn't get the video card working under Karmic Koala, despite my best efforts, so I nuked the Windows 7 garbage the laptop came with and Karmic in favor of TODAY's release of Ubuntu 10.04 "Lucid Lynx".  You need to grab the Sunday April 11th 2010 release or later apparently.

News article here

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=ODE0MQ

Ubuntu 10.04 Daily Build ISOs here

http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/daily-live/current/

Apparently the Ubuntu guys got ahold of some alpha or beta ATI drivers that haven't seen the light of day on AMD's web site.  Yes, I am writing this as an owner of a 5xxx series ATI laptop card,  to confirm that my hardware WORKS with the latest Ubuntu... with Compiz, hardware acceleration, the works.

Now, I tried from system /administration /hardware drivers to enable ATI when I first booted, but the app promptly crashed.  However, upon second or third reboot , and particularly after installing the "ia32" .deb package (to run Geekbench), I noticed something flashing in the system tray.  

Low and behold, Ubuntu was asking if I wanted to install the ATI drivers!  I clicked Yes, it installed, I rebooted, and now I have desktop effects and an ATI Control Panel app.

Incidentally, Ubuntu 10.04 is slightly 'buggy' ... not in a bad way... just stuff still crashes every now and again.  So its not ready for prime time, but its good enough for me to use as my development workstation with VMware, VirtualBox, etc.  Lynx seems more inherently STABLE than Karmic , they just need to work out the kinks... 

Now here's something really interesting for those who study speed in computing architectures...

My Core i7 performance was SIGNIFICANTLY enhanced by upgrading to Ubuntu Lynx 10.04 from Karmic Koala 9.10.  There must be some new features in the kernel to take advantage of the eight processor cores in the Core i7... have a look at this...

http://i40.tinypic.com/orjmoo.png

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## jasn

 *kernelOfTruth wrote:*   

> you could bother someone on the net with an mobility 5xxx card to install the 10.4_pre catalyst driver for Ubuntu 10.04 and report whether it works fine or not 
> 
> there have been reports on phoronix' forums that mobility 5xxx cards somewhat work with it
> 
> besides that you can patch it to make it work with 2.6.33 (& 2.6.34-rc*) and it also works with xorg-server 1.7  
> ...

 

I did install it, using the gentoo-quebec overlay 10.4 rc driver set, (which is 8.721), on my Asus G73Jh, Radeon Mobility 5870 HD equipped laptop, and it works. I also tried the ebuild for installing the 8.723.1 driver from this Gentoo Bug report, which works, (once I remembered to "eselect opengl set ati", after the driver install). Interestingly enough, the masked portage 8.721 driver, along with this 8.723.1 driver both download driver archives called;

```
fglrx-installer_8.721.orig.tar.gz

fglrx-installer_8.723.1.orig.tar.gz
```

while the gentoo-quebec overlay 10.4 driver ebuild downloads a file called

```
fglrx-installer_8.721.tar.bz2
```

I installed both the ATI 10.4 beta driver from the gentoo-quebec overlay, and the 8.721 portage masked driver, as well as the one I'm using now, the 8.723.1 driver ebuild from the aforementioned bug report.  This is on a system configured with the 2.6.33-r1 gentoo kernel sources, (~amd64), and a patched 1.80 xorg-server installation, using the patch from this bug report. It all works fine with my KDE 4.4.2 desktop, active compositing is working, (although I need to re-enable it every time I login). Performance is definitely slower in comparison to a similarly equipped i7, nVidia GTX 280M, laptop, (nvidia-drivers-195.36.15), I was using, but I'm glad I'm off nVidia, and on ATI. I can wait for performance improvements, as well as the open source radeon driver to support this RV870 chipset. (The radeon driver, with 3d support, works well for my current Radeon Mobility 4670 HD, equipped laptop.)

Good Luck..

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## jasn

On a related note. Since the ATI internal driver version number, (the 8.721, 8.723.1 versions), differs from the release version number, (the 10.2, 10.3 versions), portage thinks that 8.723.1 is a lower version than 10.3, when it's really not. However, I can't mask the driver versions higher than 8.723.1, by putting them into my mask file in /etc/portage/package.mask/. If I use

```
>x11-drivers/ati-drivers-8.723.1
```

of if I simply put in separate entries for every version of the driver I want portage to ignore like;

```
=x11-drivers/ati-drivers-10.3

=x11-drivers/ati-drivers-10.1

=x11-drivers/ati-drivers-10.2

=x11-drivers/ati-drivers-9.10

=x11-drivers/ati-drivers-9.11

=x11-drivers/ati-drivers-9.9-r2

=x11-drivers/ati-drivers-8.721

=x11-drivers/ati-drivers-8.593

=x11-drivers/ati-drivers-8.552-r2
```

When I update my world I still get portage wanting to;

```
These are the packages that would be merged, in order:

Calculating dependencies... done!

[ebuild     U ] x11-drivers/ati-drivers-10.3 [8.723.1] USE="modules (multilib) qt4 -debug" 84,066 kB [1=>0]

[blocks B     ] >=x11-base/xorg-server-1.7.0 (">=x11-base/xorg-server-1.7.0" is blocking x11-drivers/ati-drivers-10.3)

Total: 1 package (1 upgrade), Size of downloads: 84,066 kB

Conflict: 1 block (1 unsatisfied)

Portage tree and overlays:

 [0] /usr/portage

 [1] /usr/local/portage
```

Anyone know how I can mask this properly?

Thanks..

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## kernelOfTruth

 *jasn wrote:*   

> 
> 
> Anyone know how I can mask this properly?
> 
> Thanks..

 

sure, copy it to your local overlay and rename it to ati-drivers-10.4_beta.ebuild (like mentioned in the bug-report)

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## jasn

Actually I didn't read in the bug report where it suggested that after I copy the ati-drivers-8.723.1.ebuild to my local overlay, (which I had already done of course), to rename it to ati-drivers-10.4_beta.ebuild. (Looking at the ebuild, that would have certainly worked). However, I instead copied the ati-drivers-10.4_beta.ebuild from that bug report, (which installs the 8.721 version of the ATI drivers), to my local overlay. I then patched it with the ati-drivers.patch from the same bug report, so that it now install the 8.723.1 version of the drivers, and removed the requirement for less than 1.8 version of xorg-server, and digested it. And now, as you pointed out, portage is now picking up my new ati-drivers-10.4_beta.ebuild as the most recent to install.

What I was most curious about was, why didn't my local masking work? I thought once you put a package/version in your local mask file, portage will respect that. Am I missing something?

Thanks..

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## kernelOfTruth

 *jasn wrote:*   

> Actually I didn't read in the bug report where it suggested that after I copy the ati-drivers-8.723.1.ebuild to my local overlay, (which I had already done of course), to rename it to ati-drivers-10.4_beta.ebuild. (Looking at the ebuild, that would have certainly worked). However, I instead copied the ati-drivers-10.4_beta.ebuild from that bug report, (which installs the 8.721 version of the ATI drivers), to my local overlay. I then patched it with the ati-drivers.patch from the same bug report, so that it now install the 8.723.1 version of the drivers, and removed the requirement for less than 1.8 version of xorg-server, and digested it. And now, as you pointed out, portage is now picking up my new ati-drivers-10.4_beta.ebuild as the most recent to install.
> 
> What I was most curious about was, why didn't my local masking work? I thought once you put a package/version in your local mask file, portage will respect that. Am I missing something?
> 
> Thanks..

 

it really depends: some combination e.g. <=x11-drivers/ati-drivers-10.2 wouldn't work

in that case you need to add 2 entries ...

I don't know your package.keywords but often it's the case that you need to remove the reference from package.unmask that it works again in package.mask

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## jasn

 *kernelOfTruth wrote:*   

> I don't know your package.keywords but often it's the case that you need to remove the reference from package.unmask that it works again in package.mask

 

That was it.. Stupidly left the unmask of ati-drivers in my unmask file..

Thanks..

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## duderonomy

Two entries? what were they? 

Alternatively, how does a user accomplish using a gentoo-quebec overlay? 

Is that the best way to get new ATI drivers working with xorg-server-1.7.0 ?

How to get this process started, please? 

Or perhaps someone can share... how to modify an existing ati-driver ebuild to use the ati driver 

downloaded from AMD (ati-driver-installer-8.7*)  such as ati-drivers-10.3 ?

I've already extracted the flgrx package from the run file. What's next?

Thanks!

 :Very Happy: 

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## jasn

You don't need to download the drivers from ATI. In this Gentoo forum thread, the subject of installing the 10.4 beta fglrx driver is discussed, and in my post here, I described in detail how I configured my kernel, xorg.conf, and installed both the 10.4 beta driver, as well as a patched xorg-server 1.8.0, (in order to work with the driver).

Good Luck..

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