# What and how is the "ATI M6-P" display card under

## UnuMondo

According to the specs, the laptop I ordered will have an "ATI M6-P" display card (with 16MB of RAM), but I can't find any real information about this on the web or ATI's website. Does this card normally go under another name? Is it a decent card that will give decent GL output at 1600x1200? The last laptop I had had an Nvidia GeForce2GO card that rendered Xscreensaver's GL so...incredibly...slowly at 1600x1200, but that's the only resolution I'm confortable with.

Finally, how should I configure X to work with this card? Does ATI have a driver? Should I use the DRI drivers from dri.sourceforge.net?

Sorry for all the questions, but a search for "M6-P" gives no useful answers.

UnuMondo

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## cerb

this is most certainly a rage mobility card - which is not very decent in these days.  in fact is far less sophisticated than your previous geforce-2 go

AFAIK are the M7 and higher the radeon cards - anyone pls correct me if i'm wrong

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## UnuMondo

 *cerb wrote:*   

> this is most certainly a rage mobility card - which is not very decent in these days.  in fact is far less sophisticated than your previous geforce-2 go
> 
> AFAIK are the M7 and higher the radeon cards - anyone pls correct me if i'm wrong

 

That's really bad. Can I install a new display card, or am I stuck with the one shipped with my laptop?

UnuMondo

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## masseya

Actually, the first M6 cards were Radeon cards, but mine is an ATI Radeon Mobility M6 LY and I don't know what the M6-P cards are for sure.  However, I would be willing to bet that they are Radeon cards.  My card only has 8 MB of ram and doesn't do OpenGL all that well, but it could be a lot better at 16 MB.  I still doubt you'll be doing OpenGL stuff at 1600x1200 comfortably though.  If you want to learn more about these cards you can find a lot of information on http://www.linux-laptop.net as well as by searching these forums for "ATI and radeon and modiblity".

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## UnuMondo

 *Tristam29 wrote:*   

> Actually, the first M6 cards were Radeon cards, but mine is an ATI Radeon Mobility M6 LY and I don't know what the M6-P cards are for sure.  However, I would be willing to bet that they are Radeon cards.  My card only has 8 MB of ram and doesn't do OpenGL all that well, but it could be a lot better at 16 MB.  I still doubt you'll be doing OpenGL stuff at 1600x1200 comfortably though.  If you want to learn more about these cards you can find a lot of information on http://www.linux-laptop.net as well as by searching these forums for "ATI and radeon and modiblity".

 

Thanks for the info, I'm a bit more optimistic about the quality of the card, athough I guess I'll have to get used to a lower resolution to make GL work decently.

How do you configure X for your card? Do you use DRI? ATI's much hyped drivers don't come for mobile cards, because they claim that those drivers have to be carefully tweaked by the manufacturer.   :Rolling Eyes: 

UnuMondo

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## masseya

Sure, no problem.  Here's a few juicy (well, maybe not) sections of my XF86Config. 

```
Section "Module"

# This loads the DBE extension module.

    Load        "dbe"   # Double buffer extension

# This loads the miscellaneous extensions module, and disables

# initialisation of the XFree86-DGA extension within that module.

    SubSection  "extmod"

      Option    "omit xfree86-dga"   # don't initialise the DGA extension

    EndSubSection

# This loads the Type1 and FreeType font modules

    Load        "type1"

    Load        "freetype"

# This loads the GLX module

    Load       "glx"

# Options I've added

    Load "GLcore"

    Load "fbdevhw"

    Load "pex5"

    Load "dri"

    Load "record"

    Load "xie"

EndSection

*

*

*

Section "Device"

    Identifier  "ATI Radeon (generic)"

    Driver      "radeon"

    VideoRam    8192

EndSection

*

*

*

Section "Screen"

    Identifier  "Screen 1"

    Device      "ATI Radeon (generic)"

    Monitor     "Presario 1700T builtin"

    DefaultDepth 24

    Subsection "Display"

        Depth       8

        Modes       "640x400" "800x600" "1024x768" "1280x1024"

        ViewPort    0 0

    EndSubsection

    Subsection "Display"

        Depth       16

        Modes       "640x400" "800x600" "1024x768" "1280x1024"

        ViewPort    0 0

    EndSubsection

    Subsection "Display"

        Depth       24

        Modes       "1400x1050" "640x400" "800x600" "1024x768" "1280x1024"

        ViewPort    0 0

    EndSubsection

EndSection

*

*

*

Section "DRI"

    Mode 0666

EndSection
```

Obviously, your card won't have just 8 MB of Ram listed.  Also the generic warning everyone gives out when they post there XF86Config is to not just copy this kind of stuff into your file willy-nilly and then wonder what happened if you broke something.

I'm using DRI, which is slower than OpenGL for things like zsnes that have options for both.  The 2d stuff is excellent though.  I use the laptop mainly for programming and it's a great display for that.  When I get bored and I fire up zsnes it's good enough to play Final Fantasy games but something with more action graphics would be really tough, even at low resolutions.  Let me know if you have further questions.  If you get yours doing something outstanding I'd also like to know.  Us Radeon Mobility people gotta stick together.   :Very Happy: 

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## UnuMondo

Thanks for the heads up Tristam29. I won't pick up the computer until the end of December, and won't be able to wipe the HD and install Gentoo until I can use my school's highspeed connection when the Spring semester starts, so it'll be a while until I can try it. I'll let you know how it works out.

UnuMondo

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## Mnemia

I have the same card Tristam29 has, except with 16 MB. OpenGL works fairly decently for me, and I can certainly play a few games, but the performance of the drivers for Linux have been really disappointing to me. My Nvidia card on another machine gets much better performance simply due to better drivers despite being an older card. I know it's the drivers that are slow because the card has pretty good performance under Windows XP on the same laptop. Granted, the games are likely optimized more for Windows, but I get roughly double the performance for the same games under the Windows OpenGL drivers as I do under Linux with the XFree drivers mentioned here.

Also note that you won't be able to play UT2003 under Linux on this card, due to the current lack of a driver with S3TC support. The card supports this and is certainly capable of running the game (I've done it under Windows), but ATI has seemingly decided to leave mobile users out in the cold with their new binary only drivers with S3TC. I'd *really* like it if they would show some support for those of use with lesser cards than 8500+...I mean, Nvidia's drivers support TNT2!!

Also, I hear a lot of this may improve with XFree 4.3...so maybe it'll be better by January.Last edited by Mnemia on Wed Dec 11, 2002 5:31 am; edited 1 time in total

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