# ATI Radeon XPRESS 200M 5955

## hitemp

Hello all, well…. another Gentoo/Linux newbie here, I am currently unemployed so I decided to give Linux a shoot (yes, I know there are easier Linux distros to start out on but what can I say I like the penguin). Ok, so on with it

     I installed Gentoo, (not quite that simple but I got it done) sound was easy enough, my bcm 4311 wireless card was a little bit more tricky but with a little patience it worked just fine, I installed xorg and then kde, things seemed to be going fine until I noticed some video card problems. The first thing I noticed was some screen savers and such (eyecandy) would not work and then I found that the ati catalyst control center would not open, too make a long story short I have read many post and a lot of tutorials all with different settings and advice (none of which seemed to work). I have tried different drivers and different kernel settings, I have started over twice and at this point I am ready to start fresh again.

       I have an hp pavilion dv5139 laptop with an ATI Radeon XPRESS 200M 5955 (PCIE) graphics card and I am not sure what data is old and out dated, weather I should use the ati drivers or the open source ones, I just need a push in the right direction, somewhere to start. Any help on this subject would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks for your time, HiTemp

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## chithanh

Your graphics chipset is not supported by current ati-drivers any longer. You have to use the open source drivers.

Set eselect opengl back to xorg, and get rid of ati-drivers including the fglrx kernel module. See http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/xorg-config.xml how to configure the kernel for the open source drivers.

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## hitemp

Thanks for the info chithanh, I must have missed the part about the ati drivers   :Embarassed:  .

I was able to install the open source driver and xorg but that is were my problems began. After a little bit of research I found some information on hardware 3d acceleration ( http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/dri-howto.xml ) and that seemed to do the trick. I am not sure what this graphics card is capable of but as far as glxgears goes I am getting about 750 FPS in a small window (default?) and about 87 FPS in full screen (1280x800) and the UT 2004 demo plays fine. I guess that is as good as can be expected from a 5 year old laptop? Well... on to networking now.

                          Thanks, hiTemp

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## chithanh

glxgears fps is not indicative of anything.

You can get a bit more performance out of that chipset if you install mesa-7.9 (currently still in the x11 overlay) with USE="llvm" and enable kernel modesetting.

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## hitemp

 *chithanh wrote:*   

> 
> 
> install mesa-7.9 (currently still in the x11 overlay) with USE="llvm" and enable kernel modesetting.

 

You make that sound so simple.

 I did something, I am not sure if it is correct or how to check.

```

redliner@localhost ~ $ glxinfo | grep render

direct rendering: Yes

OpenGL renderer string: Mesa DRI R300 (RS400 5955) 20090101  NO-TCL DRI2

redliner@localhost ~ $ eselect mesa list

i915 (Intel 915, 945)

i965 (Intel 965, G/Q3x, G/Q4x)

r300 (Radeon R300-R500)

  classic *                 

  gallium                   

r600 (Radeon R600-R700)

  gallium                   

sw (Software renderer)

  classic                   

  gallium *                 

redliner@localhost ~ $ 

localhost redliner # eselect mesa set sw classic

Switching sw to classic

localhost redliner # eselect mesa list

i915 (Intel 915, 945)

i965 (Intel 965, G/Q3x, G/Q4x)

r300 (Radeon R300-R500)

  classic *                 

  gallium                   

r600 (Radeon R600-R700)

  gallium                   

sw (Software renderer)

  classic *                 

  gallium               

```

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## chithanh

```
r300 (Radeon R300-R500)

  classic *                 

  gallium     
```

Set r300 to gallium. Then the OpenGL renderer string in glxinfo should change.

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## hitemp

Like this?

```

localhost redliner # eselect mesa set r300 gallium

Switching r300 to gallium

localhost redliner # glxinfo | grep render 

direct rendering: Yes

OpenGL renderer string: Gallium 0.4 on RS480

    GL_NV_blend_square, GL_NV_conditional_render, GL_NV_light_max_exponent,

localhost redliner # eselect mesa list

i915 (Intel 915, 945)

i965 (Intel 965, G/Q3x, G/Q4x)

r300 (Radeon R300-R500)

  classic                   

  gallium *                 

r600 (Radeon R600-R700)

  gallium                   

sw (Software renderer)

  classic                   

  gallium *            

```

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