ATI Radeon Driver Called 'radeon'? [SOLVED]

[cklester]

Searched this forum and KB already.

The Quick Guide (http://docs.pcbsd.org/guide/chap7.1.html) mentions an ATI Radeon driver called 'radeon.' I have an ATI Radeon 9200, and it seems to use the 'ati' driver. Is there a radeon driver or is the Quick Guide out of date? I would like to use the driver specific to my card, as I believe it would improve video performance of my desktop.

[TerryP]

I know in ports there is an ati driver and a radeonhd driver (hd**** cards) so I'm not sure if the regular 'radeon' driver is going to stay supported in xorg, or if it is just a symlink to ati now because the various Xorg drivers are now seperate ports, i.e ATI is in the xf86-video-ati port (there is also a metaport of all drivers hehe).


I would try opening a konsole and test the commands:

man ati

and

man radeon

and see if they return any thing, I'm not sure under X.Org 7.x



The quickest way of switching drivers would be (if there is an option in it) to re run the PC-BSD display set up utility from the boot menu or to edit it manually:


k-menu -> run -> kdesu kedit /etc/X11/xorg.conf [press run]

enter the root pw when prompted and look in the file for the driver section and change it to radeon.

if memory serves

Driver "ati"

becomes

Driver "radeon"

save file and give the 3 fingered salute (control+alt+backspac) to restart the desktop / X.Org

[cklester]

I would try opening a konsole and test the commands:

man ati

and

man radeon

Good call! The ati driver actually detects what you have and loads the appropriate driver ('radeon,' 'rage128,' etc...).

The quickest way of switching drivers would be (if there is an option in it) to re run the PC-BSD display set up utility from the boot menu...

There was no option for 'radeon' in that menu, only 'ati.'

I wonder if providing the 'radeon' driver instead of the 'ati' driver will decrease the time required for boot-up...?

[TerryP]

I've used both in my X.Org (6.2) configuration in older versions of PC-BSD (1.1-1.2'ish) at various times and never noticed much difference. Most of the start up time is usually the kernel probing for hardware (which is what the black pcbsd loading screen sits on top of) or starting X + KDE which is not very fast if you've got 384~512MB of system memory.


Looking at the manual page for the radeon driver for the first time in at least a year... I'm sorry to see it says "hardware 3D acceleration (experimental on R300 and R400 series cards)" in the description because most Radeon cards worth mention gaming wise that I have seen use a R300 or R400 series chipset. Including notes for "(2d only)" on a lot of the newer Radeon X*00 cards.


Makes me glad I don't have the Radeon 9800 XT Pro any more, it was a 256MB graphics card but after upgrading to a GeForce 6200 I could at least tell the helmets rainbow uses in RvS are PASGT and not salad bowls or cheap protec's xD

So I could just imagine trying to run Quake on PC-BSD with it... haha