HD 2600 PRO AGP - driver problems

[philosopher0926]

I really don't wanna get to the point of it not booting at all anymore, so I thought I'd rather ask. Sorry if this is dumb :-)

Thnx again

Hehe, truth be told, I got stuck at the same spot, had the same worry, so I "forgot it." I just closed the editor and restarted X (Control + alt + backspace. I have no clue why it's called X or what it is, but I think it's the user environment. All I know is the screen went black and I had to log back in.

It seems to work so far, at least in basic applications. Gaming will be terrible, though. I got 3-5 fps on Nexuiz. If I screwed up and am in danger of messing up Corona's machine, stop and correct me. I've not had any system instability, but I don't want to be responsible for frying his computer.

[the_corona]

Hehe, truth be told, I got stuck at the same spot, had the same worry, so I "forgot it." I just closed the editor and restarted X (Control + alt + backspace. I have no clue why it's called X or what it is, but I think it's the user environment. All I know is the screen went black and I had to log back in.

It seems to work so far, at least in basic applications. Gaming will be terrible, though. I got 3-5 fps on Nexuiz. If I screwed up and am in danger of messing up Corona's machine, stop and correct me. I've not had any system instability, but I don't want to be responsible for frying his computer.

Hehe ok. Well I tried that and it works, but I don't think its using the new drivers, they are installed but not in use.

So I went ahead and tried with my version, and after a bit of flickering xserver restarted. So now that's different and I think its using the new drivers. But videos are still unwatchable and apart from flickering every now and then nothing is different. Oh well, maybe I'll come back next year again, as it is I'd rather boot vista and be done with it :-) Although I'll probably have a new gfx card by then and I guess the drivers for that won't be ready yet again :-(

Sorry, I'm really not bashing, as I said I keep playing with it, but from an end-user it just seems not usable yet. Maybe with exactly the right hardware it works fine, I don't know.

Anyways, keep up the good work everyone! I'm ready to switch as soon as things work :-)

[philosopher0926]

No need to apologize, I'm in the same boat. I'm of the opinion that you shouldn't have to wrestle the operating system into submission before you can get it to work, but I guess that goes against most of Linux's strengths of being able to make it unique.

If/When our card is supported, I'll shoot you an email if I can remember.

[bridgman]

Just a reminder that Linux support for AGP HD2xxx cards has not yet been released, but is being worked on.

If you run the current (PCIE only) driver on an AGP HD2xxx card the result may be a crash at startup, or the kernel driver may just fail to initialize. In the latter case, the X driver will run but without video or 2D/3D acceleration (since acceleration depends on the kernel driver which in turn requires support for the AGP subystem).

For the short term, the RadeonHD driver is a good alternative; it does not use the 3D engine either but the ShadowFB support gives pretty decent performance for 2D (and video via X11 output if you have a decently fast CPU).

[mwosdev]

Bridgman

Hi there . . . .

Daft question probably . . . for those of us with dual boot systems (i.e. a Linux flavour + XP) will fixed driver releases for the two OS's co-incide?

[the_corona]

Just a reminder that Linux support for AGP HD2xxx cards has not yet been released, but is being worked on.

If you run the current (PCIE only) driver on an AGP HD2xxx card the result may be a crash at startup, or the kernel driver may just fail to initialize. In the latter case, the X driver will run but without video or 2D/3D acceleration (since acceleration depends on the kernel driver which in turn requires support for the AGP subystem).

For the short term, the RadeonHD driver is a good alternative; it does not use the 3D engine either but the ShadowFB support gives pretty decent performance for 2D (and video via X11 output if you have a decently fast CPU).

See, I don't really know what that means (kernel driver, x driver, shadowFB, x11 output, etc) :-) In windows I download an exe and run that which will tell me if my card is not supported and also configure everything for me. And even if I don't the MS supplied drivers seem kinda fast enough to at least play video smoothly and make aero run.

It just seems to me that in linux you have to know about all that stuff. And yes, while it was cool to actually git (whatever that is..seems to download sourcecode) and then compile my own drivers, I spend many hours trying to figure that out, and in the end it was all for nothing. Now personally, I don't even mind that all that much, and I'm sure I can learn how to do it, I'm just off the opinion for something as low-level as a gfx driver I shouldn't have to.

BTW I have a x2 4200+ @ 2,6ghz, 2GB ram, but even low-rez xvid videos are blocky as hell and stutter all over the place. I don't dare to open an HD video :-)

Gosh, I'm really sorry, again I really don't mean to sound like I'm bashing Linux, I just kinda wanted to say how it is for me.

The funny thing is just a few months ago I still had my x800gto card (fan broke...aaaarggh), which would have probably worked fine and I assume I would be in awe about all the nice effect that compiz thing would give me. I also still have a FX5200 lying around, how are the nvideo linux drivers? Worth a shot? On the other hand I really don't wanna put in an old video card :-)

bridgman, any *loose* timeline? Trying to decide if I should wipe the partition or not :-)

[Nexus7]

See, I don't really know what that means (kernel driver, x driver, shadowFB, x11 output, etc) :-) In windows I download an exe and run that which will tell me if my card is not supported and also configure everything for me...

It just seems to me that in linux you have to know about all that stuff. ... learn how to do it, I'm just off the opinion for something as low-level as a gfx driver I shouldn't have to.

Keep in mind that until not very long ago, most Linux graphics drivers were 100% reverse-engineered. Not the case anymore, since we have companies releasing drivers (such as Intel, Nvidia & ATI), or specifications from which a driver can be written (with partial/complete functionality).

In the case of the HD2xxx drivers, according to bridgeman, Linux and Windows drivers are broken. The net result of the x11/2d/3d etc. is that HDTV and 3D games will play very poorly, if at all, in Linux (and in Windows, going by what's been said).

BTW I have a x2 4200+ @ 2,6ghz, 2GB ram, but even low-rez xvid videos are blocky as hell and stutter all over the place. I don't dare to open an HD video :-)

Yes, these will play poorly. When full 2D & 3D support is available, these things will be hardware-accelerated (as opposed to your CPU now doing the heavy computations needed), and video will be smooth.

would give me. I also still have a FX5200 lying around, how are the nvideo linux drivers? Worth a shot? On the other hand I really don't wanna put in an old video card :-)

The FX5200 is a great card. Put it in, use the Nvidia driver (this driver is proprietary, so you may need to use module-assistant and create a module; see easy instructions on the web). You wil be able to play HDTV at 720p easily, and 1020i quite well. There is another web forum where you can get good help on this card.

[bridgman]

If you go back a few months, the Windows drivers were much closer to working on AGP than the Linux drivers; that was just a consequence of where we happened to be in the migration to common code.

In general we are trying to finalize AGP support on Windows and Linux at the same time, ie in the same release, but sometimes we will need to deliver Linux and Windows support on different releases to make best use of QA time. Testing has to be done separately for each board so support for different chips & boards will probably show up over 2-3 releases.

AGP support should start to hit the beta program over the next couple of weeks.

[Kano]

Wouldn't you call that banana hardware what you currently sell?

[the_corona]

AGP support should start to hit the beta program over the next couple of weeks.

Very cool, is this going to be a public beta by any chance?