radeon
Driver for ATI/AMD Radeon based video chips, everything from Radeon 7000 to Radeon HD 4890 series. Part of xf86-video-ati, ie. also known as the ”ati” driver. License: MIT
Latest News
10 Sep 2009: 6.12.4: brown paper bag release for X.org 7.5. [ changelog ]
9 Sep 2009: 6.12.3: bug fixes backported from master, along with PCI IDs for some new hardware. [ changelog ]
17 Apr 2009: AMD releases initial code branches for 3D support on R6xx/R7xx (see more below)
8 Apr 2009: 6.12.2: Bug fixes, and r2xx/r3xx textured video improvements. [ changelog ]
18 Mar 2009: 6.12.1: Bug fixes for R6xx/R7xx, and avivo load detection fix. [ changelog ]
13 Mar 2009: 6.12.0: EXA and Xvideo support for R6xx/R7xx series, and bug fixes. [ changelog ]
18 Feb 2009: 6.11.0: Bug fixes, output rework. [ changelog ]
6 Jan 2009: 6.10.0: Bicubic scaling, reduce tearing, more R600/R700 asics supported. [ changelog ]
Latest changes in the development tree can be seen at: http://cgit.freedesktop.org/xorg/driver/xf86-video-ati/
Status
- R100/R200 (Radeon 7000 – Radeon 9250) and R300/R400/R500 (Radeon 9500 – Radeon X1950) class chips:
- 2D: accelerated (EXA), stable
XVideo: accelerated and tear free, stable
- 3D: accelerated, stable
- R600/R700 class chips (Radeon HD 2300 – Radeon HD 4890):
- 2D: accelerated (EXA), stable
XVideo: accelerated and tear free, stable
3D: experimental, development at mesa master (r600 mesa driver), and drm r6xx-r7xx-3d (radeon drm driver), instructions for usage at radeonhd:experimental_3D
More 3D information at DRI wiki: Radeon. See also RadeonFeature and RadeonProgram for feature and supported program lists.
What about other drivers?
For an alternative R500/R600/R700 driver see radeonhd. Radeon has some features not available in radeonhd and vice versa, but generally they are starting to be quite close while radeon supports all the cards and radeonhd only r5xx-r7xx.
The differences between radeon and radeonhd with r5xx-r7xx:
- radeon supports tear-free video playback
- radeon supports TV-out (experimental)
- radeonhd supports HDMI audio
The reasons for two different drivers are historical, and starting to be a thing of the past as all the new DRM (direct rendering manager), 3D and KMS (kernel mode setting) work is done elsewhere, in a single place. Both drivers will be continued to be developed as long as they are useful.
For R6xx and above there is also an ATIProprietaryDriver available, which is worse in many aspects but has better 3D performance and features. The proprietary driver included support for R3xx-R5xx GPUs until the March 2009 release.
Documentation and Support
Build instruction can be found from radeonBuildHowTo
Please check the included manual page (old version here) for configuration options. To see or submit real-world reports on the 3D acceleration performance of this driver, see the free3d.org wiki
There is an IRC channel #radeon on irc.freenode.net for radeon users and developers.
Submit a bug report. View open bugs.
Development mailing lists are:
http://lists.x.org/mailman/listinfo/xorg-driver-ati - for the ati/radeon driver
http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/xorg - for general Xorg development
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/mesa3d-dev - Mesa / 3D support development.
TV Out Support
Please check radeonTV for information about TV out support.
Dual-head Support
See the XRandR 1.2 documentation for how to set up multiple monitors.