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
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), a new feature (see radeon:r6xx_r7xx_branch)
XVideo: accelerated and tear free, a new feature (see radeon:r6xx_r7xx_branch)
3D: experimental, development at r6xx-rewrite (mesa driver), and drm r6xx-r7xx-3d (drm driver) | instructions for usage at radeonhd:experimental_3D
More 3D information at DRI wiki: ATIRadeon. See also RadeonFeature and RadeonProgram for feature and supported program lists. And R300 Portal for some older stuff. All of these pages would need combining to a more coherent resource where all could point at.
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
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.
Known Issues
User-submitted tips
Building recent version of radeon + mesa + drm
Here's how one can install a recent version of radeon + mesa + drm from git for testing. Instructions for a recent Debian-based distribution with sudo enabled, adaptable to elsewhere.
Alternatively for 1. and 2., use versions provided by the distribution:
sudo aptitude install xserver-xorg-dev x11proto-xf86dri-dev x11proto-dri2-dev libxdamage-dev libxxf86vm-dev libdrm2-dev x11proto-gl-dev
1. clone relevant trees (first use only)
git clone git://git.freedesktop.org/git/xorg/proto/dri2proto git clone git://anongit.freedesktop.org/git/mesa/drm git clone git://anongit.freedesktop.org/git/xorg/util/macros git clone git://anongit.freedesktop.org/git/mesa/mesa git clone git://anongit.freedesktop.org/git/xcb/pthread-stubs git clone git://anongit.freedesktop.org/git/xorg/driver/xf86-video-ati
2. update all trees
for file in *; do (cd $file; git pull) done
3. prepare /local/xorg
sudo mkdir -p /local/xorg/share/aclocal sudo chmod a+rx /local sudo chmod a+rx /local/xorg sudo sh -c "echo /local/xorg/lib > /etc/ld.so.conf.d/a-local-xorg.conf" sudo ldconfig -v > /dev/null sudo sh -c "cat >> /etc/X11/xorg.conf" << EOF Section "Files" ModulePath "/local/xorg/lib/xorg/modules,/usr/lib/xorg/modules" EndSection EOF
4. build and install everything
export ACLOCAL="/usr/bin/aclocal -I /local/xorg/share/aclocal" export PKG_CONFIG_PATH=/local/xorg/lib/pkgconfig:/usr/lib/pkgconfig export LDFLAGS=-L/local/xorg/lib CPPFLAGS=-I/local/xorg/include for file in *; do (cd $file; ./autogen.sh; ./configure --prefix=/local/xorg; make; echo $file; sudo make install) done