Need help getting my video card working properly

[Benzorz]

I have a Radeon 9800 and it gets about 3 frames per second while playing Chromium. I also get about 5 frames per second watching the GLMatrix screensaver. Surely my card isn't already out of date. Anyhow, I'm just using the drivers Fedora recognized. lspci says:

01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc Radeon R350 [Radeon 9800]
01:00.1 Display controller: ATI Technologies Inc Radeon R350 [Radeon 9800] (Secondary)

I have a CD with drivers, but it says only for Windows XP/2000/ME/9x. Anyone know where I can get drivers for my ATI Radeon 9800 (made by Sapphire). Also, maybe I don't have the latest OpenGL installed? How do I check?

Thanks!

[Dolda2000]

The open source drivers have no 3D acceleration, since ATi won't release the specifications for the card to do that. However, you can download ATi's proprietary 3D accelerating drivers from their website, which should fix your problem.

[Benzorz]

ATI's installation instructions say it requires:

* glibc version 2.2 or 2.3
* XFree86 version 4.1.0, 4.2.0, or 4.3.0
* Kernel source code
* Kernel header (include) files
* GCC compiler
* Make Utility

I'm not sure if I have the kernel header and source, but I know I don't have GCC installed. I've gone in to System Settings > Add/Remove Applications and selected to add GCC, but it says: "Packages not found: libxml2, cyrus-sasl, libuser." I tried downloading libxml2 and when I ran rpm -i on it, it said there was a confliction with an earlier version, so I tried rpm -U and everything seemed to run fine, but the Add/Remove Applications tool still says I need it and whereis doesn't find it anywhere. Not sure what to do.

[Dolda2000]

That's weird... I thought Fedora had that "Add/Remove Applications" program working by now. Anyway, try finding the gcc and kernel-source RPMs on the installation CDs and install them manually with the rpm command. That's probably easiest.

[Benzorz]

Alright, I've been running around getting all sorts of RPMS, but I finally got most of them working. When I RPM the fglrx-blah-blah.rpm it spits out:

Tailored kernel module for fglrx not present in your system.
You must go to /lib/modules/fglrx/build_mod subdir
and execute './make.sh' to build a fully customed kernel module.
Afterwards go to /lib/modules/fglrx and run './make_install.sh'
in order to install the module into your kernel's module repository.
(see readme.txt for more details.)

As of now you can still run your XServer in 2D, but hardware acclerated
OpenGL will not work and 2D graphics will lack performance.

failed.
*** Found kernel module build environment, generating kernel module now.
ATI module generator V 2.0
==========================
initializing...
Error:
XFree86 drm includes at /lib/modules/2.6.8-1.521/build/include/../drivers/char/drm do not fit this driver.
This driver is designed to only work with X4.1.0 or higher.
You can match this by getting Linux kernel 2.4.8 or higher.
*** WARNING ***
Tailored kernel module for fglrx not present in your system.
You must go to /lib/modules/fglrx/build_mod subdir
and execute './make.sh' to build a fully customed kernel module.
Afterwards go to /lib/modules/fglrx and run './make_install.sh'
in order to install the module into your kernel's module repository.
(see readme.txt for more details.)

As of now you can still run your XServer in 2D, but hardware acclerated
OpenGL will not work and 2D graphics will lack performance.

failed.
*** Warning ***
The QT based control panel application did not load in any version.
===
ATI display drivers successfully installed
please run 'fglrxconfig' now
===

So, it said it was successfully installed towards the end, so I went ahead and did the config thing, but fglrxinfo says it MESA is install the default after I've rebooted.

So, I go and run the make.sh file and it spits out:

ATI module generator V 2.0
==========================
initializing...
Error:
XFree86 drm includes at /lib/modules/2.6.8-1.521/build/include/../drivers/char/drm do not fit this driver.
This driver is designed to only work with X4.1.0 or higher.
You can match this by getting Linux kernel 2.4.8 or higher.

My kernel is 2.6.8 and I downloaded kernel-headers.2.6.8-something and kernel-source.2.6.8-something. I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong here.

Arg, it's such a downer to work on something for 5 hours and it still doesn't work.

[Dolda2000]

Hmmm... weird. What version of the driver did you get?

[Benzorz]

I got the fglrx-4.3.0-3.14.6.i386.rpm.