Radeon 9250 Question

[Will]

After searching the forum I have to ask, has there been a concrete workable solution for this card? I ask since I bought it to game with, so hardware acceleration is kinda needed. Yes i know its an old card,but then again, the system itself is old so I figure go with the best that it can handle and work with what I've got.

[nightflier]

You can use ATI's proprietary driver version 8.28.8. Versions after that do not support your card. I think you need the kernel sources installed first.

The open source driver will also give you 3D, but performance lags significantly behind the proprietary driver.

[Will]

Is there a how-to on doing this?

[lagagnon]

1) when you installed VL did you choose the option to install the kernel sources? If yes go to 2. If no type "uname -r", find out what kernel you have and isntall the correct the kernel sources (kernel-src) using gslapt
2) go to the amd website here http://ati.amd.com/support/drivers/linux/linux-radeon-prer200.html and follow their instructions

[Will]

Thanks.

Oi I feel dense...

[InTheWoods]

I have  a 9250 as well and spent almost 2 weeks floundering around with little success. The proprietary 8.28.8 driver is definetly more stable than the open source one on my machine but I have never got this card to be as capable as it was under Windows.

On various forums people either seem to get it to work easily or they don't get it to work at all. Even when they are following the same advice.

I have wondered if the card is an PCI card or an AGP had anything to do with this but found no answer. Mine is PCI.

My advice is if you don't get it working fairly easily accept that you won't. Here are a couple of the solutions I tried.
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/showthread.php?t=558746
http://en.opensuse.org/Howto/ATI_Driver

There was also a lengthy discussion about it in the Unbuntu forums.

Good Luck!

If you are successful please post how you did it.

[Will]

It will stil lbe quite some time as my box is still being 'borrowed'. I can accept it if it doens't work absolutly great, so long as I can surf and youtube and the like. Its just being able to game would be a plus. However as long as I can get the basics, it'l lbe fine.

Edit: Keep in mind the version I have is for PCI not AGP.

[nightflier]

never got this card to be as capable as it was under Windows

From what I have been reading in the phoronix forums, expect about half the performance under Linux.
ATI/AMD promise big improvements "soon", but don't know if that will extend to older products.

All my Radeons were AGP. Still, I think the odds are good that you should get yours working. Make sure you install the kernel sources first.

These kinds of threads usually digress into ATI vs. nVidia vs. Intel, so real quickly:
- Yes, nVidia drivers will give you about the same performance under both operating systems.
- Yes, Intel has good open source drivers.

[uelsk8s]

I have my ati card running pretty good with the open source drivers that come with 5.8.6-SOHO
the problem IIRC with the proprietary 8.28.8 driver is it will not compile with kernels after 2.6.19

[Will]

So its basicly tossing dice on wether the bundledo pen scource drivers will give me 3d acceleration? Eh well. so long as the basics are covered i can overlook the rest. Looking like wifi is whats going to be the hard part, but thats a question for another thread.

[lagagnon]

...and before and after you install the ATI or Open drivers you can check the performance and rendering info and the differences you get with each by using "glxgears" and "glxinfo" in a terminal.