Support For ATI Sapphire Radeon Graphics Card

Redefined Horizons wrote:
> I talked a buddy of mine into installing Linux on his new computer in
> a dual-boot environment with MS Windows. He was able to get the
> operating system installed without any major problems.
>
> However, he is having some problem with his graphics card. He is using
> the ATI Sapphire Radeon 1650. Does anyone now if it is still necessary
> to go through these steps to install support for the video card?

If his problems are anything like mine he would do better buying a non-ATI
replacement! Mine is a recently purchased Sapphire X1550 and it - predictably -
doesn't work as anything other than VESA, which limits it to a stretched (very)
1280 x 1024 resolution, instead of the VIewSonic's native 1680 x 1050.

It doesn't even work with Windows XP (apologies for the language) via the DVI
port and neither Sapphire, nor ATI are prepared to offer useful support.

Best of luck.

Peter HB

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Redefined Horizons wrote:
> However, he is having some problem with his graphics card. He is using
> the ATI Sapphire Radeon 1650. Does anyone now if it is still necessary
> to go through these steps to install support for the video card?
>
> http://www.debianhelp.org/node/4447

I have used 2 different X1650Pro cards since December with Etch.
That may not be exactly the same as X1650, but my bet is that your
friend's will work fine with the proprietary drivers.
The instructions on the link you provided aren't quite the steps I
follow, but if they worked for someone else they will probably work
for you. (There is more than one way to get the same result here.)

I should point out that any changes to your kernel will require
uninstalling and reinstalling the ATI driver. That may annoy your
friend a lot, compared with how things work with Windows. Updating to
new (proprietary) drivers involves the same process.
If the Debian fglrx packages support this card (last time I checked
they did NOT, but you should check again) that would make your life a
whole lot easier -- updating the driver, for whatever reason, would be
so much easier. The main problem with that approach is the lag
between current ATI drivers and the Debian packages. The ATI
proprietary drivers since January have performed much better than
previous ones.

HTH,
Dave W.

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good