[mythtv-users] ATI Video Drivers

[Jonathan Rogers]

On Mon, 2006-12-18 at 06:38 +0000, Nick Morrott wrote:
> On 15/12/06, Brad Goodman <brad at bradgoodman.com> wrote:
> > I am having an enormously difficult time getting the video drivers set up
> > correctly.
> >
> > What I know is that I have fglrx, drm, radeon, agpgart and via-agp that all
> > need to play together.
> 
> fglrx is the closed source ATI binary driver. radeon is the open
> source driver. You should use one or the other. The fglrx driver can
> use either the kernel's AGP support, or the AGP support in the fglrx
> driver itself. If it detects kernel support, it will not try to use
> its own AGP support. As you have seen, the best way to ensure that the
> fglrx's AGP support is used is to recompile the kernel without the AGP
> support.

I recommend trying X.org's free radeon driver first, unless you need TV
out. I've used a Radeon 8500 and a 9600 and I've tried both "radeon" and
fglrx. The free "radeon" driver is much easier to set up and definitely
gives me better quality video on the VGA and DVI outputs, though it
doesn't support TV out. Also, if you need OpenGL (you shouldn't for
MythTV unless you absolutely must have the cool new menu fade effects)
you may need fglrx.

Jonathan Rogers