2-d Games

Hi All,

I'm running SuSE off a laptop. Back before there became the great game 3-D acclertor push I'd never got involved in gaming.

I've got the ATI Mobility 9200 chip. I've tried to launch a bunch of gmaes off the KDE / SuSE offering, but I usually get the error that 3-D is not enabled.

Anything that I can do to get into gaming at the 3-D level or interesting 2-D games?

Adler

don't know much about the ati drivers but have you tried installing new drivers? which driver are you using now? if it's a generic driver (vesa or fbdev) it doesn't support 3d so you need new drivers. that will probably cause a headache from what i've read here and other forums. i have a laptop too, but with an nvidia chip. that's not flawless either but a lot easier. hope someone with an ati card can help you out.

on the subject of 2d games, frozen bubble rulez, but you probably know it already. i've had some success running old windblows game in winex/cedega, red alert 2 for example

TiMiN8R,

Thanks for your post.

I'm not sure if I can turn a 2-D chipset into a 3-D set-up. I'll look into your suggestions about winex/cedega.

Adler

I'm not sure if I can turn a 2-D chipset into a 3-D set-up. I'll look into your suggestions about winex/cedega.

I'm not sure what gives you the idea that the ATI Mobility Radeon 9200 is a 2D chipset. Clearly, it is not. See the ATI Linux driver release notes and you'll see that your graphics card is listed as one of the supported units of this 3D driver. You can also see the ATI homepage for this card where the card is described as a 3D card. You just need to install the ATI drivers. They are located here. Download the two files, print out the instructions and play 3D games.

Originally posted by anthro398@Nov 3 2004, 14:30
You just need to install the ATI drivers. They are located here. Download the two files, print out the instructions and play 3D games.

If only it were that simple. My experience with ATI cards in the past wasn't. Good luck with that though; I've heard the 9200 and below lines of cards have much better support than the newer chipsets. <_<

I've been through 4 driver installs, all successful, with my ATI RADEON 9600 Pro. Not a bit of trouble, not once. The only reason I reinstall is either a kernel upgrade or a driver upgrade. I can't imagine why you'd want to be so discouraging, but there are plenty of people who don't have problems so I suggest, Adler, that you try this. Look at it this way, yesterday you thought you had a 2D card, tomorrow you could have full 3D hardware acceleration.

There's no reason not to try. Only a lot of people have had a lot of troubles installing ATI drivers. Just a little warning, but yes, go ahead and install them.

If you've got problems, you know where to turn

Originally posted by anthro398@Nov 3 2004, 15:50
I've been through 4 driver installs, all successful, with my ATI RADEON 9600 Pro. Not a bit of trouble, not once. The only reason I reinstall is either a kernel upgrade or a driver upgrade. I can't imagine why you'd want to be so discouraging, but there are plenty of people who don't have problems so I suggest, Adler, that you try this. Look at it this way, yesterday you thought you had a 2D card, tomorrow you could have full 3D hardware acceleration.

I've been through just as many installs with a 9800 Pro, and had no success. That very 9800 Pro actually overheated and fried itself after the last install, so I have a very low opinion of ATI products. I was not trying to discourage, only warn that there may be problems, based on my personal experience. This is in no way downplaying yours, as it is just as valid.

Could it have been a hardware issue all along and not a driver issue?

Originally posted by anthro398@Nov 3 2004, 20:17
Could it have been a hardware issue all along and not a driver issue?

That's entirely possible, as I've never again tried an ATI card to compare results. I just know I've seen a lot of users on other Linux boards I frequent that had the same problems I did (minus the melting thing, of course), so I'm assuming that wasn't the case. :huh: