I have a Dell Studio 1537 with an ATI Mobility Radeon HD3450 and i recently installed openSUSE 11.0 on it. Currently it has both Vista and openSUSE. now i can boot openSUSE only in failsafe mode. when i boot it in normal mode, i can hear the startup sound of openSUSE but nothing comes on the screen. I have realized that ATI can be a pain in the ass with openSUSE but which drivers am i supposed to download, and what am i supposed to do with them. btw this is my first time with linux so a little generosity in the explanation will be appreciated!
Welcome to SUSE and have a lot of fun…
the first thing is to get the ATI repository into the system. go to yast,and then open repositories it will allow you to download the latest updates for ATI drivers., once you open click on the add button,then checkmark the community repositories then checkmark the one that says ATI then press ok and let the system finish, then what you want to do is run your updates and it will find any updates for ATI, this should help you with any problems you might have
ATI - openSUSE
check here, shld help.
if u can’t get the GUI running just goto console with Ctrl+Alt+F1 or Ctrl+Alt+F6 and run the commands there to configure SaX2.
Welcome Achu! 
This should help you in installing the drivers: Configuring graphics cards.
There’s a section there for ATI and Nvidia, so it should help you install and configuring the drivers.
Hope this helps!