I have a laptop with Radeon Xpress 200M graphics card running openSUSE 11.2 and i am looking for drivers but it looks like that Global Provider of Innovative Graphics, Processors and Media Solutions | AMD don’t have drivers for this graphics card. So what can i do now? Can I find those drivers somewhere else or is there a workaround or something?
Without drivers installed, even tuxracer is laggy 
There’s been a recent thread discussing this ATI chipset. Look for Catalyst 9.3 thread.
ATI have dropped support a touch prematurely, with the FOSS Radeon driver not quite ready for prime time yet on these sets.
Have you tried the fglrx drivers?
HowTo for openSUSE 11.2 is here (in brief): Install fglrx drivers for ATI in openSUSE 11.2
Don’t know whether they support your card though
swerdna wrote:
>
> Have you tried the fglrx drivers?
>
> HowTo for openSUSE 11.2 is here (in brief): ‘Install fglrx drivers for
> ATI in openSUSE 11.2’ (http://tinyurl.com/yjngdqq)
>
> Don’t know whether they support your card though
>
>
Look for a posting from me in reply to the thread title of: “Re: Issues with
Newly defined ATI legacy Cards”
The short answer, is to use the
http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/X11:/XOrg/openSUSE_11.2 repository
and update all your xorg-x11* and associated packages using this repo. It’s
worked very well for me and a few others so far. I’m also not using
/etc/X11/xorg.conf and I have not had to use sax2. My Xpress 200M (chip
5975) is working fine with no more black screens 
The short answer, is to use the
http://download.opensuse.org/reposit.../openSUSE_11.2 repository
and update all your xorg-x11* and associated packages using this repo. It’s
worked very well for me and a few others so far. I’m also not using
/etc/X11/xorg.conf and I have not had to use sax2. My Xpress 200M (chip
5975) is working fine with no more black screens
This sounds promising for those of us who have older ATI hardware (X200M X300 chipsets stc). I’ll make sure I refer back to this thread when I finally get around to installing openSUSE 11.2.
By ‘working very well’, do you mean with desktop effects enabled or not?
weighty foe wrote:
>
> By ‘working very well’, do you mean with desktop effects enabled or
> not?
>
>
No desktop effects. I thought I had them on, but no. They are enabled, but
“System Settings” > “Desktop” says “Compositing is temporarily disabled”.
I’ll try sax2 -r -m=ati later and see if I can get it going.
By ‘working very well’, I was really referring to the fact that it displays
2d windows without black screening, so it’s certainly working very well
compared to when it was barely working at all.
You might as well not go to the trouble of adding the X11 repo, because “sax2 -r 0=radeon” works with your card using the normal repositories provided the fglrx RPMs aren’t installed (or are uninstalled).
swerdna wrote:
>
> You might as well not go to the trouble of adding the X11 repo, because
> “sax2 -r 0=radeon” works with your card using the normal repositories
> provided the fglrx RPMs aren’t installed (or are uninstalled).
>
Not for me it doesn’t. I had to use the X11 repo and update to the latest
X11 rpm’s. I had tried “sax2 -r 0=radeon”, “sax2 -r 0=ati”, no xorg.conf.
It was not until I tried the X11 repo that I have now got to a stable
useable (ok, with effects) display manager and I’m still currently not using
an xorg.conf.
Steve Barrell wrote:
> swerdna wrote:
>
>
>>
>> You might as well not go to the trouble of adding the X11 repo, because
>> “sax2 -r 0=radeon” works with your card using the normal repositories
>> provided the fglrx RPMs aren’t installed (or are uninstalled).
>>
>
> Not for me it doesn’t. I had to use the X11 repo and update to the latest
> X11 rpm’s. I had tried “sax2 -r 0=radeon”, “sax2 -r 0=ati”, no xorg.conf.
> It was not until I tried the X11 repo that I have now got to a stable
> useable (ok, with effects) display manager and I’m still currently not
> using an xorg.conf.
I meant to say “with no effects”.
I suspect the 200M has limited or does not have any 3D hardware
acceleration, which may well prohibit some or all desktop effects.
Fortunately, my 11.1 x64 home-built desktop where this post is coming from,
is running just great with desktop effects and KDE 4.3.3, albeit with a
somewhat ageing nvidia 6600GT graphics card (~5 years old) and proprietary
drivers. I was thinking of going for an ATI 5000 series card for it, but I
think I’ll stick with nvidia cards, based on ATI’s lack of support for 3+
year old chipsets such as the Xpress 200 series.
No, it does. Many years ago I had three CPUs with onboard Xpress 200M video and all supported 3D in windows.Also after moving one to linux (they are old celeron machines) 3D games like chromium run fine in OS 11.0/KDE3.5 with the proprietary fglrx driver.
It’s just that ATI is (prematurely) dropping support for them.
It’s just that ATI is (prematurely) dropping support for them.
Well said. I would like to think that the radeon driver could inherit the required 3D support. Is this likely?
I’d guess it depends on ATI, they may release the code if these chipset generations don’t include any technology they consider strategic, and someone there takes the time to do it.
Personally I favor nvidia, which became a problem as I also prefer AMD processors. Today, with integrated motherboards, it’s either AMD+ATI or intel+nvidia.
I had to compromise in a new athlon 2 mobo, very nice (integrated firewire, HDMI, etc.) but with ATI graphics. Although it’s not really difficult to install the driver (but nowhere as easy as nvidia’s), the graphics performance do feel inferior to the (older) nvidia mobos I have.
In my case, I have a ThinkPad Z60m for work and play, with Intel Pentium M 2Ghz CPU and ATI MOBILITY RADEON X300 GPU combination. Although I have no complaints with the quality and durability of this laptop, if I’d had the choice at the time, I would have preferred nvidia over the ATI hardware. I’m disappointed that AMD/ATI has only supported the hardware for just over 3 years though.
deano ferrari wrote:
>
> In my case, I have a ThinkPad Z60m for work and play, with Intel Pentium
> M 2Ghz CPU and ATI MOBILITY RADEON X300 GPU combination. Although I have
> no complaints with the quality and durability of this laptop, if I’d had
> the choice at the time, I would have preferred nvidia over the ATI
> hardware. I’m disappointed that AMD/ATI has only supported the hardware
> for just over 3 years though.
>
>
ATI dropping hardware support for 3+ year old chipsets/cards does not
encourage me to buy anything with their chips again. If I were to buy the
latest and greatest HD 5970 (would need to raid a bank to get the money
first! 
), should I expect it to be “retired” in three years time? I
don’t want to take the chance.
BTW - for some as yet unexplained reason, my 200M is working with desktop
effects - I now have wobbly windows and transparency. I also tried extreme
tux racer, but it’s worse than a 1930’s silent movie - getting 5 fps. I’m
also getting some black screen boots again. Double drat. Need to see if I
can see what’s changed - maybe some updates I applied have done something.
Currently have to boot using init 3, login, then init 5 to avoid black
screens. I’m wondering if it’s a startup timing problem - maybe the wrong
things are running in parallel at the wrong time or something like that.
I installed the fglrx drivers and that made 3D acceleration activate, BUT then sysinfo stoped working (known issue) giving and error message (died unexpecticaly…). Removing those fglrx drivers solved the problem but now no 3D acceleration.
The same computer (I had to replace the hard drive and install OpenSuse again) was working fine with 3D before the new installation, therefore I suspect I am using the wrong fglrx drives…but I do not know which are the right ones anymore!
OpenSuse 11.0 Linux 2.6.25.20-0.5-pae i686
Radeon XPRESS 200M 5A62 (PCIE)
I installed the fglrx drivers and that made 3D acceleration activate, BUT…
OpenSuse 11.0 Linux 2.6.25.20-0.5-pae i686
This thread concerns openSUSE 11.2, so you should start a new thread if you need help with proprietary ATI drivers with openSUSE 11.0.
I also have the Radeon 200m card. I did a clean install of Opensuse 11.2 on my laptop because I loved the system and it worked great on the Live CD. A few people here tried to help me get it working but I had to return to Ubuntu. I really like Opensuse 11.2 and would love to get it working on my machine, but it kept kicking me to terminal upon boot. Could you help me figure out how to get my Radeon 200m card working or write me a set of instructions? It would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks!
Well let’s check out what’s happening. But first, is openSUSE still on the hard drive, maybe multibooting with Ubuntu? Tell us where you’re at.
No, I re-clean installed Ubuntu. Old CPU suggested I should wait a few weeks for things to get sorted out and I did not want to leave my computer in a broken state.