# ATI 5870 on Freebsd?



## oxymoron (Jul 1, 2010)

Hi,

Downloading freebsd as we speak, but wondering is my ati5870 supported? From what I googled 3D support is a no no, but what driver supports 2D so I can watch avi, youtube and surf the web?


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## zeiz (Jul 1, 2010)

Hopefully radeonhd but maybe radeonhd-devel or simply ati.
I can play youtube and serf web with just vesa (no 3D of course).


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## adamk (Jul 1, 2010)

radeonhd does not.  Development on it has stopped.

xf86-video-ati (aka. the radeon driver) supports 2D modesetting, but still no acceleration (either 2D or 3D).  This means there is no composite support or video acceleration.

2D acceleration should be available relatively soon on Linux, but then someone will have to port it to FreeBSD.

Adam


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## unsobill (Jul 25, 2011)

Year later - same issue - HD5870 on Freebsd 8.0 Stable - running xorg get black screen and nothing else... x(


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## adamk (Jul 25, 2011)

If you are simply running 'Xorg' and black screen is all you should get.  

The HD5870 doesn't have any acceleration at the moment, but you should be able to get basic modesetting, at least, with the latest version of the radeon driver in the FreeBSD ports tree.

Adam


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## unsobill (Jul 25, 2011)

When i run xorg on other pc i get grey gui with 3 minimal windows and sometimes a clock.
Am i missing configuration piece here? Which driver i should install and how
Thnks


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## adamk (Jul 25, 2011)

By default, X just starts with a simple window manager (twm), 3 xterms, and a clock.  What you're seeing is perfectly normal.  You should configure 'startx' to use whatever window manager or desktop environment you want:

http://www.freebsd.org/doc/handbook/x11-wm.html


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## unsobill (Jul 26, 2011)

But thats the thing... I dont even get twm on bootup... Only black screen and nothing esle... And thats after i run startx


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## wblock@ (Jul 26, 2011)

Is there a mouse pointer?  Does ctrl-alt-f1 take you to a console screen?  If so, X is working, and .xinitrc needs adjustment.  Or possibly whatever else is starting X, like /etc/ttys or gdm_enable or whatever.

Otherwise, show the contents of xorg.conf and use pastebin.com to show the contents of /var/log/Xorg.0.log.

If X is locking up, adding Option "Log" "sync" to xorg.conf before running it helps to make sure a file is written.


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