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I have an ATI graphics card and I want to know if it is supported and what kind of drivers should I be running to get the best features out of it.

Is my card supported in Ubuntu and what drivers will work with my card?

Braiam
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Bruno Pereira
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4 Answers4

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Officially Supported Hardware

To check if your card is supported visit this site.

If you card is not listed there then probably it is too new and simply is not supported by any ATI driver.

Installation of the drivers

Before installing any drivers you need to install some dependencies to your system, do this by running this command

sudo apt-get install build-essential cdbs fakeroot dh-make debhelper debconf libstdc++6 dkms libqtgui4 wget execstack libelfg0 dh-modaliases

Official binary packages from Ubuntu

To install the fglrx packages supplied by Ubuntu open a terminal and install using

sudo apt-get install fglrx fglrx-amdcccle

or search for the Additional Drivers utility in your dash and install one of the detected drivers from the list.

Latest version provided by Ubuntu's Additional Drivers tool (up to this edit's date) is 11.10.

Official ATI binaries from the ATI site

To install the latest ATI 15.9 drivers follow this, people are reporting that updating their driver solves some problems with Unity and Gnome-Shell

You will need to remove all the current fglrx packages from your system and download the driver from the ATI site.

Remove the fglrx drivers if previously installed them (if any of these returns errors ie: file not found, package not found ignore it)

sudo sh /usr/share/ati/fglrx-uninstall.sh
sudo apt-get remove --purge fglrx fglrx_* fglrx-amdcccle* fglrx-dev*

Download the newest ATI driver (current version is 15.9)

wget http://www2.ati.com/drivers/linux/amd-driver-installer-15-9-x86.x86_64.run

If you have a 64 bit system, then install this before anything

sudo apt-get install ia32-libs

Once downloaded go to the file location and set it to run as executable

cd /path_of_the_file
chmod 755 amd-driver-installer-15-9-x86.x86_64.run

For 32/64 bit Ubuntu use these steps to install

sh ./amd-driver-installer-15-9-x86.x86_64.run --buildpkg Ubuntu/oneiric
sudo dpkg -i fglrx*.deb

Once the driver is installed you need to start up a new xorg.conf file with this command

sudo aticonfig --initial -f

Reboot

sudo reboot


Revert back to the open source drivers

After installing drivers from deb packages

Remove all the fglrx traces from your system:

sudo apt-get remove --purge fglrx fglrx_* fglrx-amdcccle* fglrx-dev*

Remove your xorg.conf

sudo rm /etc/X11/xorg.conf

Reinstall xorg

For 32bits systems

sudo apt-get install --reinstall xserver-xorg-core libgl1-mesa-glx libgl1-mesa-dri

For 64bits systems

sudo apt-get install --reinstall libgl1-mesa-glx:i386 libgl1-mesa-glx:amd64 libgl1-mesa-dri:i386 libgl1-mesa-dri:amd64 xserver-xorg-core

Configure Xorg

sudo dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg

Reboot:

sudo reboot

After the reboot all the fglrx packages will be gone, you will be using default ones.

After installing drivers from ATI binary

Remove all the ATI driver files:

sudo sh /usr/share/ati/fglrx-uninstall.sh

Remove your xorg.conf

sudo rm /etc/X11/xorg.conf

Reinstall xorg

For 32bits systems

sudo apt-get install --reinstall xserver-xorg-core libgl1-mesa-glx libgl1-mesa-dri

For 64bits systems

sudo apt-get install --reinstall libgl1-mesa-glx:i386 libgl1-mesa-glx:amd64 libgl1-mesa-dri:i386 libgl1-mesa-dri:amd64 xserver-xorg-core

Configure Xorg

sudo dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg

Reboot:

sudo reboot

After the reboot all the fglrx drivers will be gone, you will be using default ones.

jbowtie
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Bruno Pereira
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    “If you have a 64 bit system, then install this before anything: sudo apt-get install ia32-libs”... Is this remark still valid for Ubuntu 12.04? Given that -as I understand it- packages are now multiarch and ia32-libs should no longer be needed? – Laurens Holst Apr 27 '12 at 23:39
  • To answer my own question, see here: http://askubuntu.com/questions/124292/what-is-the-correct-way-to-install-ati-catalyst-video-drivers-in-12-04-lts – Laurens Holst Apr 28 '12 at 00:37
  • Just a note, the current ATI driver url is http://www2.ati.com/drivers/linux/amd-driver-installer-12-4-x86.x86_64.run – kiswa Jun 07 '12 at 18:17
  • @kiswa I will fix that soon. On a side note, if you see something wrong on the site you can always fix it yourself if its useful ;) – Bruno Pereira Jun 08 '12 at 08:32
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    Thanks, I knew that. ;) I somehow didn't notice it was community wiki! EDIT: Also, I went ahead and edited the 12.3 to 12.4 – kiswa Jun 12 '12 at 17:46
  • I had a very recent problem with Unity, I followed the steps of "Installation of the Drivers" rebooted and it all worked. One this to note is that I am using ati-13.1 driver – whoami Feb 28 '13 at 12:06
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    FYI the ati.com links do not work anymore – Will Sheppard Apr 28 '14 at 15:31
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    The link wget http://www2.ati.com/... is broken. – john_science Mar 31 '15 at 04:22
  • ATI doesn't care for redirects from other sites. Download the latest drivers as needed at http://support.amd.com/en-us/download/linux – Elder Geek Feb 22 '16 at 02:57
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I have found that the default, open driver works best with my ATI card (5450). I had installed a proprietary driver that Ubuntu recommends, but had issues with shutdown crashing. I uninstalled the proprietary driver, and I don't notice any difference in performance at all, but all I use it for is the Compiz effects, no games.

Marty Fried
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There's atleast three drivers available with newer ATI cards. THere's the open source driver. It's reliable but not always the fastest. THen there's the fglrx driver shipped with the operating system or from jockey. It's faster and propably working. And then there's the fglrx driver downloadable from ATI.

The open source drivers is actually quite good. Try that one first.

Antti Rytsölä
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Many ATI video cards work well with Ubuntu automatically. To check that 3d acceleration works with your card, see the section called "Introduction to 3D Video Acceleration". If it does not work, this procedure should activate it.

Install the xorg-driver-fglrx package from the Restricted repository (see Chapter 2, Adding, Removing and Updating Applications).

You now need to configure the computer to use the new driver so run this command in a terminal:

sudo dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg When the dialogue appears and asks whether to do automatic detection of your video, pick Yes.

When asked to select a driver, pick fglrx.

Follow the remaining instructions as appropriate.

Restart your machine for changes to take effect.