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No proprietary drivers in "Software Sources"

Posted: Sun Jan 13, 2013 2:28 pm
by fjdz
Hi,

I have Linux Mint 14 Cinnamon, and I would like to use the proprietary driver for my graphics card. But when I go to "Software Sourses" and "Additional Drivers" it just says "No proprietary drivers are in use", and there is no list of drivers to choose from. Below is the info I have about my graphics card:

Code: Select all

lspci | grep "VGA"
02:00.0 VGA compatible controller: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] nee ATI RV730 PRO [Radeon HD 4650]
What might be the problem? Is it possible to install the driver in some other way that through "Software sources"?

Re: No proprietary drivers in "Software Sources"

Posted: Sun Jan 13, 2013 2:41 pm
by zerozero
amd dropped support for the 2xxx/4xxx series
sorry to say this but your card is not officially supported

there's an unsupported workaround that involves downgrading xorg and installing some legacy drivers but unless you know exactly what you are doing and are willing to accept the risks i won't advise that route; furthermore not all the reports i read are positive so the risk involved is great and is not granted that it will work.

Re: No proprietary drivers in "Software Sources"

Posted: Sun Jan 13, 2013 2:48 pm
by fjdz
Ok. Thanks for your reply! I guess I'll have to continue using the driver I have at the moment. The reason I wanted the proprietary driver is that my fan seems a bit over-active at the moment, and I think it has to do with this driver. In Windows the fan runs at full speed only when I'm playing games.

Re: No proprietary drivers in "Software Sources"

Posted: Sun Jan 13, 2013 3:32 pm
by zerozero
the driver you are using is the open source and yes it is worst in power efficiency (you can see that in your comp running hotter than it would with the prop. drivers)

the option you have is install mint 13 (where you still have support for that card) and enabling the backports (see here http://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=2225) you'll get some of the features of nadia into maya.

Re: No proprietary drivers in "Software Sources"

Posted: Tue Jan 15, 2013 7:11 am
by fjdz
Is there perhaps some other way to reduce the fan speed a bit, without over heating the computer? Here is the output of the "sensors" command:

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radeon-pci-0200
Adapter: PCI adapter
temp1:        +61.0°C  

k10temp-pci-00c3
Adapter: PCI adapter
temp1:        +24.0°C  (high = +70.0°C)
(I was only running firefox and some other standard programs when the temperature was measured.) Clearly the second value is very low, but I don't know about the first one. A quick search on the internet seems to indicate that 60 C is pretty normal for this graphics card.