Dear ATI,

I really like your GPU hardware, it kinda kicks ass, but the drivers are another story. Please make some linux drivers that don't suck completely.  I am sick of driver installs that break every time the kernel gets updated or I switch monitor configurations.  Soon, I will trade off my Radeon 6850 for an older nVidia part just because NV drivers actually work.  If you want me back as a customer, please put more effort into making linux drivers.

Sincerely,

Ben

Setting Fan speed for AMD GPUs under linux

If you need to set the fan speed for your ATI / AMD card manually for whatever reason, this is how it is done. I assume you have the fglrx drivers installed and configured correctly.

Type in terminal the following line (including quotes):

aticonfig --pplib-cmd "get fanspeed 0"

This command fetches the current fan speed.

Set the speed to something higher using this command:

aticonfig --pplib-cmd "set fanspeed 0 X"

X is the fan speed %.  In both commands 0 represents the first video card in the system.

ATI Now Offering Radeon Drivers for Windows 7 Beta

Recently, ATI has released a Windows 7 specific driver package for Radeon graphics cards. The download includes the Catalyst control center and the driver version 9.3 . They are also offering a 64 bit version in case you have an x64 edition of Windows 7 beta like myself. Download at http://game.amd.com/us-en/drivers_catalyst.aspx. Keep in mind of course that along with a beta operating system comes pre-release drivers.