This post and the next few posts refer to upgrading a driver on an existing installation to the proprietary ATI driver.
For the procedure on a fresh ubuntu install, see the post titled "Fresh Install ATI Radeon (Ubuntu 10.04 LTS)" in this thread.
viewtopic.php?f=2&t=1215&p=6089#p6327
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I was a happy Matrox User until I upgraded to Ubuntu 10.04 LTS a few days ago. Instead of just recompiling, I got the error-messages that are already described in other posts (which I should have read beforehand

After some google searching I decided to dump the Matrox P690 Card(s) and go for a cheap ATI Radeon.
Old setup:
- 2x P690 (1x PCIe x16, 1x PCIe x1) with DVI connectors.
- 3x DVI LCD Screens.
New Setup:
- 1x ATI HD 4350 with DVI and HDMI Port
- 1x HDMI to DVI 2meter cable.
- 2x DVI LCD Screens.
Basic Procedure, YMMV: (See other docs, but maybe this helps to ease the switch for you.)
- select card: Multiple Vendors, multiple Hardware/CPU versions, multiple interfaces (DVI, HDMI, Displayport etc.)
- I got a DVI/HDMI Combo card. That one required a HDMI to DVI converter cable (EUR 10,-) to be used with two DVI screens.
It is passively cooled, so no extra fan in the box. But it is two slots wide! Make sure it fits inside your box.
- Download the latest Matrox Drivers beforehand.
- Install RTFM (http://wiki.cchtml.com/index.php/Ubuntu ... tion_Guide) for proprietary driver.
- What is different:
- don´t manually mess around with the xorg.conf!
- on ATI, xorg.conf is built/created via the "aticonfig" program that will be installed together with the driver.
- "aticonfig -f --initial=dual-head --screen-layout=right --tls=1 --xinerama=on" is 90% of what you need for a dual-head setup.
-f: override xorg.conf (may need a rm -f xorg.conf before anyway.) --initial: create from scratch --initial=dual-head create for dual-head.
- "aticonfig -h" is the help screen for details, very long...
- ati has its own "registry" in /etc/ati/amdpcsdb This file contains additional settings that will be loaded by the driver but that are not in xorg.conf. Sometimes this amdpcsdb needs to be updated when X is not running to be effective.
- also there is a "default" copy in /etc/ati/amdpcsdb.default. I read somewhere (didn´t try), that sometimes you may want to delete the amdpcsdb, copy the .default to the basic version an re-apply the aticonfig settings again.
- I needed to set a different Video Output in Mplayer.
- they have a new 2d Accelerator, configuring it is described in the cchtml wiki-page. I did not manage to disable the old accelerator - will give it a try on my next ATI-driver reinstall. (Probably I played around too much with the setup when I didn´t have dual-head working.)
Issues/Problems:
- Initial setup w/o dual-head but with two screens that were cloned, the display and scrolling in Firefox etc was terribly slow and buggy. (Here I probably screwed up on the amdpcsdb settings). After I got the dual-head xorg.conf right, everything worked fine.
Compared to my first Matrox-setup this one was a piece of cake.
Reinstalling the ATI-Driver (Version update) seems to require a "full kill" of the existing files. (All documented in the wiki above.)
For multiple cards: What I found (but didn´t test): use "aticonfig -f --adapter=all --initial=dual-head" to get all adapters for the dual-head setting... YMMV.
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Bye Bye Matrox on Linux. Those two boards will probably end up on Ebay.