Installing the ATI Catalyst Drivers for 13.04

These instructions will install Catalyst v13.4, in order to see what is the latest available driver visit theOfficial AMD Website

Instructions

Check your card

Only RadeonHD cards are supported by Catalyst drivers.

To know which card is installed in your system type the following command in a terminal:

lspci | grep VGA

It may show you your graphic card.

Before continue please read first! Which Radeon cards are no longer supported by ATI's Catalyst:

• Cards that no longer can make use of AMD Catalyst drivers and are limited to open-source drivers:

  ATI Radeon 9500-9800, Xpress200-1250, 690G, 740G, X300-X2500, Mobility RadeonHD 2300

• Cards that doesn't work with AMD Catalyst in Xserver versions newer than v1.13 and Linux Kernel newer than v3.5:

  ATI RadeonHD 2x00 - 4xx0 cards

  These cards can make use of the Catalyst Legacy driver, but only if you downgrade your Xserver version. This can be done really easily by following the instructions given at LaunchPad. This PPA downgrades the Xserver and install a patched version of fglrx that supports kernel version 3.5.

Removing (purging) existing drivers

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

Install Dependencies

• For 32-bit systems:

  sudo apt-get install build-essential cdbs dh-make dkms execstack dh-modaliases linux-headers-generic fakeroot libqtgui4
  

• For 64-bit systems:

  sudo apt-get install build-essential cdbs dh-make dkms execstack dh-modaliases linux-headers-generic fakeroot libqtgui4 lib32gcc1
  

Download Catalyst package

cd ~/
mkdir catalyst
cd catalyst/

In order to have the latest drivers installed check if v13.4 is the latest offered in AMD Webpage, if v13.4 isn't the latest you may want to manually download the drivers from there, extract the zip file to ~/catalyst/ folder and then skip the following first two commands and execute the last replacing the package name with the name of the extracted one in ~/catalyst/ folder

wget http://www2.ati.com/drivers/linux/amd-catalyst-13.4-linux-x86.x86_64.zip
unzip amd-catalyst-13.4-linux-x86.x86_64.zip
chmod +x amd-catalyst-13.4-linux-x86.x86_64.run

Install Drivers

Navigate to the extracted package (~/catalyst/), make sure it is the only .run file in that folder, and type in the following command

sudo sh *.run --buildpkg Ubuntu/raring

An AMD Catalyst window will open to deploy the .deb packages wait until it finishes and then execute this command to proceed:

sudo dpkg -i fglrx*.deb

Configuration

• Generic Configuration

  This will work for most people

  sudo aticonfig --initial -f
  

• Minimal Config

  A very basic /etc/X11/xorg.conf file might be what you need if you have a new card that's not fully supported by aticonfig. Here follows the entirety of a minimal xorg.conf file for the Radeon HD 6870:

  Section "Device"
   Identifier "ATI radeon 6870"
   Driver "fglrx"
  EndSection
  

• X2/Dual GPU Cards

  Only use if you have an X2 card (e.g. 4870X2 or 5970) !!Do not use for two separate cards in crossfire!!

  sudo amdconfig --initial -f --adapter=all
  

• Dual/Multi Monitors

  If you have a dual monitor display (also known as "Big Desktop")

  sudo aticonfig --initial -f
  sudo aticonfig --set-pcs-str="DDX,EnableRandR12,FALSE"
  

  Be advised that you may need to manually set the correct refresh rate for your second monitor through catalyst. See this threat.

  If it occurs "The system is running in low-graphics mode" error, you need to enter the terminal first, type sudo apt-get install fglrx. After rebooting, all problems should be solved. 

Before Rebooting

Just in case, write down these instructions for the case you get a black screen:

• If the X server fails to start, switch to a new TTY using Ctrl+Alt+F2. Log in, and attempt to start the X server.

  sudo startx
  

• If it fails to start, you will likely see a stacktrace, and immediately above it will be something along the lines of "Could not stat /usr/lib64/fglrx/switchlibGL" which means that you failed to copy the executables properly. Ctrl+C, and immediately copy the switchlibGL and switchlibglx executables to the fglrx folder in /usr/lib64/ or /usr/lib32/.

• If all else fails, revert your xorg.conf and reboot:

  sudo cp /etc/X11/xorg.conf.orig /etc/X11/xorg.conf
  

  This should return your original display.

• If anything worked, try these key combinations in this order:

Ctrl+Alt+F1 ; Ctrl+Alt+Backspace ; Alt+PrntScr+r ; Alt+PrntScr+s ; Alt+PrntScr+e ;Alt+PrntScr+i ; Alt+PrntScr+n ; Alt+PrntScr+u ; Alt+PrntScr+b ; and in the last case holdCtrl+Alt+SysRq (SysRq usually is the same as Print Screen) and type very slowly R E I S U B.

Test your Installation

Restart your system and type in the terminal:

fglrxinfo

The output may be similar to this if everything went fine:

display: :0  screen: 0
OpenGL vendor string: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc.
OpenGL renderer string: AMD Radeon HD 7900 Series (This line may be different depending on what graphics card you are using.)
OpenGL version string: 4.2.12217 Compatibility Profile Context 12.104 (This line may be different depending on what graphics card and Catalyst version you are using.)

Now try:

fgl_glxgears

If you experience issues or a hang, you may need to disable fast TLS:

sudo aticonfig --tls=0

That is it!

If the Ubuntu Unity destroys, try this command:

dconf reset -f /org/compiz/ 
unity --reset-icons &disown

Source