I have a Dell 15R 2nd Gen with an ATI 6470m GPU and Intel HD graphics 3000 (form the i5 processor). I just installed Ubuntu 11.10 and can't get the graphics card to install. In system information it comes up as unknown. I've heard that there currently isn't any way to switch between ATI & Intel graphics processors on Ubuntu, I don't know how true that is. I just want the graphics card working properly. I've been searching a while now but no luck. Any help and information will be most appreciated.
Ubuntu – ATI 6470m & intel HD graphics 3000 drivers
atidelldriversgraphics
Related Solutions
The display of the graphics card name in System Settings often does not work (just search askubuntu, there are dozens of questions about it and the answer is always the same...). I wouldn't worry about it and only trust other tools to find out which graphics driver is in use.
Your laptop obviously has a recent Intel CPU, which includes a graphics unit. This is the reason, an Intel graphics card is shown in lspci.
Your xorg.conf hints that atm you are using fglrx, and it seems to be working. To see, if the driver is really active, simply try to run fglrxinfo. Another tool that you might take a look at is amdcccle, the catalyst control center. It will give you a lot of details (if fglrx is installed).
Since you installed the driver from the AMD website, "additional drivers" will not show any driver in its list as active (since you didn't use official driver packages for Ubuntu, but the download from the AMD website).
I don't know about your laptop specifically, but you might find this guide useful: Installing Catalyst with Intel/AMD hybrid graphics
Oh, and btw, the preferred way to install the driver downloaded from the AMD website would be to make distribution specific packages and then to install those. By this, you can ensure that it stays working when you get Kernel updates. If you simply install it, it might be, that you have to reinstall it every time, a Kernel update is installed.
The best answer is: install a newer version of Ubuntu, with a recent kernel.
Xubuntu 14.04 works great on that computer, and the GPU is never too hot.
As this answer explains, "New kernel 3.13 has an advanced dynamic power management of the ATI card with the radeon driver.
Also, "In normal conditions the ATI discrete is off."
(When the cooler gets up now, in most cases it is not because of the GPU, but of the CPU.)
(The best way of monitoring GPU temperature in Xubuntu 14.04 when using the OpenSource driver.)
Sub-answers:
Is ATI Radeon 6470M supported? YES.
Considering ATI: is there a driver already installed when installing Ubuntu? YES. It's the opensource Radeon driver just mentioned
GL_RENDERER = Gallium 0.4 on AMD CAICOS
GL_VERSION = 3.0 Mesa 10.1.3
GL_VENDOR = X.Org
Considering Intel card: that is the one that is mostly used (and had been already supported) while under normal conditions the ATI stays discrete (in contrast with older versions of the kernel when it was abnormally used at full capacity and was getting hot).
So, is there an "ATI issue" for this machine? NO, as far as I am concerned, as I do not use possible video intensive features that might involve the need for the proprietary driver.
The comments and answers of the user Rmano were very useful to me in understanding what the problem was and in articulating this answer.
Best Answer
I have an intel core i3 with hybrid graphics too (ati+intel) and the only solution that i found was to disable the intel card on bios to use the ATI on ubuntu. Then i installed the ATI driver selecting restricted drivers. Currently, hybrid graphics isn't well supported on linux so, maybe its better we wait a few more months.
Edit: If you want, you can read the comunity documents about hybrid graphics and how to change both graphics but as i said, its better to wait a few more months for more support.
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/HybridGraphics