Fedora 11 x86_64, ATI HD4870, and RPM Fusion's Catalyst Drivers...

[Bruno Wolff III]

On Thu, Nov 05, 2009 at 14:57:38 -0800,
  suvayu ali <fatkasuvayu+linux at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> I think although on paper 4850 and 4870s are the same, they behave
> very differently. I used the radeon drivers until a few weeks back,
> about the time when quakelive received support on linux. I was never
> able to turn on desktop effects successfully, either with radeon or
> radeonhd. It was the same even for the F12 LiveCD for the Radeon test
> day.[1] The penultimate entry is mine. But I have to admit things have
> improved by leaps and bounds over the last few months, and I am
> waiting for the day when I can switch to open source drivers.

A number of bugs were fixed about two weeks ago. You might want to try again.
Also you'll probably want to install mesa-dri-drivers-experimental to get
3d acceleration and kernel mode setting for your card.

If you have still have probelms filing bugs will help.