Thought it was about time to push this topic again
'Cause I was experiencing the same problem with my ATI Radeon 9600 Mobility (M10)... I'm not an excessive gamer anymore but I WANT MY TUX RACER
There actually are people you got their Linux to recognize their ATI cards as capable of displaying/using 3D -- but none of whom I met could help me
Well... it did work for me so maybe you'll find yourself a solution by typing "3Ddiag --dri" on your konsole. It gives you some hints of what to change in your /etc/X11/XF86Config in order to get 3D running.