radeon
is an Xorg driver for ATI RADEON based video cards. It contains
full support for 8, 15, 16 and 24 bit pixel depths, dual-head setup,
flat panel, hardware 2D acceleration, hardware 3D acceleration, hardware cursor,
XV extension, and the Xinerama extension.
SUPPORTED HARDWARE
The
radeon
driver supports PCI and AGP video cards based on the following ATI chips
Please refer to xorg.conf(5) for general configuration
details. This section only covers configuration details specific to this
driver.
The driver auto-detects all device information necessary to initialize
the card. However, if you have problems with auto-detection, you can
specify:
VideoRam - in kilobytes
MemBase - physical address of the linear framebuffer
IOBase - physical address of the MMIO registers
ChipID - PCI DEVICE ID
In addition, the following driver
Options
are supported:
Option N'34'SWcursorN'34' N'34'booleanN'34'
Selects software cursor. The default is
off.
Option N'34'NoAccelN'34' N'34'booleanN'34'
Enables or disables all hardware acceleration.
The default is to
enable
hardware acceleration.
Option N'34'Dac6BitN'34' N'34'booleanN'34'
Enables or disables the use of 6 bits per color component when in 8 bpp
mode (emulates VGA mode). By default, all 8 bits per color component
are used.
The default is
off.
Option N'34'VideoKeyN'34' N'34'integerN'34'
This overrides the default pixel value for the YUV video overlay key.
The default value is
0x1E.
Option N'34'ScalerWidthN'34' N'34'integerN'34'
This sets the overlay scaler buffer width. Accepted values range from 1024 to
2048, divisible by 64, values other than 1536 and 1920 may not make sense
though. Should be set automatically, but noone has a clue what the limit is
for which chip. If you think quality is not optimal when playing back HD video
(with horizontal resolution larger than this setting), increase this value, if
you get an empty area at the right (usually pink), decrease it. Note this only
affects the "true" overlay via xv, it won't affect things like textured video.
The default value is either 1536 (for most chips) or 1920.
Option N'34'AGPModeN'34' N'34'integerN'34'
Set AGP data transfer rate.
(used only when DRI is enabled)
1 -- 1x (before AGPv3 only)
2 -- 2x (before AGPv3 only)
4 -- 4x
8 -- 8x (AGPv3 only)
others -- invalid
The default is to
leave it unchanged.
Option N'34'AGPFastWriteN'34' N'34'booleanN'34'
Enable AGP fast writes. Enabling this is frequently the cause of
instability. Used only when the DRI is enabled. If you enable
this option you will get *NO* support from developers.
The default is to
leave it unchanged.
Option N'34'BusTypeN'34' N'34'stringN'34'
Used to replace previous ForcePCIMode option.
Should only be used when driver's bus detection is incorrect
or you want to force a AGP card to PCI mode. Should NEVER force
a PCI card to AGP bus.
PCI -- PCI bus
AGP -- AGP bus
PCIE -- PCI Express (falls back to PCI at present)
(used only when DRI is enabled)
The default is
auto detect.
Option N'34'DDCModeN'34' N'34'booleanN'34'
Force to use the modes queried from the connected monitor.
The default is
off.
Option N'34'DisplayPriorityN'34' N'34'stringN'34'
Used to prevent flickering or tearing problem caused by display buffer underflow.
AUTO -- Driver calculated (default).
BIOS -- Remain unchanged from BIOS setting.
Use this if the calculation is not correct
for your card.
HIGH -- Force to the highest priority.
Use this if you have problem with above options.
This may affect performance slightly.
The default value is
AUTO.
Option N'34'ColorTilingN'34' N'34'booleanN'34'
Frame buffer can be addressed either in linear or tiled mode. Tiled mode can provide
significant performance benefits with 3D applications, for 2D it shouldn't matter
much. Tiling will be disabled if the virtual x resolution exceeds 2048 (3968 for R300
and above), if option
UseFBDev
is used, or (if DRI is enabled) the drm module is too old.
If this option is enabled, a new dri driver is required for direct rendering too.
Color tiling will be automatically disabled in interlaced or doublescan screen modes.
The default value is
on.
Option N'34'IgnoreEDIDN'34' N'34'booleanN'34'
Do not use EDID data for mode validation, but DDC is still used
for monitor detection. This is different from NoDDC option.
The default value is
off.
Option N'34'PanelSizeN'34' N'34'stringN'34'
Should only be used when driver cannot detect the correct panel size.
Apply to both desktop (TMDS) and laptop (LVDS) digital panels.
When a valid panel size is specified, the timings collected from
DDC and BIOS will not be used. If you have a panel with timings
different from that of a standard VESA mode, you have to provide
this information through the Modeline.
For example, Option "PanelSize" "1400x1050"
The default value is
none.
Option N'34'EnablePageFlipN'34' N'34'booleanN'34'
Enable page flipping for 3D acceleration. This will increase performance
but not work correctly in some rare cases, hence the default is
off.
Override minimum dot clock. Some Radeon BIOSes report a minimum dot
clock unsuitable (too high) for use with television sets even when they
actually can produce lower dot clocks. If this is the case you can
override the value here.
Note that using this option may damage your hardware.
You have been warned. The
frequency
parameter may be specified as a float value with standard suffixes like
"k", "kHz", "M", "MHz".
Option N'34'RenderAccelN'34' N'34'booleanN'34'
Enables or disables hardware Render acceleration. This driver does not
support component alpha (subpixel) rendering. It is only supported on
Radeon series up to and including 9200 (9500/9700 and newer
unsupported). The default is to
enable
Render acceleration.
Option N'34'AccelMethodN'34' N'34'stringN'34'
Chooses between available acceleration architectures. Valid options are
XAA
and
EXA.
XAA is the traditional acceleration architecture and support for it is very
stable. EXA is a newer acceleration architecture with better performance for
the Render and Composite extensions, but the rendering code for it is newer and
possibly unstable. The default is
XAA.
Option N'34'AccelDFSN'34' N'34'booleanN'34'
Use or don't use accelerated EXA DownloadFromScreen hook when possible (only
when Direct Rendering is enabled, e.g.).
Default:
off
with AGP due to issues with GPU->host transfers with some AGP bridges,
on
otherwise.
Option N'34'FBTexPercentN'34' N'34'integerN'34'
Amount of video RAM to reserve for OpenGL textures, in percent. With EXA, the
remainder of video RAM is reserved for EXA offscreen management. Specifying 0
results in all offscreen video RAM being reserved for EXA and only GART memory
being available for OpenGL textures. This may improve EXA performance, but
beware that it may cause problems with OpenGL drivers from Mesa versions older
than 6.4. With XAA, specifying lower percentage than what gets reserved without
this option has no effect, but the driver tries to increase the video RAM
reserved for textures to the amount specified roughly.
Default:
50.
Option N'34'DepthBitsN'34' N'34'integerN'34'
Precision in bits per pixel of the shared depth buffer used for 3D acceleration.
Valid values are 16 and 24. When this is 24, there will also be a hardware
accelerated stencil buffer, but the combined depth/stencil buffer will take up
twice as much video RAM as when it's 16.
Default:
The same as the screen depth.
Option N'34'DMAForXvN'34' N'34'booleanN'34'
Try or don't try to use DMA for Xv image transfers. This will reduce CPU
usage when playing big videos like DVDs, but may cause instabilities.
Default:
on.
Option N'34'SubPixelOrderN'34' N'34'stringN'34'
Force subpixel order to specified order.
Subpixel order is used for subpixel decimation on flat panels.
NONE -- No subpixel (CRT like displays)
RGB -- in horizontal RGB order (most flat panels)
BGR -- in horizontal BGR order (some flat panels)
This option is intended to be used in following cases:
1. The default subpixel order is incorrect for your panel.
2. Enable subpixel decimation on analog panels.
3. Adjust to one display type in dual-head clone mode setup.
4. Get better performance with Render acceleration on
digital panels (use NONE setting).
The default is
NONE
for CRT,
RGB
for digital panels
Option N'34'DynamicClocksN'34' N'34'booleanN'34'
Enable dynamic clock scaling. The on-chip clocks will scale dynamically
based on usage. This can help reduce heat and increase battery
life by reducing power usage. Some users report reduced 3D performance
with this enabled. The default is
off.
Option N'34'VGAAccessN'34' N'34'booleanN'34'
Tell the driver if it can do legacy VGA IOs to the card. This is
necessary for properly resuming consoles when in VGA text mode, but
shouldn't be if the console is using radeonfb or some other graphic
mode driver. Some platforms like PowerPC have issues with those, and they aren't
necessary unless you have a real text mode in console. The default is
off
on PowerPC and
on
on other architectures.
Option N'34'ReverseDDCN'34' N'34'booleanN'34'
When BIOS connector informations aren't available, use this option to
reverse the mapping of the 2 main DDC ports. Use this if the X serve
obviously detects the wrong display for each connector. This is
typically needed on the Radeon 9600 cards bundled with Apple G5s. The
default is
off.
Option N'34'LVDSProbePLLN'34' N'34'booleanN'34'
When BIOS panel informations aren't available (like on PowerBooks), it
may still be necessary to use the firmware provided PLL values for the
panel or flickering will happen. This option will force probing of
the current value programmed in the chip when X is launched in that
case. This is only useful for LVDS panels (laptop internal panels).
The default is
on.
On some laptops, the LVDS mode from the timing tables in the bios does
not work properly. In those cases, a CVT mode seems to work better.
If you get a blank screen or have LVDS display problems, disable this
option to use a CVT mode.
The default is
on.
Option N'34'DRIN'34' N'34'booleanN'34'
Enable DRI support. This option allows you to enable to disable the DRI.
The default is
off
for RN50/ES1000 and
on
for others.
Enable this option to skip the BIOS connector table parsing and use the
driver defaults for each chip.
The default is
off
Option N'34'MacModelN'34' N'34'stringN'34'
Used to specify Mac models for connector tables and quirks. Only valid
on PowerPC.
ibook -- ibooks
powerbook-duallink -- Powerbooks with external DVI
powerbook -- Powerbooks with integrated DVI
mini -- Mac Mini
The default value is
undefined.
