README revision e35772b2
1 Information for SiS and XGI Users 2 Thomas Winischhofer (thomas@winischhofer.net) 3 6 July 2005 4 ____________________________________________________________ 5 6 Table of Contents 7 8 9 1. Introduction 10 2. xorg.conf Options 11 2.1 For all chipsets 12 2.2 Old series specific options 13 2.3 300/315/330/340 series specific options 14 2.4 300 series specific options 15 2.5 315/330/340 series specific options 16 17 18 ______________________________________________________________________ 19 20 1. Introduction 21 22 23 This driver is written by Thomas Winischhofer and is a (nearly) 24 complete re-write of a driver written for the SiS6326 and SiS530 by 25 Alan Hourihane and others. 26 27 It currently supports the following chipsets: 28 29 o old series: SiS 5597/5598, 6236/AGP/DVD, 530/620 30 31 o 300 series: SiS 300/305, 540, 630/730 32 33 o 315 series: SiS 315/E/PRO, 55x, 650, 651, M650, 740, 34 [M]661&[F/M/G]X, [M]741[GX] 35 36 o 330 series: SiS 330 ("Xabre"), [M]760[GX], [M]761[GX] 37 38 o 340 series: SiS 34x, XGI Volari Z7, V3XT, V5, V8 39 40 Among other features, the driver supports 41 42 o 8/16/24 bits color depth; old series also 15 43 44 o Hardware cursor; 315/330/340 series: Color HW cursor 45 46 o XAA; EXA; XVideo (Xv); RENDER and other extensions 47 48 o 6326: TV output 49 50 o 300/315/330/340 series: TV output via Chrontel TV encoders or SiS 51 video bridges 52 53 o 300/315/330/340 series: LCD output via LVDS transmitters or SiS 54 video bridges 55 56 o 300/315/330/340 series: Dual head mode; Xinerama; Merged 57 framebuffer mode 58 59 o 300/315/330/340 series: Interface for SiSCtrl (see below) 60 61 This document provides a brief overview over the driver's features and 62 configuration options. Please see 63 http://www.winischhofer.eu/linuxsisvga.shtml for detailed 64 documentation and updates. 65 66 67 2. xorg.conf Options 68 69 70 The following options are of particular interest for the SiS driver. 71 Each of them must be specified in the Device section of the xorg.conf 72 file for this card. 73 74 In the list below, the options' arguments are described by type. For 75 "boolean", the keywords "on", "true" and "yes", as well as "off", 76 "false" and "no" respectively have the same meaning. 77 78 79 2.1. For all chipsets 80 81 82 83 Option 84 > 85 86 Option 87 These options select whether the software (SW) or hardware (HW) 88 cursor should be used. The default is using the hardware cursor. 89 90 Option 91 Disables 2D acceleration. By default, 2D acceleration is 92 enabled. 93 94 Option 95 Determines which acceleration architecture should be used. 96 Possible arguments are "XAA" or "EXA". As of this writing, EXA 97 is still experimental and it is not recommended to be used on 98 production machines. By default, XAA will be used. 99 100 Option 101 This option enables clockwise ("CW") or counter-clockwise 102 ("CCW") rotation of the display. Enabling either CW or CCW 103 rotation disables the RandR extension as well as all 2D 104 acceleration and Xv support. Default: no rotation. 105 106 Option 107 This option enables reflecting the display horizontally ("X"), 108 vertically ("Y") or in both directions ("XY"). Enabling 109 reflection disables the RandR extension as well as all 2D 110 acceleration and Xv support. Default: no rotation. 111 112 Option 113 This option enables the shadow framebuffer layer. By default, it 114 is disabled. 115 116 Option 117 Disables the XVideo (Xv) support. Apart from the XGI Volari Z7, 118 all chipsets support Xv. By default, XVideo support is enabled. 119 120 Option 121 Enables or disables gamma correction. Default: gamma correction 122 is enabled. 123 124 125 2.2. Old series specific options 126 127 128 129 Option 130 Enables 1 cycle memory access for read and write operations. The 131 default depends on the chipset used. 132 133 Option 134 SiS chipsets have the ability to extend the engine command queue 135 in video RAM. This concept is called "TurboQueue" and gives some 136 performance improvement. Due to hardware bugs, the TurboQueue is 137 disabled on the 530/620, otherwise enabled by default. 138 139 Option 140 For 5597/5598 only. This option, if set, disables the CPU to VGA 141 host bus. Disabling the host bus will result in a severe 142 performance regression. 143 144 VideoRAM [size] 145 The SiS 6326 can only directly address 4096K bytes of video RAM. 146 However, there are some cards out there featuring 8192K (8MB) of 147 video RAM. This RAM is not addressable by the engines. 148 Therefore, by default, the driver will only use 4096K. This 149 behavior can be overridden by specifying the amount of video RAM 150 using the VideoRAM keyword. If more than 4096K is specified, the 151 driver will disable 2D acceleration, Xv and the HW cursor. On 152 all other chipsets, this keyword is ignored. The size argument 153 is expected in KB, but without "KB". 154 155 Option 156 Due to hardware bugs, XVideo may display a corrupt image when 157 using YV12 encoded material. This option, if set, disables 158 support for YV12 and hence forces the Xv-aware application to 159 use either YUV2 or XShm for video output. 160 161 Option 162 (6326 only) Selects the TV output standard. May be PAL or NTSC. 163 By default, this is selected by a jumper on the card. 164 165 166 2.3. 300/315/330/340 series specific options 167 168 169 170 Option 171 This option enables/disables the driver's interface for the 172 SiSCtrl utility. Please see 173 http://www.winischhofer.eu/linuxsisvga.shtml for more 174 information. 175 176 Option 177 (300 series only) SiS chipsets have the ability to extend the 178 engine command queue in video RAM. This concept is called 179 "TurboQueue" and gives some performance improvement. The 180 TurboQueue is enabled by default. 181 182 Option 183 Enables or disables CRT1 (= the external VGA monitor). By 184 default, the driver will use CRT1 if a monitor is detected 185 during server start. Some older monitors can't be detected, so 186 they may require setting this option to true. To disable CRT1 187 output, set this option to false. 188 189 Option 190 (For SiS 650, M650, 651, 661, 741, 760 with either SiS 301LV, 191 302LV or SiS 301C video bridge only) The argument may be "VGA", 192 "LCD" or "OFF". Specifying LCD will force the driver to use the 193 VGA controller's CRT1 channel for driving the LCD while CRT2 is 194 free for TV usage. "OFF" is the same as setting the option 195 ForceCRT1 to "false". Default is VGA. 196 197 Option 198 Selects the CRT2 output device type. Valid parameters are "LCD", 199 "TV", "SVIDEO", "COMPOSITE", "SVIDEO+COMPOSITE", "SCART", "VGA", 200 "YPBPR480I", "YPBPR480P", "YPBPR720P", "YPBPR1080I" or "NONE". 201 NONE disables CRT2. SVIDEO, COMPOSITE, SVIDEO+COMPOSITE, SCART 202 and all the YPBPR alternatives are only for systems with a SiS 203 video bridge and select the desired plug or TV standard type. 204 For Chrontel systems, TV should be used instead. VGA means 205 secondary VGA and is only available on some SiS video bridges 206 (301, 301B, 301C). 207 208 Option 209 (For SiS video bridges only) This option enables or disables 210 gamma correction for CRT2. Default: gamma correction for CRT2 is 211 enabled. 212 213 Option 214 Although this option is accepted for all chipsets, it currently 215 only makes sense on the 300 series; DRI is only supported on 216 these chipsets. This option enables/disables DRI. 217 218 Option 219 Selects the TV output standard. May be PAL or NTSC, on some 220 machines (depending on the hardware) also PALM and PALN. 221 Default: BIOS setting. 222 223 Option 224 > 225 226 Option 227 These options allow relocating the image on your TV. Both 228 options take an integer within the range of -16 to 16. Default: 229 0. Not supported for Chrontel 7019. 230 231 Option 232 (For Chrontel TV encoders only) Selects whether TV output should 233 be overscan or underscan. 234 235 Option 236 (For Chrontel 7005 TV encoders in PAL mode only) Selects whether 237 TV output should be super-overscan (slightly larger than the 238 viewable area) or not. 239 240 Option 241 > 242 243 Option 244 (For SiS video bridges only) These options allow zooming the 245 image on your TV. SISTVXScale takes an integer within the range 246 of -16 to 16. SISTVYScale accepts -4 to 3. Default: 0. Not all 247 modes can be scaled. 248 249 250 2.4. 300 series specific options 251 252 253 254 Option 255 This option might only be needed if you are running X on a Linux 256 2.4 series kernel. This option is not needed and should be 257 omitted on Linux 2.6 and *BSD. 258 259 The Linux kernel features a framebuffer driver named "sisfb" 260 which takes care of memory management for DRI/DRM (such as for 261 3D texture data). In order to keep the X driver and sisfb from 262 overwriting each other's video memory, sisfb reserves a certain 263 amount of video memory for the X driver. Reserved memory is for 264 X 2D, pixmap cache and video data only. Sisfb will not present 265 this memory to the DRI. The amount of reserved memory can either 266 be selected using sisfb's mem parameter or auto-selected 267 depending on the total amount of video RAM available. 268 269 Fact of the matter is, the X driver needs to know about the 270 amount of RAM sisfb reserved. For this purpose, the Option 271 "MaxXFBMem" exists. 272 273 If you start sisfb with a valid mode (ie you run a graphical 274 console), the X driver can communicate with sisfb and doesn't 275 require setting the MaxXFBMem option at all. The X driver will 276 receive enough information from sisfb in this case. 277 278 If you, on the other hand, use sisfb for memory management only, 279 ie you started sisfb with mode=none and still have a text mode 280 console, there is no communication between sisfb and the X 281 driver. In this - and ONLY this - case, you need to set 282 MaxXFBMem to the same value as you gave sisfb with its mem 283 parameter. If you didn't specify any mem parameter, sisfb will 284 reserve (and you will have to specify by MaxXFBMem) 12288KB if 285 more than 16MB of total video RAM is available, 8192KB if 286 between 12 and 16MB of video RAM is available, 4096KB in all 287 other cases. The size is expected in KB, without the "KB". 288 289 Final word of advice: If you intend to use DRI on an integrated 290 chipset (such as the 540/630/730), it is recommended to set the 291 total video memory in the BIOS setup utility to 64MB. 292 293 294 2.5. 315/330/340 series specific options 295 296 297 298 Option 299 Enables or disables RENDER acceleration. This feature, for 300 instance, accelerates output of anti-aliased text. By default, 301 RENDER acceleration is enabled. RENDER acceleration is currently 302 only supported for XAA, not EXA. 303 304 Option 305 (For 315, 650, 740, 330, 340 and XGI chips only) This option 306 selects whether the XVideo (Xv) overlay should be displayed on 307 CRT1 or CRT2. Setting this option means CRT2. The other CRT will 308 only display the (by default: blue) color key or a black/red 309 pattern. 310 311 312 313