savage - S3 Savage video driver

Section qDeviceq
  Identifier qdevnameq
  Driver qsavageq
  ...
EndSection

savage is an Xorg driver for the S3 Savage family video accelerator chips. 2D, 3D, and Xv acceleration is supported on all chips except the Savage2000 (2D only). Dualhead operation is supported on MX, IX, and SuperSavage chips. The savage driver supports PCI and AGP boards with the following chips:

Savage3D

(8a20 and 8a21) (2D, 3D)

Savage4

(8a22) (2D, 3D)

Savage2000

(9102) (2D only)

Savage/MX

(8c10 and 8c11) (2D, 3D, Dualhead)

Savage/IX

(8c12 and 8c13) (2D, 3D, Dualhead)

SuperSavage/MX

(8c22, 8c24, and 8c26) (2D, 3D, Dualhead)

SuperSavage/IX

(8c2a, 8c2b, 8c2c, 8c2d, 8c2e, and 8c2f) (2D, 3D, Dualhead)

ProSavage PM133

(8a25) (2D, 3D)

ProSavage KM133

(8a26) (2D, 3D)

Twister (ProSavage PN133)

(8d01) (2D, 3D)

TwisterK (ProSavage KN133)

(8d02) (2D, 3D)

ProSavage DDR

(8d03) (2D, 3D)

ProSavage DDR-K

(8d04) (2D, 3D)

Please refer to xorg.conf(5) for general configuration details. This section only covers configuration details specific to this driver.

The following driver Options are supported:

Option qHWCursorq qbooleanq

Option qSWCursorq qbooleanq

These two options interact to specify hardware or software cursor. If the SWCursor option is specified, any HWCursor setting is ignored. Thus, either qHWCursor offq or qSWCursor onq will force the use of the software cursor. On Savage/MX and Savage/IX chips which are connected to LCDs, a software cursor will be forced, because the Savage hardware cursor does not correctly track the automatic panel expansion feature. Default: hardware cursor.

Option qNoAccelq qbooleanq

Disable or enable acceleration. Default: acceleration is enabled.

Option qRotateq qCWq

Option qRotateq qCCWq

Rotate the desktop 90 degrees clockwise or counterclockwise. This option forces the ShadowFB option on, and disables acceleration. Default: no rotation.

Option qShadowFBq qbooleanq

Enable or disable use of the shadow framebuffer layer. This option disables acceleration. Default: off.

Option qLCDClockq qfrequencyq

Override the maximum dot clock. Some LCD panels produce incorrect results if they are driven at too fast of a frequency. If UseBIOS is on, the BIOS will usually restrict the clock to the correct range. If not, it might be necessary to override it here. The frequency parameter may be specified as an integer in Hz (135750000), or with standard suffixes like "k", "kHz", "M", or "MHz" (as in 135.75MHz).

Option qCrtOnlyq qbooleanq

This option disables output to the LCD and enables output to the CRT port only. It is useful on laptops if you only want to use the CRT port or to force the CRT output only on desktop cards that use mobile chips. Default: auto-detect active outputs

Option qUseBIOSq qbooleanq

Enable or disable use of the video BIOS to change modes. Ordinarily, the savage driver tries to use the video BIOS to do mode switches. This generally produces the best results with the mobile chips (/MX and /IX), since the BIOS knows how to handle the critical but unusual timing requirements of the various LCD panels supported by the chip. To do this, the driver searches through the BIOS mode list, looking for the mode which most closely matches the xorg.conf mode line. Some purists find this scheme objectionable. If you would rather have the savage driver use your mode line timing exactly, turn off the UseBios option. Note: Use of the BIOS is required for dualhead operation. Default: on (use the BIOS).

Option qShadowStatusq qbooleanq

Enables the use of a shadow status register. There is a chip bug in the Savage graphics engine that can cause a bus lock when reading the engine status register under heavy load, such as when scrolling text or dragging windows. The bug affects about 4% of all Savage users without DRI and a large fraction of users with DRI. If your system hangs regularly while scrolling text or dragging windows, try turning this option on. This uses an alternate method of reading the engine status which is slightly more expensive, but avoids the problem. When DRI is enabled then the default is qonq (use shadow status), otherwise the default is qoffq (use normal status register).

Option qDisableCOBq qbooleanq

Disables the COB (Command Overflow Buffer) on savage4 and newer chips. There is supposedly a HW cache coherency problem on certain savage4 and newer chips that renders the COB useless. If you are having problems with 2D acceleration you can disable the COB, however you will lose some performance. 3D acceleration requires the COB to work. This option only applies to Savage4 and newer chips. Default: qoffq (use COB).

Option qBCIforXvq qbooleanq

Use the BCI to copy and reformat Xv pixel data. Using the BCI for Xv causes graphics artifacts on some chips. This option only applies to Savage4 and prosavage/twister chips. Default: on for prosavage and twister (use BCI for Xv); off for savage4 (do not use the BCI for Xv).

Option qAGPModeq qintegerq

Set AGP data transfer rate. (used only when DRI is enabled)

1 -- x1 (default)

2 -- x2

4 -- x4

others -- invalid

Option qAGPSizeq qintegerq

The amount of AGP memory that will allocated for DMA and textures in MB. Valid sizes are 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128 and 256. The default is 16MB.

Option qDmaModeq qstringq

This option influences in which way DMA (direct memory access) is used by the kernel and 3D drivers.

Any -- Try command DMA first, then vertex DMA (default)

Command -- Only use command DMA or don't use DMA at all

Vertex -- Only use vertex DMA or don't use DMA at all

None -- Disable DMA

Command and vertex DMA cannot be enabled at the same time. Which DMA mode is actually used in the end also depends on the DRM version (only >= 2.4.0 supports command DMA) and the hardware (Savage3D/MX/IX doesn't support command DMA).

Option qDmaTypeq qstringq

The type of memory that will be used by the 3D driver for DMA (direct memory access).

PCI -- PCI memory (default on PCI cards)

AGP -- AGP memory (default on AGP cards)

qAGPq only works if you have an AGP card.

Option qBusTypeq qstringq

The bus type that will be used to access the graphics card.

PCI -- PCI bus (default on PCI cards)

AGP -- AGP bus (default on AGP cards)

qAGPq only works if you have an AGP card. If you choose qPCIq on an AGP card the AGP bus speed is not set and no AGP aperture is allocated. This implies DmaType qPCIq.

savage_drv.o

Xorg(1), xorg.conf(5), xorgconfig(1), Xserver(1), X(7)

Authors include Tim Roberts (timr@probo.com) and Ani Joshi (ajoshi@unixbox.com) for this version, and Tim Roberts and S. Marineau for the original driver from which this was derived.