Information for Intel graphics driver users
Eric Anholt
2007-07-02
This document provides a brief summary of the Intel graphics support provided
by the xf86-video-intel driver. More information can also be found in the
intel(4) manual page.
Supported Hardware:
i810,
i810-dc100,
i810e
i815
i830
i845
i852
i855
915G
915GM
945G
945GM/GME
946GZ
G965
GM/GME965
G33/Q33/Q35
Features
- Full support for 8, 15, 16, and 24 bit pixel depths.
- Hardware accelerated 2D drawing engine support for 8, 15, 16 and 24 bit
pixel depths.
- Hardware accelerated 3D drawing using OpenGL and the DRI.
- Hardware cursor support to reduce sprite flicker.
- Textured video XV implementation on i915 through i965.
- Hardware overlay XV implementation up through i945.
- Screen resize and rotation.
Technical Notes
- Interlace modes cannot be supported.
- This driver requires kernel support for AGP, which is included in Linux
kernels 2.3.42 and higher, and FreeBSD 4.1 and higher.
- This driver may be built against xserver 1.2.0 or newer. If built
from git source against an older server, a copy of xserver 1.3.0 source is
needed to complete the build, which is chosen with the --with-xserver-source
argument to ./configure. The compatibility mode with xserver 1.2.0 will have
limited functionality, in particular by not supporting RandR 1.2 or the
new Damage 1.1 updated needed for 3D applications to work with display
rotation.
Configuration
The driver auto-detects all device information necessary to
initialize the card. The only lines you should need in the "Device"
section of your xorg.conf file are:
Section "Device"
Identifier "intel"
Driver "intel"
EndSection
Please refer to the intel(4) manual page for information on configuration
options.
Known Limitations
- No support for "zaphod mode" dualhead. This is the mode in which two
Device sections are placed in the config file, and doesn't support DRI or
many other features. Instead, only "MergedFB-style" dualhead is supported.
- No support for X Screens larger than 2048 pixels in either direction
before the 965. This reflects hardware limitations in the x direction on
those older chips, and limits dualhead functionality. It may be possible to
extend the limit vertically on these older chips.
- i855 XV may cause hangs. This was present in the previous release, and no
workaround is known.
- SDVO TV-out cards not supported. This should be fixed in the next
release.
- Gray output with integrated TV-out and PAL TVs.
- EXA support unstable on i845.
- Some GM965 systems, such as the Thinkpad T61, probe the TV as being connected
even when no output connector is available. This results in the gnome-panel
issue noted below.
Common issues not caused by the driver
- Font sizes (DPI) are wrong. Some displays incorrectly report their
physical size, which is harmless on most OSes that always assume 96dpi
displays. This can be fixed through quirks for specific monitors in the X
Server, and the output of xrandr --prop along with a physical measurement of
the screen size in a bug report against the server can help get that fixed.
- gnome-panel is located in the middle of the screen. gnome-panel places
itself within head #0's boundaries, which doesn't work well with a second
head covering the same area as head #0 but larger.
- Older resolution-changing applications have poor results in
multihead systems. Previous extensions such as RandR 1.1 exposed only a
single output to client programs, and those requests map poorly to multi-head
systems. Currently, those requests map to just one of the outputs in the
RandR 1.2 environment, and those applications need to be updated to RandR 1.2
API when available for better results.
The X11R6 version of this driver originally came from XFree86 4.4 rc2.
The XFree86 version of this driver was donated to The XFree86 Project by:
Precision Insight, Inc.
Cedar Park, TX
USA
The X.Org version of this driver is maintained by Intel Corporation.
<http://www.intellinuxgraphics.org>
