Newer ATI Radeon, ATI FireGL, and Nvidia GeForce/Quadro hardware support

Mike A. Harris mharris at redhat.com
Tue Oct 21 11:27:45 UTC 2003


This document concerns the current state of the XFree86 video 
driver support for ATI Radeon, FireGL, and Nvidia GeForce and 
Quadro video hardware which is present in Red Hat rawhide, and 
the current Fedora Core OS test release.  I'm posting this in 
order to solicit feedback, and also to get more people involved 
in reporting bugs and also notifying Red Hat and myself of any 
missing hardware support, etc. for these 2 video drivers.

More information on the Fedora Project, and our current Fedora 
Core test release can be found at:

	http://fedora.redhat.com


Just to be clear, this information does not apply to any previous
Red Hat operating systems such as Red Hat Linux 8.0, 7.x, but is
exclusive to Fedora Core test 3 and later.  Also, this video
hardware support will also be released as an update for Red Hat
Linux 9 in the near future, as:

	XFree86-4.3.0-2.90.$RAWHIDE_RELEASE_NUMBER



ATI Radeon and FireGL support status:

XFree86 4.3.0, which is in Fedora Core test releases and rawhide
currently, contains additional patches to support newer ATI
Radeon and FireGL video hardware than what the stock XFree86 
4.3.0 release supports.  This support is a combination of 4
things:

1) Enhancements I've implemented myself voluntarily on 
   weekends, etc. and included, which either have been committed
   to XFree86 CVS already, or will be in the future hopefully.

2) Code that I have backported from the XFree86 developmental CVS 
   head, either developed by ATI, or by other people who work on 
   the "radeon" driver.

3) Code contributed to me directly by ATI.

4) Code contributed to me directly by other developers.

Currently, our customized 4.3.0 "radeon" driver supports almost
all ATI Radeon and FireGL hardware.  3D is supported on all video
hardware up to and including the Radeon 9000 and 9100, FireGL
8700, 8800, and it may or may not also work on the 9200 hardware
(untested).  2D support is present for all hardware including the 
9500/9600/9700/9800 series cards also, and the newer ATI FireGL 
X1/Z1 hardware.

There are different variants of these cards out there however,
and some cards have different PCI device IDs than others, and so
for example, while Radeon 9800 is supported 2D only, it's
possible that someone might have a Radeon 9800 card that is
unknown to our pcitable, and unknown to the video driver, but
which otherwise should/would work ok once the PCI ID is made
known to the video driver and pcitable database.  About 2 weeks
ago I updated the driver with a newer list of PCI IDs sent to me
from ATI which was believed to cover all of the existing hardware 
at the point ATI sent me the files.  I tested this on the 
hardware I personally have available, and everything worked fine, 
however I don't have one of every single card for every single 
PCI device ID out there, so I can only vouch for the particular 
chips I physically have available to test.

Since then a number of newer ATI Radeon and FireGL hardware has
been released by ATI, such as the 9800Pro XT and SE, 9600 XT/SE,
and new FireGL cards.  I do not yet have all of this hardware,
however some of this hardware might work with the existing driver 
currently in rawhide, while other cards might still need to have 
their PCI IDs added before they're functional.  This also goes 
for the Radeon Mobility, FireGL Mobility, and ATI Radeon IGP and 
Mobility IGP chipsets.

Here is a list of all chips that the driver currently supports:

ATI Radeon QD (AGP)
ATI Radeon QE (AGP)
ATI Radeon QF (AGP)
ATI Radeon QG (AGP)
ATI Radeon VE/7000 QY (AGP)
ATI Radeon VE/7000 QZ (AGP)
ATI Radeon Mobility M7 LW (AGP)
ATI Mobility FireGL 7800 M7 LX (AGP)
ATI Radeon Mobility M6 LY (AGP)
ATI Radeon Mobility M6 LZ (AGP)
ATI Radeon IGP320 (A3) 4136
ATI Radeon IGP320M (U1) 4336
ATI Radeon IGP330/340/350 (A4) 4137
ATI Radeon IGP330M/340M/350M (U2) 4337
ATI Radeon 7000 IGP (A4+) 4237
ATI Radeon Mobility 7000 IGP 4437
ATI FireGL 8700/8800 QH (AGP)
ATI Radeon 8500 QI (AGP)
ATI Radeon 8500 QJ (AGP)
ATI Radeon 8500 QK (AGP)
ATI Radeon 8500 QL (AGP)
ATI Radeon 9100 QM (AGP)
ATI Radeon 8500 QN (AGP)
ATI Radeon 8500 QO (AGP)
ATI Radeon 8500 Qh (AGP)
ATI Radeon 8500 Qi (AGP)
ATI Radeon 8500 Qj (AGP)
ATI Radeon 8500 Qk (AGP)
ATI Radeon 8500 Ql (AGP)
ATI Radeon 8500 BB (AGP)
ATI Radeon 7500 QW (AGP)
ATI Radeon 7500 QX (AGP)
ATI Radeon 9000 Id (AGP)
ATI Radeon 9000 Ie (AGP)
ATI Radeon 9000 If (AGP)
ATI Radeon 9000 Ig (AGP)
ATI Radeon Mobility M9 Ld (AGP)
ATI Radeon Mobility M9 Le (AGP)
ATI Radeon Mobility M9 Lf (AGP)
ATI Radeon Mobility M9 Lg (AGP)
ATI Radeon 9000 IGP (A5) 5834
ATI Radeon Mobility 9000 IGP (U3) 5835
ATI Radeon 9200 5960 (AGP)
ATI Radeon 9200 5961 (AGP)
ATI Radeon 9200 5962 (AGP)
ATI Radeon 9200 5963 (AGP)
ATI Radeon 9200 5964 (AGP)
ATI Radeon M9+ 5968 (AGP)
ATI Radeon M9+ 5969 (AGP)
ATI Radeon M9+ 596A (AGP)
ATI Radeon M9+ 596B (AGP)
ATI Radeon 9500 AD (AGP)
ATI Radeon 9500 AE (AGP)
ATI Radeon 9500 AF (AGP)
ATI FireGL Z1/X1 AG (AGP)
ATI Radeon 9700 Pro ND (AGP)
ATI Radeon 9700/9500Pro NE (AGP)
ATI Radeon 9700 NF (AGP)
ATI FireGL X1 NG (AGP)
ATI Radeon 9600 AP (AGP)
ATI Radeon 9600 Pro AR (AGP)
ATI Radeon Mobility M10 NP (AGP)
ATI FireGL (R350) AK (AGP)
ATI Radeon 9800 NH (AGP)
ATI FireGL (R350) NK (AGP)


If someone has an ATI Radeon or FireGL card which is not on this 
list, it is currently not supported by the driver.  Run "lspci" 
and look and see if it lists the card by name, or if it says 
"unknown" or similar.  If lspci doesn't know what the card is, 
even if it isn't on the above list, please file a bug report in 
bugzilla, and include full details of the video card, and also 
manually choose any Radeon video card from the list of hardware 
in redhat-config-xfree86 and test the card out with X.  Report 
any problems found in your bugzilla bug report.

I plan on improving our 4.3.0 radeon driver to support any new 
cards that come out whenever I have the information I need to do 
the work, and have some spare weekend-hacker time to do the 
necessary volunteer work.

Currently the XT/SE cards wont work I don't think, however you
can probably trick them into working by using the "ChipID" config 
file directive in the config file to lie to the driver about what 
card you have.  "man XF86Config" documents this option and how to 
use it.  ie:

	ChipId "0x4150"

That line would probably allow a Radeon 9600 SE/XT/whatever to 
work by faking that it is a "Radeon 9600 AP".  You can get the 
various PCI ID numbers for various supported cards from:

	/usr/share/hwdata/pcitable

So, if your card is not autodetected by our config tool and/or 
not autodetected by the video driver, please report a bug report 
or request for enhancement in bugzilla, so that I at least know 
about the missing hardware support and might be able to add 
support for it when I have spare time, for future XFree86 4.3.0 
update releases.  I can't guarantee any kind of speedy resolution 
of course, but it'd be nice to have a list of various cards in 
bugzilla that need work, so that when I do have the time to hack 
on it, I can add them all at once.  ;o)



Nvidia support status:

The "nv" driver in 4.3.0 supports the majority of Nvidia hardware 
that existed in February 2003, plus it has code to support 
similar hardware that Nvidia planned on shipping later than that, 
but which the driver will claim is "unknown Nvidia blah blah" and 
try to drive it nonethless.  The "nv" driver *only* supports CRT 
displays officially, flat panel display types are not officially 
supported, but the driver has experimental support which might or 
might not work depending on the exact brand/make/model/phase of 
the moon, etc.  It is also possible that there are newer Nvidia 
boards that aren't supported or just don't work at all for one 
reason or another.

User's experiencing problems with the "nv" driver, be they 
general bugs, or lack of support for their particular card, 
should also file bug reports in Red Hat bugzilla, however they 
should also file them in XFree86 bugzilla as Nvidia doesn't 
release their specifications nor any detailed information on how 
their hardware works, so adding support for new chips is nowhere 
near as simple as doing it for the Radeon driver.  All Nvidia 
"nv" driver related bug reports if filed in Red Hat bugzilla, 
should also be filed at: http://bugs.xfree86.org including 
complete details of any problems, and having config file and log 
file attachments.

Where possible, I will try to also update the Nvidia "nv" driver
to support newer Nvidia hardware as volunteer time permits.

NOTE: This is STRICTLY for the Red Hat/XFree86 supplied "nv" 
driver.  DO NOT file bug reports about using the proprietary 
Nvidia video drivers, as we do not support those drivers at all.  
Any problems experienced while using the Nvidia proprietary 
drivers should be reported to Nvidia directly and discussed on 
their end user web support forums (don't have the URL handy) as 
this is Nvidia Inc.'s preferred mechanism for handling problems 
in their drivers.  If a user is using both the proprietary and 
the "nv" driver on their system and having problems with the "nv" 
driver, before reporting problems, disable the proprietary driver 
and it's kernel module completely, then do a full system reboot 
in order to reset the video hardware to it's default power on 
state, as the different drivers can and do program the Nvidia 
hardware a bit differently and this can cause the 'nv' driver to 
fail once the proprietary driver has been used since boot time.


Final comments:

I must ask politely that people please do NOT email me personally
for help configuring their hardware or solving X configuration
problems, etc.  I generally get 20-50 or more email requests for
special help from people when I send an email like this out, and
unfortunately, I really truely do not have time to help that many
people out individually.

Any email based tech support or discussion of any problems should
take place on xfree86-list at redhat.com, or
fedora-devel-list at redhat.com, or even xfree86 at xfree86.org, so
that numerous developers and other people can possibly assist
with a given problem someone is experiencing. Any generic
questions about future X support or development should also be
directed to one of those mailing lists, or dri-devel on
sourceforge, rather than directly to me.

Bug reports and RFEs should be filed at:
	http://bugzilla.redhat.com
	http://bugs.xfree86.org


While this email is rather lengthy, if I've missed anything and
someone decides to respond, please respond on the mailing list
that you received this email from and do not reply directly to me
privately.  I'll probably reply to any discussions on our mailing
lists that crop up from this mail, but probably ignore all 
private replies.  ;o)

Thanks in advance for testing out this new hardware support, and
for contributing bug reports and enhancement requests so that we
can hopefully end up being able to support the latest video
hardware for y'all.    ;o)

Enjoy.

-- 
Mike A. Harris     ftp://people.redhat.com/mharris
OS Systems Engineer - XFree86 maintainer - Red Hat





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