RADEON(4)

NAME
radeon - ATI RADEON video driver

SYNOPSIS
Section "Device"
  Identifier "devname"
  Driver "radeon"
  ...
EndSection

DESCRIPTION
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

R100
    Radeon 7200

RV100
    Radeon 7000(VE), M6, RN50/ES1000

RS100
    Radeon IGP320(M)

RV200
    Radeon 7500, M7, FireGL 7800

RS200
    Radeon IGP330(M)/IGP340(M)

RS250
    Radeon Mobility 7000 IGP

R200
    Radeon 8500, 9100, FireGL 8800/8700

RV250
    Radeon 9000PRO/9000, M9

RS300
    Radeon 9100 IGP

RS350
    Radeon 9200 IGP

RS400
    Radeon XPRESS 200/200M IGP (2d only)

RV280
    Radeon 9200PRO/9200/9200SE, M9+

R300
    Radeon 9700PRO/9700/9500PRO/9500/9600TX, FireGL X1/Z1

R350
    Radeon 9800PRO/9800SE/9800, FireGL X2

R360
    Radeon 9800XT

RV350
    Radeon 9600PRO/9600SE/9600, M10/M11, FireGL T2

RV360
    Radeon 9600XT

RV370
    Radeon X300, M22

RV380
    Radeon X600, M24

RV410
    Radeon X700, M26 PCIE

R420
    Radeon X800 AGP

R423/R430
    Radeon X800, M28 PCIE

R480/R481
    Radeon X850 PCIE/AGP

CONFIGURATION DETAILS
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 "SWcursor" "boolean"
    Selects software cursor. The default is off.

Option "NoAccel" "boolean"
    Enables or disables all hardware acceleration.
    The default is to enable hardware acceleration.

Option "Dac6Bit" "boolean"
    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 "VideoKey" "integer"
    This overrides the default pixel value for the YUV video overlay key.
    The default value is 0x1E.

Option "ScalerWidth" "integer"
    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 "AGPMode" "integer"
    Set AGP data transfer rate. (used only when DRI is enabled)
    1 -- 1x (before AGP v3 only)
    2 -- 2x (before AGP v3 only)
    4 -- 4x
    8 -- 8x (AGP v3 only)
    others -- invalid
    The default is to leave it unchanged.

Option "AGPFastWrite" "boolean"
    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 off.

Option "BusType" "string"
    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 "DDCMode" "boolean"
    Force to use the modes queried from the connected monitor.
    The default is off.

Option "DisplayPriority" "string"
    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 "ColorTiling" "boolean"
    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 "IgnoreEDID" "boolean"
    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 "PanelSize" "string"
    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 "EnablePageFlip" "boolean"
    Enable page flipping for 3D acceleration. This will increase performance but not work correctly in some rare cases, hence the default is off.

Option "ForceMinDotClock" "frequency"
    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 "RenderAccel" "boolean"
    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 "AccelMethod" "string"
    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 "AccelDFS" "boolean"
    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 "FBTexPercent" "integer"
    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 "DepthBits" "integer"
    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 "DMAForXv" "boolean"
    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 "SubPixelOrder" "string"
    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 "DynamicClocks" "boolean"
    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 "VGAAccess" "boolean"
    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 SPARC and on on other architectures.

Option "ReverseDDC" "boolean"
    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 "LVDSProbePLL" "boolean"
    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.

Option "TVDACLoadDetect" "boolean"
    Enable load detection on the TV DAC. The TV DAC is used to drive both TV-OUT and analog monitors. Load detection is often unreliable in the TV DAC so it is disabled by default. The default is off.

Option "DefaultTMDSPLL" "boolean"
    Use the default driver provided TMDS PLL values rather than the ones provided by the bios. This option has no effect on Mac cards. Enable this option if you are having problems with a DVI monitor using the internal TMDS controller. The default is off.

Option "DRI" "boolean"
    Enable DRI support. This option allows you to enable to disable the DRI. The default is off for RN50/ES1000 and on for others.

Option "DefaultConnectorTable" "boolean"
    Enable this option to skip the BIOS connector table parsing and use the driver defaults for each chip. The default is off

Option "MacModel" "string"
    Used to specify Mac models for connector tables and quirks. If you have a powerbook or mini with DVI that does not work properly, try the alternate
     options as Apple does not seem to provide a good way of knowing whether
     they use internal or external TMDS for DVI. Only valid on PowerPC.
    ibook -- ibooks
    powerbook-external -- Powerbooks with external DVI
    powerbook-internal -- Powerbooks with integrated DVI
    powerbook-vga -- Powerbooks with VGA rather than DVI
    powerbook-duallink -- powerbook-external alias
    powerbook -- powerbook-internal alias
    mini-external -- Mac Mini with external DVI
    mini-internal -- Mac Mini with integrated DVI
    mini -- mini-external alias
    imac-g5-isight -- iMac G5 iSight
    The default value is undefined.

Option "TVStandard" "string"
    Used to specify the default TV standard if you want to use something other than the bios default. Valid options are:
    ntsc
    pal
    pal-m
    pal-60
    ntsc-j
    scart-pal
    The default value is undefined.

Option "ForceTVOut" "boolean"
    Enable this option to force TV Out to always be detected as attached. The default is off

Option "IgnoreLidStatus" "boolean"
    Enable this option to ignore lid status on laptops and always detect LVDS as attached. The default is on.

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

AUTHORS
Authors include:
Rickard E. (Rik) Faith   faith@precisioninsight.com
Kevin E. Martin          kem@freedesktop.org
Alan Hourihane           alanh@fairlite.demon.co.uk
Marc Aurele La France    tsi@xfree86.org
Benjamin Herrenschmidt   benh@kernel.crashing.org
Michel Dänzer            michel@tungstengraphics.com
Alex Deucher             alexdeucher@gmail.com
Bogdan D.                bogdand@users.sourceforge.net
Eric Anholt              eric@anholt.net