On Wed, 1 Oct 2003, Mike A. Harris wrote: > Most modern drivers currently autodetect the proper video RAM > amount on all hardware they support. Unfortunately, some X > configuration tools allow users to override this option too > easily, and if they "think" they have more video memory than they > really do have, then they can create problems for themselves > where those problems do not really need to exist, simply by > incorrectly overspecifying their videoram amount, or in some > cases underspecifying it - in particular with DRI and low memory.
> I've had various problems tracked down to people specifying this > where they need not and should not. > As such, I'm trying to determine which video hardware really does > require a manually specified videoRAM setting in order for the > card to work properly. > My goal is to disable this option by default in drivers which > correctly detect video memory on all supported cards, at least > for our shipped drivers. I've disabled this setting in our > radeon driver for example as that driver correctly detects video > memory on all supported hardware. > Which other drivers might be safe candidates for this? All > Nvidia hardware should autodetect properly IIRC, except possibly > a few really old cards, in which case I could modify the driver > to only allow that option on cards that explicitly require it. > Ditto for the mga driver. > If people (both other developers and end users) who _require_ > the VideoRAM option in order for the proper amount of video > memory to be useable with their card, could send me privately > their: "lspci -vvn" or alternatively "scanpci" output (if lspci > isn't available to them), that would help me assess how feasible > this would be to do. > My end-goal here, is to determine which hardware truely requires > the VideoRAM option, and limit the usage of that option in our > own XFree86 packages to those specific drivers and cards to limit > the amount of bogus incoming bug reports and end user problems > created by unnecessary overconfiguration. I might also add > another option to re-enable VideoRAM override if people see cases > where autodetection does work, but want to override it anyway, > such as a global "AllowVideoRAMOverride" setting. ie: user has > card with bad videoram, but by limiting videoram to a lower > amount they can disable the bad area of memory. > If this is considered to be a useful thing to do in the upstream > XFree86 as well, please let me know and I'll be sure to > submit the end result for possible inclusion in 4.4.0. The atimisc module has been VideoRAM specifications for a long time. In the case of ATI adapters at least, if the driver doesn't properly detect video memory size, I'd consider it a bug. Marc. +----------------------------------+-----------------------------------+ | Marc Aurele La France | work: 1-780-492-9310 | | Computing and Network Services | fax: 1-780-492-1729 | | 352 General Services Building | email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] | | University of Alberta +-----------------------------------+ | Edmonton, Alberta | | | T6G 2H1 | Standard disclaimers apply | | CANADA | | +----------------------------------+-----------------------------------+ XFree86 Core Team member. ATI driver and X server internals. _______________________________________________ Devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://XFree86.Org/mailman/listinfo/devel
