Information for S3 Chipset Users : New S3 SVGA driver
Previous: How to avoid ``snowing'' display while performing graphics operations
Next: Information for S3 Chipset Users

## 9. New S3 SVGA driver

There is a new experimental S3 driver for non-ViRGE S3 chipsets in the XF86_SVGA server. This is definitely an ALPHA quality driver and hasn't been well tested, and has some known problems. Because of this, the configuration programs will install XF86_S3 by default rather than this one. But if you're adventurous or had some problems with XF86_S3, you might want to give it a try.

The driver includes generic S3 support which should work on all non-ViRGE S3 chips (in theory, that is). It also has improved support for chips that support S3's new style memory mapped I/O. These chips include the 868, 968 and recent Trio64 variants (not the plain old Trio64s). Chips that are capable of using the new style MMIO will use it automatically. The option "NO_MMIO" can be used to turn this off.

Performance for chips using the new style MMIO is expected to be better than XF86_S3, especially on a PCI bus. Performance without MMIO, however, is expected to be roughly comparable to XF86_S3 (faster in some areas, slower in others).

All color depths achievable with XF86_S3 should be possible with these drivers. Additionally, packed 24 bpp "sort of" works for the 868 and 968. Your results may vary.

Nearly all the options and features supported by XF86_S3 are supported by this driver. Additionally, the standard XAA/SVGA server options such as NO_ACCEL, SW_CURSOR, and NO_PIXMAP_CACHE are also supported. XF86_S3 features which are NOT supported in this driver are DPMS support and gamma correction.

The driver supports the PCI_RETRY option when using MMIO and a PCI card. This option can give large performance boosts for some operations, but has a tendency to hog the bus. Because of this, the option is not set by default. Most hardware combinations may not have any problems using this option, but sound card glitches during intensive graphics operations have been reported on some.

One shortcoming worth noting is that this driver does not yet contain the work-around for some S3 PCI BIOSs that report their memory usage incorrectly. This can result in conflicting address spaces. If this is the case on your hardware you should run XF86_S3 once and write down the address that your card is relocated to (as printed out in the server output). Then you can force the server to use this address with the MemBase field in the XF86Config (see the man page on XF86Config).

    $XFree86: xc/programs/Xserver/hw/xfree86/doc/sgml/S3.sgml,v 3.37.2.4 1998/02/27 02:34:38 dawes Exp $

    $XConsortium: S3.sgml /main/14 1996/02/21 17:45:58 kaleb $

Information for S3 Chipset Users : New S3 SVGA driver
Previous: How to avoid ``snowing'' display while performing graphics operations
Next: Information for S3 Chipset Users