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Video Troubleshooting Tips

Here are some general tips (followed by sections with sets of specific tips) to help you out when you are troubleshooting your video card:

Tips for Getting DRI to Work

Direct Rendering Infrastructure (DRI) allows you to do 3D hardware acceleration on selected video cards. To see if DRI is enabled on your display, type the following:

   # glxinfo | grep direct
   direct rendering: Yes

The Yes shows that DRI is on. If it says No instead, you should check that your video card is on the list of cards supported by DRI (visit the DRI website at dri.sourceforge.net/doc/dri_driver_features.phtml). If DRI should be supported, but appears to be disabled, make sure the following lines appear in your XF86Config file:

   Section "DRI"
                Mode 0666

One limitation of DRI is that it does not run in resolutions greater than 1024 x 768. Trying to run X in a higher resolution on a card that supports DRI, then backing down (using Ctrl+Alt+F1) may cause your X server to crash. The reason is that the higher resolution will consume lots of your video RAM, and not release it when you switch to the lower resolution. When DRI goes to get the memory that it needs, the X server crashes.

If you have trouble getting or keeping the X server running with DRI enabled, try setting a low resolution for the X server (maybe 640 × 480 with 16-bit color depth). If this works, try increasing the resolution (up to 1024 × 7668) and color depth (up to 32 bits) as long as the X server continues to run. If the server doesn't run at the lower resolution, you might have to disable DRI for your card.

Tips for Particular Video Cards (Chipsets)

The following are some tips that may help you through some problems that are specific to certain video cards and chipsets. For configuration information that applies to all video cards, see the XF86Config and XFree86 man pages.

3dfx Chipsets

Even though the maker of 3dfx products, 3dfx Interactive, Inc., is out of business, there are still a lot of video cards around that use 3dfx chipsets. Although the cards are officially unsupported, many Voodoo cards that use 3dfx chips are so inexpensive that you might want to give them a try. Here are a few tips to help you with your 3dfx cards:

  • Identify chipset-To physically identify a 3dfx chipset, try this site: www.plasma-online.de/english/identify/picture/3dfx.html.

  • Video driver-Use the tdfx video driver for Voodoo Banshee, Voodoo3, Voodoo4, and Voodoo5 cards (type man tdfx).

  • Hardware acceleration-DRI is supported on these cards to do hardware acceleration. However, you cannot use resolutions higher than 1024 × 768 at 16-bit color depth.

If you run into problems with a 3dfx card, try the voodoofiles.com website. They have a 3dfx forum where you can get help with your Voodoo 3, 4, 5, Banshee, or other 3dfx cards.

Intel i810 Chipsets

The i810 video chipsets are used on Intel 810 motherboards (i810, i810-dc100, i810e, and i815). For pixel depths up to 24 bits, hardware accelerated 2D drawing is supported. High-resolution video modes are supported up to 1600 × 1200.

The driver name is i810. Since XFree86 version 4.3.0, this graphics chipset has included 2D, 3D (using DRI), and XVideo support. Here are a few tips:

  • Video driver-Use the i810 video driver (type man i810).

  • Hardware acceleration-DRI is supported on these cards to do hardware acceleration. However, you cannot use resolutions higher than 1024 × 768 at 16-bit color depth for i810 and i815 chipsets. Later chipsets allow depths up to 24 bits.

  • Increasing video RAM-The i810 graphics chipsets use a unified memory architecture in which they can use system RAM for video memory. By default, 8MB of system RAM is assigned for graphics. You can increase this number using the VideoRam option in the Device section of XF86Config file for the i810 driver. Here's an example of what that line might look like to use 16MB of RAM for graphics:

       Section "Device"
                 Identifier "Intel 810"
                 Driver "i810
                 VideoRam 16384
                 VendorName "Intel 810"
       EndSection
    

NVIDIA Chipsets

Although a driver for NVIDIA cards is included with XFree86 (the nv driver), it only supports 2D acceleration. That includes support for PCI and AGP video cards that include the following chips: RIVA 128, RIVA TNT, RIVA TNT2, GeForce 256-Quadro, GeForce2-Quadro2, GeForce3Quadro DCC, nForce-nForce2, GeForce4-Quadro4, and GeForce FX-Quadro FX.

To get 3D acceleration on NVIDIA boards, you need to install NVIDIA's own proprietary binary X drivers. Go to the NVIDIA website (www.nvidia.com) and click on the Download Drivers link. From there, follow the link to Linux Drivers to download and install the NVIDIA driver.

Note 

It is possible that the redhat-config-xfree86 window will not recognize the proprietary NVIDIA driver. You may need to run XFree86-configure to create your XF86Config file.

ATI Chipsets

The ATI Rage 128-based video cards use the r128 driver, while the ATI Radeon-based video cards use the radeon driver. Although your X server should autodetect this information, you can specify the following values in the Devices section for the driver:

  • VideoRam-Specify in kilobytes how much RAM is available on the card.

  • ChipID-Identify the PCI device ID (run the lspci command to get this ID).

  • IOBase-Identify the physical address of the MMIO register.

  • MemBase-Identify the physical address of the linear framebuffer.

Many options are available to use with the r128 and radeon drivers. Type man r128 or man radeon to view available options for the drivers.

Tips to Fix Video Crashes

  • Broken XF86Config file-It is possible that you, or some tool you used, may have trashed your /etc/X11/XF86Config file. If you are unable to fix the file manually so X can start, you can delete XF86Config (actually, make a copy first, and then delete it). Run redhat-config-xfree86 again to get, hopefully, a sane XF86Config file to start with. If that doesn't work, try typing this:

    # XFree86 -configure
    XFree86 -xf86config /root/XF86Config.new
    

    If the X server starts properly using the XF86Config.new file you just created, you can copy the file to its permanent location and restart X when you are ready.

    # cp /root/XF86Config.new /etc/X11/XF86Config
    
  • There's nothing I can do to get this card to work!-If the card is not listed as supported, and you can't get it to go, consider buying a new card. There are good, brand-new video cards starting at about $30 that will work well, and some screaming great ones starting at around $100. Xfree86.org recommends S3-based boards and ATI-based boards. I have had good luck with NVIDIA cards, but you need their proprietary drivers to get them to work well.

    The Driver Status for XFree86 page (www.xfree86.org/current/Status.html) is a good place to start. Beware, however, that even some boards that are listed as supported may become unsupported if the manufacturer decides to change the chipset on the board without changing its name or model number.


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