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<A HREF="S3.html"><EM> Information for S3 Chipset Users</EM></A>
 <b>:</b> <EM>New S3 SVGA driver</EM><BR>
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  <H2><A NAME="9"></A>9. New S3 SVGA driver</H2>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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. </p>
<p>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).</p>
<p>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. </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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. </p>
<p>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).</p>

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$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 $
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 <HR NOSHADE>
<A HREF="S3.html"><EM> Information for S3 Chipset Users</EM></A>
 <b>:</b> <EM>New S3 SVGA driver</EM><BR>
<b>Previous:</b> <A HREF="S38.html"><EM>How to avoid ``snowing'' display while performing graphics operations</EM></A><BR>
<b>Next:</b> <A HREF="S3.html"><EM> Information for S3 Chipset Users</EM></A>



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