Provided by: xserver-xorg-video-savage_2.3.9-1ubuntu1_amd64 
NAME
savage - S3 Savage video driver
SYNOPSIS
Section "Device"
Identifier "devname"
Driver "savage"
...
EndSection
DESCRIPTION
savage is an Xorg driver for the S3 Savage family video accelerator chips. 2D, 3D, and Xv acceleration
is supported on all chips except the Savage2000 (2D only). Dualhead operation is supported on MX, IX,
and SuperSavage chips. The savage driver supports PCI and AGP boards with the following chips:
Savage3D (8a20 and 8a21) (2D, 3D)
Savage4 (8a22) (2D, 3D)
Savage2000 (9102) (2D only)
Savage/MX (8c10 and 8c11) (2D, 3D, Dualhead)
Savage/IX (8c12 and 8c13) (2D, 3D, Dualhead)
SuperSavage/MX (8c22, 8c24, and 8c26) (2D, 3D, Dualhead)
SuperSavage/IX (8c2a, 8c2b, 8c2c, 8c2d, 8c2e, and 8c2f) (2D, 3D, Dualhead)
ProSavage PM133 (8a25) (2D, 3D)
ProSavage KM133 (8a26) (2D, 3D)
Twister (ProSavage PN133)
(8d01) (2D, 3D)
TwisterK (ProSavage KN133)
(8d02) (2D, 3D)
ProSavage DDR (8d03) (2D, 3D)
ProSavage DDR-K (8d04) (2D, 3D)
CONFIGURATION DETAILS
Please refer to xorg.conf(5) for general configuration details. This section only covers configuration
details specific to this driver.
The following driver Options are supported:
Option "HWCursor" "boolean"
Option "SWCursor" "boolean"
These two options interact to specify hardware or software cursor. If the SWCursor option is
specified, any HWCursor setting is ignored. Thus, either "HWCursor off" or "SWCursor on" will
force the use of the software cursor. On Savage/MX and Savage/IX chips which are connected to
LCDs, a software cursor will be forced, because the Savage hardware cursor does not correctly
track the automatic panel expansion feature. Default: hardware cursor.
Option "NoAccel" "boolean"
Disable or enable acceleration. Default: acceleration is enabled.
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 "Rotate" "CW"
Option "Rotate" "CCW"
Rotate the desktop 90 degrees clockwise or counterclockwise. This option forces the ShadowFB
option on, and disables acceleration and the RandR extension. Default: no rotation.
Option "ShadowFB" "boolean"
Enable or disable use of the shadow framebuffer layer. This option disables acceleration.
Default: off.
Option "LCDClock" "frequency"
Override the maximum dot clock. Some LCD panels produce incorrect results if they are driven at
too fast of a frequency. If UseBIOS is on, the BIOS will usually restrict the clock to the
correct range. If not, it might be necessary to override it here. The frequency parameter may be
specified as an integer in Hz (135750000), or with standard suffixes like "k", "kHz", "M", or
"MHz" (as in 135.75MHz).
Option "CrtOnly" "boolean"
This option disables output to the LCD and enables output to the CRT port only. It is useful on
laptops if you only want to use the CRT port or to force the CRT output only on desktop cards that
use mobile chips. Default: auto-detect active outputs
Option "UseBIOS" "boolean"
Enable or disable use of the video BIOS to change modes. Ordinarily, the savage driver tries to
use the video BIOS to do mode switches. This generally produces the best results with the mobile
chips (/MX and /IX), since the BIOS knows how to handle the critical but unusual timing
requirements of the various LCD panels supported by the chip. To do this, the driver searches
through the BIOS mode list, looking for the mode which most closely matches the xorg.conf mode
line. Some purists find this scheme objectionable. If you would rather have the savage driver
use your mode line timing exactly, turn off the UseBios option. Note: Use of the BIOS is required
for dualhead operation. Default: on (use the BIOS).
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 "ShadowStatus" "boolean"
Enables the use of a shadow status register. There is a chip bug in the Savage graphics engine
that can cause a bus lock when reading the engine status register under heavy load, such as when
scrolling text or dragging windows. The bug affects about 4% of all Savage users without DRI and
a large fraction of users with DRI. If your system hangs regularly while scrolling text or
dragging windows, try turning this option on. This uses an alternate method of reading the engine
status which is slightly more expensive, but avoids the problem. When DRI is enabled then the
default is "on" (use shadow status), otherwise the default is "off" (use normal status register).
Option "DisableCOB" "boolean"
Disables the COB (Command Overflow Buffer) on savage4 and newer chips. There is supposedly a HW
cache coherency problem on certain savage4 and newer chips that renders the COB useless. If you
are having problems with 2D acceleration you can disable the COB, however you will lose some
performance. 3D acceleration requires the COB to work. This option only applies to Savage4 and
newer chips. Default: "off" (use COB).
Option "BCIforXv" "boolean"
Use the BCI to copy and reformat Xv pixel data. Using the BCI for Xv causes graphics artifacts on
some chips. This option only applies to Savage4 and prosavage/twister chips. On some combinations
of chipsets and video players, BCI formatting might actually be slower than software formatting
("AGPforXv" might help in this case). BCI formatting can only be used on video data with a width
that is a multiple of 16 pixels (which is the vast majority of videos). Other widths are handled
through software formatting. Default: on for prosavage and twister (use BCI for Xv); off for
savage4 (do not use the BCI for Xv).
Option "AGPforXv" "boolean"
Instructs the BCI Xv pixel formatter to use AGP memory as a scratch buffer. Ordinarily the BCI
formatter uses a an area in framebuffer memory to hold YV12 planar data to be converted for
display. This requires a somewhat expensive upload of YV12 data to framebuffer memory. The
"AGPforXv" option causes the BCI formatter to place the YV12 data in AGP memory instead, which can
be uploaded faster than the framebuffer. Use of this option cuts upload overhead by 25% according
to benchmarks. This option also smooths out most of the shearing present when using BCI for pixel
conversion. Currently this option is experimental and is disabled by default. Video width
restrictions that apply to "BCIforXv" also apply here. Only valid when "DRI" and "BCIforXv" are
both active, and only on AGP chipsets. Default: "off".
If "AccelMethod" is set to "EXA" and "AGPforXv" is enabled, then the driver will also attempt to
reuse the AGP scratch buffer for UploadToScreen acceleration.
Option "AGPMode" "integer"
Set AGP data transfer rate. (used only when DRI is enabled)
1 -- x1 (default)
2 -- x2
4 -- x4
others -- invalid
Option "AGPSize" "integer"
The amount of AGP memory that will allocated for DMA and textures in MB. Valid sizes are 4, 8, 16,
32, 64, 128 and 256. The default is 16MB.
Option "DmaMode" "string"
This option influences in which way DMA (direct memory access) is used by the kernel and 3D
drivers.
Any -- Try command DMA first, then vertex DMA (default)
Command -- Only use command DMA or don't use DMA at all
Vertex -- Only use vertex DMA or don't use DMA at all
None -- Disable DMA
Command and vertex DMA cannot be enabled at the same time. Which DMA mode is actually used in the
end also depends on the DRM version (only >= 2.4.0 supports command DMA) and the hardware
(Savage3D/MX/IX doesn't support command DMA).
Option "DmaType" "string"
The type of memory that will be used by the 3D driver for DMA (direct memory access).
PCI -- PCI memory (default on PCI cards)
AGP -- AGP memory (default on AGP cards)
"AGP" only works if you have an AGP card.
Option "BusType" "string"
The bus type that will be used to access the graphics card.
PCI -- PCI bus (default)
AGP -- AGP bus
"AGP" only works if you have an AGP card. If you choose "PCI" on an AGP card the AGP bus speed is
not set and no AGP aperture is allocated. This implies DmaType "PCI".
Option "DRI" "boolean"
Enable DRI support. This option allows you to enable or disable the DRI. Default: "on" (enable
DRI).
FILES
savage_drv.o
SEE ALSO
Xorg(1), xorg.conf(5), Xserver(1), X(7)
AUTHORS
Authors include Tim Roberts (timr@probo.com) and Ani Joshi (ajoshi@unixbox.com) for this version, and Tim
Roberts and S. Marineau for the original driver from which this was derived.
X Version 11 xf86-video-savage 2.3.9 SAVAGE(4)