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Re: HELP: ATI 64-bit video



Gilad Kedem writes:
 > On Sun, 26 Nov 1995, George Agasandian wrote:
 > > Hi everybody,
 > > 
 > > I am going to buy a PC with ATI 64-bit video card.
 > > Does somebody have any experience with the Linux
 > > installed for such card?  The last XFree-HOWTO file
 > > says nothing about the ATI 64-bit accelerator.
 > > 
 > > Thank you in advance,
 > > 
 > > George.
 > 
 > If you mean the ATI Mach64, then its not fully supported by X. I had one and 
 > couldnt get any "workable" resolution with it. The only possible 
 > resolution was 640x480. Have a look at comp.os.linux.x/setup/hardware 
 > newsgroups. There are quite a few posts concerning this problem.
 > 

Some of the ATI mach64 cards have pretty high Xstones ratings.  See
http://www.goof.com/xbench/ for more details.

Also, from /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/doc/README.Mach64 (included with the
XFree version 3.1.2 distribution):

  Notes for Mach64 X Server
  Kevin E. Martin (martin@cs.unc.edu)
  6 June 1995

  1.  Supported Cards, RAMDACs, and Bits Per Pixel

  The Mach64 X server supports 8bpp with a dot clock up to 80MHz on all
  Mach64 based cards.  On certain cards, higher dot clocks and
  additional depths are available (see the table below).  What
  determines this support is the RAMDAC on your card.

   RAMDAC      Max Dot Clock   BPP   Max Resolution   Video RAM Required
  --------     -------------   ---   --------------   ------------------
  ATI68860         135MHz       8      1280x1024             2Mb
  ATI68860         135MHz      16      1280x1024             4Mb
  ATI68860          80MHz      32       1024x768             4Mb

  ATI68880         135MHz       8      1280x1024             2Mb
  ATI68880         135MHz      16      1280x1024             4Mb
  ATI68880          80MHz      32       1024x768             4Mb

  ATI68875          80MHz      32       1024x768             4Mb

  CH8398           135MHz       8      1280x1024             2Mb
  CH8398            80MHz      16       1024x768             2Mb
  CH8398            40MHz      32        800x600             2Mb

  STG1702          135MHz       8      1280x1024             2Mb
  STG1702           80MHz      16       1024x768             2Mb
  STG1702           50MHz      32        800x600             2Mb

  STG1703          135MHz       8      1280x1024             2Mb
  STG1703           80MHz      16       1024x768             2Mb
  STG1703           50MHz      32        800x600             2Mb

  All Others[*]     80MHz       8      1280x1024             2Mb

  [*] - The dot clocks are limited to 80MHz and the bpp is limited to 8.

  The RAMDAC is reported when you run the Mach64 X server with the
  "-probeonly" command line option.

  The ATI68860 and ATI68880 RAMDACs are usually found on ATI Graphics
  Pro Turbo and ATI WinTurbo cards.  The other RAMDACs are usually found
  on ATI Graphics Xpression cards.

  As advertised, Mach64 graphics cards can use a special 24bpp mode
  (packed pixel mode), but this is not currently supported in the Mach64
  for various reasons.  The main one is that there is no current support
  for 24bpp modes in the X Consortium's servers.  Adding this support
  will require a great programming effort.

  The Mach64 X server requires the video memory aperture to function
  properly.  This means that ISA Mach64 cards in systems with more than
  12Mb of main memory will not work.


Good luck,

Dr. Harvey J. Stein
Berger Financial Research
hjstein@math.huji.ac.il