intel(4)

NAME
intel - Intel integrated graphics chipsets

SYNOPSIS
Section "Device"
  Identifier "devname"
  Driver "intel"
  ...
EndSection

DESCRIPTION
intel is an Xorg driver for Intel integrated graphics chipsets. The driver supports depths 8, 15, 16 and 24. All visual types are supported in depth 8. For the i810/i815 other depths support the TrueColor and DirectColor visuals. For the i830M and later, only the TrueColor visual is supported for depths greater than 8. The driver supports hardware accelerated 3D via the Direct Rendering Infrastructure (DRI), but only in depth 16 for the i810/i815 and depths 16 and 24 for the 830M and later.

SUPPORTED HARDWARE
intel supports the i810, i810-DC100, i810e, i815, i830M, 845G, 852GM, 855GM, 865G, 915G, 915GM, 945G, 945GM, 965G, 965Q, 946GZ, 965GM, 945GME, G33, Q33, and Q35 chipsets.

CONFIGURATION DETAILS
Please refer to xorg.conf(5) for general configuration details. This section only covers configuration details specific to this driver.

The Intel 8xx and 9xx families of integrated graphics chipsets have a unified memory architecture and uses system memory for video ram. For the i810 and i815 family of chipset, operating system support for allocating system memory for video use is required in order to use this driver. For the 830M and later, this is required in order for the driver to use more video ram than has been pre-allocated at boot time by the BIOS. This is usually achieved with an "agpgart" or "agp" kernel driver. Linux, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, and Solaris have such kernel drivers available.

By default, the i810 will use 8 megabytes of system memory for graphics. For the 830M and later, the driver will automatically size its memory allocation according to the features it will support. The VideoRam option, which in the past had been necessary to allow more than some small amount of memory to be allocated, is now ignored.

The following driver Options are supported

Option "NoAccel" "boolean"
    Disable or enable acceleration. Default: acceleration is enabled.

Option "SWCursor" "boolean"
    Disable or enable software cursor. Default: software cursor is disable and a hardware cursor is used for configurations where the hardware cursor is available.

Option "ColorKey" "integer"
    This sets the default pixel value for the YUV video overlay key. Default: undefined.

Option "CacheLines" "integer"
    This allows the user to change the amount of graphics memory used for 2D acceleration and video when XAA acceleration is enabled. Decreasing this amount leaves more for 3D textures. Increasing it can improve 2D performance at the expense of 3D performance. Default: depends on the resolution, depth, and available video memory. The driver attempts to allocate space for at 3 screenfuls of pixmaps plus an HD-sized XV video. The default used for a specific configuration can be found by examining the Xorg log file.

Option "FramebufferCompression" "boolean"
    This option controls whether the framebuffer compression feature is enabled. If possible, the front buffer will be allocated in a tiled format and compressed periodically to save memory bandwidth and power. This option is only available on mobile chipsets. Default: enabled on supported configurations.

Option "Tiling" "boolean"
    This option controls whether memory buffers are allocated in tiled mode. In many cases (especially for complex rendering), tiling can improve performance. Default: enabled.

Option "DRI" "boolean"
    Disable or enable DRI support. Default: DRI is enabled for configurations where it is supported.

The following driver Options are supported for the i810 and i815 chipsets:

Option "DDC" "boolean"
    Disable or enable DDC support. Default: enabled.

Option "Dac6Bit" "boolean"
    Enable or disable 6-bits per RGB for 8-bit modes. Default: 8-bits per RGB for 8-bit modes.

Option "XvMCSurfaces" "integer"
    This option enables XvMC. The integer parameter specifies the number of surfaces to use. Valid values are 6 and 7. Default: XvMC is disabled.

The following driver Options are supported for the 830M and later chipsets:

Option "VideoKey" "integer"
    This is the same as the "ColorKey" option described above. It is provided for compatibility with most other drivers.

Option "XVideo" "boolean"
    Disable or enable XVideo support. Default: XVideo is enabled for configurations where it is supported.

Option "Legacy3D" "boolean"
    Enable support for the legacy i915_dri.so 3D driver. This will, among other things, make the 2D driver tell libGL to load the 3D driver i915_dri.so instead of the newer i915tex_dri.so. This option is only used for chipsets in the range i830-i945. Default for i830-i945 series: Enabled. Default for i810: The option is not used. Default for i965: The option is always true.

Option "AperTexSize" "integer"
    Give the size in kiB of the AGP aperture area that is reserved for the DRM memory manager present in i915 drm from version 1.7.0 and upwards, and that is used with the 3D driver in Mesa from version 6.5.2 and upwards. If the size is set too high to make room for pre-allocated VideoRam, the driver will try to reduce it automatically. If you use only older Mesa or DRM versions, you may set this value to zero, and activate the legacy texture pool (see Option "Legacy3D" ). If you run 3D programs with large texture memory requirements, you might gain some performance by increasing this value. Default: 32768.

Option "PageFlip" "boolean"
    Enable support for page flipping. This should improve 3D performance at the potential cost of worse performance with mixed 2D/3D. Also note that this gives no benefit without corresponding support in the Mesa 3D driver and may not give the full benefit without triple buffering (see Option "TripleBuffer" ). Default for i810: The option is not used. Default for i830 and above: Disabled (This option is currently unstable).

Option "TripleBuffer" "boolean"
    Enable support for triple buffering. This should improve 3D performance at the potential cost of worse performance with mixed 2D/3D. Also note that this gives no benefit without corresponding support in the Mesa 3D driver and may not give any benefit without page flipping either (see Option "PageFlip" ). Default for i810: The option is not used. Default for i830 and above: Disabled.

Option "AccelMethod" "string"
    Choose acceleration architecture, either "XAA" or "EXA". XAA is the old XFree86 based acceleration architecture. EXA is a newer and simpler acceleration architecture designed to better accelerate the X Render extension. Default: "EXA".

Option "ModeDebug" "boolean"
    Enable printing of additional debugging information about modesetting to the server log.

Option "ForceEnablePipeA" "boolean"
    Force the driver to leave pipe A enabled. May be necessary in configurations where the BIOS accesses pipe registers during display hotswitch or lid close, causing a crash. If you find that your platform needs this option, please file a bug against xf86-video-intel at http://bugs.freedesktop.org which includes the output of 'lspci -v' and 'lspci -vn'.

OUTPUT CONFIGURATION
On 830M and better chipsets, the driver supports runtime configuration of detected outputs. You can use the xrandr tool to control outputs on the command line. Each output listed below may have one or more properties associated with it (like a binary EDID block if one is found). Some outputs have unique properties which are described below.

  VGA
VGA output port (typically exposed via an HD15 connector).

  LVDS
Low Voltage Differential Signalling output (typically a laptop LCD panel). Available properties:

BACKLIGHT - current backlight level (adjustable)

By adjusting the BACKLIGHT property, the brightness on the LVDS output can be adjusted.  In some cases, this property may be unavailable (for example if your platform uses an external microcontroller to control the backlight).

BACKLIGHT_CONTROL - method used to control backlight

The driver will attempt to automatically detect the backlight control method for your platform.  If this fails however, you can select another method which may allow you to control your backlight.  Available methods include:

NATIVE

Intel chipsets include backlight control registers, which on some platforms may be wired to control the backlight directly.  This method uses those registers.

LEGACY

The legacy backlight control registers exist in PCI configuration space, and have fewer available backlight levels than the native registers.  However, some platforms are wired this way and so need to use this method.

COMBO

This method attempts to use the native registers where possible, resorting to the legacy, configuration space registers only to enable the backlight if needed.  On platforms that have both wired this can be a good choice as it allows the fine grained backlight control of the native interface.

KERNEL

On some system, the kernel may provide a backlight control driver.  In that case, using the kernel interfaces is preferable, as the same driver may respond to hotkey events or external APIs.

  TV
Integrated TV output. Available properties include:

BOTTOM, RIGHT, TOP, LEFT - margins

Adjusting these properties allows you to control the placement of your TV output buffer on the screen.

TV_FORMAT - output standard

This property allows you to control the output standard used on your TV output port.  You can select between NTSC-M, NTSC-443, NTSC-J, PAL-M, PAL-N, and PAL.

  TMDS-1
First DVI SDVO output

  TMDS-2
Second DVI SDVO output

SDVO and DVO TV outputs are not supported by the driver at this time.

See xorg.conf(5) for information on associating Monitor sections with these outputs for configuration. Associating Monitor sections with each output can be helpful if you need to ignore a specific output, for example, or statically configure an extended desktop monitor layout.

SEE ALSO
Xorg(1), xorg.conf(5), xorgconfig(1), Xserver(1), X(7)

AUTHORS
Authors include: Keith Whitwell, and also Jonathan Bian, Matthew J Sottek, Jeff Hartmann, Mark Vojkovich, Alan Hourihane, H. J. Lu. 830M and 845G support reworked for XFree86 4.3 by David Dawes and Keith Whitwell. 852GM, 855GM, and 865G support added by David Dawes and Keith Whitwell. 915G, 915GM, 945G, 945GM, 965G, 965Q and 946GZ support added by Alan Hourihane and Keith Whitwell. Lid status support added by Alan Hourihane. Textured video support for 915G and later chips, RandR 1.2 and hardware modesetting added by Eric Anholt and Keith Packard. EXA and Render acceleration added by Wang Zhenyu. TV out support added by Zou Nan Hai and Keith Packard. 965GM, G33, Q33, and Q35 support added by Wang Zhenyu.