Xorg, i810,

Bob P · Posted: Sat Dec 04, 2004 1:23 pm Post subject:

well, i've tried a few more things with the i810 chipset, and i've run into some interesting problems.

using dohko's recommended kernel settings i was able to get nice performance from the i810 chipset. i retained the VideoRam 16384 setting in Xorg.conf, and i was even able to get FB support working for GenSplash at bootup. :wink:

unfortunately, as soon as i tried to incorporate another video module, like vesafb/vesafb-tng or matrox mga using <*> or <M>, the i810 FB support vanished completely. AARGH!!!

at this point i wonder if i will ever get a dual head setup working wtih the OptiPlex's native chipset. I'm beginning to think that the only palatable solution is to throw a pair of Matrox PCI cards in the expansion bus and use them with the VESA drivers, leaving out support for the i810 altogether.

EDIT: typos
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Bob P

Just saw this on the Intel website: Intel plans to discontinue interactive support for the i810 (aka 82810) chipset on 12/31/04. link

Anyone owning a PC with one of these chipsets knows that its a real B*I*T*C*H to get it working with Linux. If you need to get e-mail support, get it while you still can.

Links:
End of Support Notice
82810 Graphics Controller Page
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SPY_jmr1 · n00b Joined: 02 Jan 2004 Posts: 62

NiklasH · Posted: Mon Dec 06, 2004 7:55 am Post subject:

Try loading the modules sis and sis_agp. That did it for me.
Although I only had trouble getting dri to work. But maybe it helps for you guys too?
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Bob P · Posted: Tue Dec 07, 2004 10:45 pm Post subject:

well, i decided to dig a little deeper into the i810 chipset problem, and i found some interesting information at the intel website.

1. Intentional Disabling of Hi-Res Video Modes in Windows and Availability in Linux. even though 1600x1200x16 is a VESA video mode that's do-able with 4 MB of video memory, the i810 chipset won't do it in Windows. this has always struck me as odd -- why would intel intentionally disable a standard vesa mode in their chipset? i had always considered it to be an intentional disabling of the chipset by the Wintel monopoly to force you to buy more expensive hardware if you want to do highres video with big displays. greedy bastards.

the good news? even though this video mode is explicitly disabled in windows, you can do it in Linux, but the high res video modes in Linux are a little compilcated to set up and a bit of tweaking is required.

as i had mentioned earlier, when using the default/maximum kernel command line parameter of "vram:4", the high res video modes don't work right under Xorg. at resolutions above 1280x1024 in the current version of Xorg and KDE 3.3.x, for example, the backgrounds on all windows and menus are rendered 100% transparent.

another user pointed out that you can tweak the i810 chipset into working properly by issuing an option videoram command in xorg.conf with a value of 16384. this seemed a bit counterintuitive, given that the chipset driver explicitly states that supports a maximum of 4 mb of system memory dedicated to video memory. it turns out that the driver documentation may not be correct.

i found a white paper on the intel website entitled "Intel 810 and 815 Chipset Family Dynamic Video Memory Technology." buried in that document is a statement that the chipset can address additional memory beyond the 4 mb of memory dedicated to the display cache if you're using the PV 4.x drivers. in Windows 2000 the maximum value can increase to 10-12 mb, which may explain why the other user's recommendation of 16MB resulted in a functional system. unfortunately, there was no reference to Linux in this document, so I had to do some experimenting.

i tested values of 4 MB, 8MB and 16MB. the 4 and 8 MB settings would not correct the transparent background problem, though the 16 MB setting would. based on the documentation of addressability of up to 12 MB in windows, additional testing of values between 8 MB and 16 MB may be worthy of pursuit.

Score: +1 for the 810 under Linux.

2. Framebuffer support and GenSplash. I was able to get framebuffer support working with the i810 chipset to enable those cool GenSplash boot and terminal graphics... although i was never able to get the bootsplash graphics to work in an entirely error-free way with the i810.

I was able to enable framebuffers/bootsplash with both the matrox cards without any problems whatsoever. i was able to get bootsplash to work in a buggy sort of way while running the i810 as the solitary video chipset. i was also able to enable bootsplash to work on the matrox cards with the i810 drivers installed. but i was NEVER able to get bootsplash to work on the i810 chipset with another video card and driver (any type) present in the machine and kernel.

Score: -1 for i810 under Linux

3. Incompatability with other video cards, and inoperability of Dual-Head X Servers. I'm a multi-head display kind of guy. At times I've had as many as three 21-inch displays on my Linux box running them all at 1600x1200 resolution at 16 or 24 bit depths. although I've been able to do this with just about any combination of cards, i've had absolutely no luck with the i810 chipset. no matter what arrangement of cards i have tried, i could never get Xorg to boot if the i810 chipset was included in a multihead setup. although i could get all of the other cards to work fine together while running multihead, and although i could get the i810 to work well in X by itself, the mere addition of the i810 chipset to any multihead configuration i worked with resulted in Xorg lockups at boot -- 100% of the time.

Score: -1 for the i810 under Linux.

so what's the final score? -1.

my conclusions after 55 days of testing and tweaking the i810 chipset is that the i810 is a piece of garbage. it has no video memory of its own, and it forces you to sacrifice system ram for video. this was a design consideration based on cheap produciton, not performance. in addition, the 810 chipset is difficult to configure to work properly in X. witness the scores of i810/Xorg threads if you have any doubts. finally, the i810 chipset is a showstopper if you want to do any sort of a multihead setup.

personally, my recommendations are that you disable your i810 chipset to the fullest extent possible and use a high quality video card in its place. don't waste your time like i did. the 810 chipset just isn't worth it.
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TheCat · Posted: Sun Feb 27, 2005 7:31 pm Post subject:

how to tell to Xorg to use i915 kernel module? Xorg want i810 kernel module...
I get:

red5standingby · n00b Joined: 11 Feb 2005 Posts: 19

Gentlemen,

I'm up in the air on whether or not Linux makes a distinction between i810 and i815, but I have a laptop so I couldn't disable 815 if I wanted to. In the Xorg readme files it says that I can just let Xorgconfig do most of the work, and then install agpgart.o myself.

But, in my kernel, it says
---

Next to the part where I should be able to put an "M" do get that module.
Either way, I'm still stuck at 640x480.
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sram · n00b Joined: 27 Mar 2004 Posts: 45

Compiling i915 as a module worked for me...i dont know why but it did...my motherboard is intel845gvad2, still i had built i810 & i915 driver in kernel..but it was not working earlier(it certainly shd not, as i810 must be driver) and as a module everything is fine till now:)
Thanx

mhoskins

I'm very grateful to the group that has been driving this thread. It has helped a great deal. You guys rock. I'm stuck on what must be a detail that I have misunderstood or overlooked.

I have a Viao R505JL. I'm running the 2.6.11.4 vanilla-sources. The results of attempting to follow the thread have left me with these modules:

cgmd · Posted: Wed May 11, 2005 2:47 pm Post subject:

Bob P concludes...

curtis119 · Posted: Wed Jun 01, 2005 2:04 pm Post subject:

I had problems (for the first time) with my i810 chipset. I had to disable the VESA and i810 frame buffer and use only the VGA16 frame buffer. The i810 dri/agp modules worked correctly. I also had to disable i2c support. These options used to work for me prior to 2.6.11-gentoo-r9. With these new settings I seem to be getting the same behaviour as with my old settings. I haven't noticed a slow down or any other errors. glx works perfectly.

xorg.conf:

paramthegreat · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 12 Aug 2002 Posts: 78

i have been having similar problems on my dell laptop with i810 chipset. everytime i tried using dri, i woiuld get a small 1 inch square block on my screen and the system would freeze. the only way to get out was to reboot.

after some testing i found that if u add the following line to device section for ur card, the problem goes away

hkg · n00b Joined: 19 Sep 2005 Posts: 1

does anybody know what is the glue between the $MODULES/extension/libdri.so and the $MODULES/dri/i810_dri.so??? every symbol which appears undefined, could be found in the i810_dri.so file. how the dri knows which shared object to use?
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nlogax · n00b Joined: 23 Sep 2005 Posts: 1

Folks, I managed to get this working!!!

\o/ etc

...by changing my BIOS so that the Intel 815 was enabled and my 2nd card (ATI Rage XL) was disabled. It wouldn't let me have both enabled simealtaneously, unfortunately. However, in spite of it being disabled in the BIOS, both cards are working so I've got a desktop spanning my ATI Rage XL & my i810 (just like I had on Windows)

I am using Ubuntu Breezy Badger but I don't think that has too much bearing - I think with the right BIOS setup it should be possible to get any i810 working in dual-head. Anyway, here's my xorg.conf:

frawd · n00b Joined: 21 Sep 2005 Posts: 5

Any success in having TV-out working with the 82810 chip?

The XFree "MonitorLayout" option is not supported for chips 810 and 815 i believe (only from 830, cf man i810). I read above that some could use the kernel drm i915 driver with 810 chip, I will try that, but if someone in the mean time has any hints to try tricking X and make it spit out on TV output, it would be nice

Thanks.