Matrox Releases XFree86 4.0.1 Driver 90
As the title says - Matrox has released a beta driver for their G200/G400/G450 which includes support for DualHead and QuadHead (up to 4 monitors), Flat Panel and TV out. This driver is a beta. You can get it here and I mirrored it here. You'll need XFree 4.0.1 in order to use this driver. Please follow the readme file carefully! (the readme file from Matrox's FTP needs to be converted dos2unix). Note: you cannot use the 3D hardware acceleration on the 2nd monitor (yet).Matrox & Precision insight - Keep up the good work!
Re:The good and bad of this (Score:2)
Look at the DRI project's developer mailing list archives [geocrawler.com]. There's a message from Jeff Hartmann hinting that the source for the HAL will be relesed eventually, too. (Wait for the archive to be updated, the message is fairly recent, that's the reason I can't provide a direct link to it)
Its piece of cake (Score:1)
Rename your old X dirs ! before install.
G400 Max (Score:2)
On the down side, I sent them an E-Mail asking how the Rainbow Runner works in Linux and I never heard back from them. Pity. I was all set to drop some cash for a TV capture card (I since got diverted and haven't investigated that scene for a while.)
Dual monitor support with linux (Score:2)
It works great, except the menu bar doesn't float with applications but you get used to that. I love dual monitor set ups.
I don't know enough about X to know if its posible
Re:Not to be a bitch but.....Great README (Score:2)
What this proves... (Score:4)
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Re:Debian and XFree86 4.0.1? (Score:1)
Anyone made it work? (Score:1)
dos2unix!? (Score:1)
What's wrong with
perl -pi -e 's/\r//'
?
Quad-Head? How? (Score:1)
Re:Dual monitor support with linux (Score:2)
But yeah. I don't really like X, so if video goodness (such as dual-headedness) were to be added to the kernel, I'd be happy.
DVI cards! (Score:1)
Polygon naming (Score:1)
Nvidia vs. Others (Score:1)
Maybe it's not the best benchmark, but running simple linux games like quake3, heavy gear 2 and the like are reasonable judges of how well a 3d card will perform under linux.
I have now tried almost every major brand of card on my machine, and without a question, for games and standard opengl, Nvidia's drivers, in the case of the TNT2 and the Geforce2 I've tried, kick butt.
Try running the program "mtri" under your mesa's demo dir. Make sure to link it to the right opengl libs. Like magic, you can see how many triangles your card can push in-window (which is slower than full screen btw).
In window, the Matrox G400 I tried scored about 1m triangles. The Nvidia geforce score more than that, by almost 3.5 times! (taken at 32-bit color 1280x1024 on an athalon t-bird 800 w/ 256 megs pc100 ram, for those who care). The TNT2 scores at just below 2mtri. For reference, the Voodoo3 3000 scored just below the TNT2, at about 1.8 mtri (this test was done in 16-bit color tho, so ymmv).
That's plenty enough benchmarking for me. Code I write runs well with one card, and at 1/4 speed on a Matrox card. Now, don't get me wrong. I love Matrox. I think it's admirable what they are doing, and I plan to buy a g450 w/ dual heading for my workstatin computer because dual monitors make coding easier. But for raw 3d performace, both in games and simulations, nvidia cards give you the best performance you are going to get on an x86 machine, open source or closed.
- Paradox
Man of the C!!!
Beta for Linux and drivers for W2K are still beta (Score:1)
If they take as long as they did with the W2K drivers then you won't see their final Linux version anytime soon. The only benifit is that you can get the source and fix it yourself before they will ever be done.
Re:for dualhead, its still better to use TWO cards (Score:1)
Re:The good and bad of this (Score:2)
Look at the DRI project website [sourceforge.net] (yes, I know, I have said this a gazillion times already). They developed these drivers, and the license is the XFree86 license, i.e., you can't get more free than that.
Re:And what about PI's drivers? (Score:2)
Download the source from Matrox, download the source from DRI's CVS [sourceforge.net]. Run diff. Modulo the HAL, these are just about the same drivers.
Not to be a bitch but.....Great README (Score:3)
That said, I am still dying to get my hands on a good graphics card for Linux (it would be nice if it would do BSD and Be but Linux is _my_ OS of choice) and this is starting to sound closer to the mark. Anyone able to offer any real feedback on what this can do? The one thing we are really missing now in terms of X Video Card support is a "Tom's Hardware" site which reviews the cards and drivers so that we can all find out what features we can expect to get out of modern cards under XFree and what sort of performance they offer (primarly of interest vis-a-vis OpenGL frame rates and dvd playback cpu loads, but scalability (1head - 4 heads + tv) and video capture performance (achievable undropped data rates, resolution and frame rates). Anyone able to write useful benchmarks for any of these areas...if so please do and send them to Tom GPL'd (and/or anyone else you think might take this on).
The debate over Nvidia's open V closed drivers is so virulent because we do not have any good performance comparisons, and also because support for features beyond standard 2d and 3d are essentially undocumented/unsupported and therefore it is difficult to determine what features you would get out of your ATI All in Wonder 128 (to take what I feel is a good example) if you use it under linux without just buying one.
If Linux (and really the free OSs as a whole) wants to be any more mainstream for "home" users and not simply as a second OS on a machine designed for Windows, we need to start gathering up the hardware and driver (the two are inexorably intertwined for Free OSs) information so that people buying a PC can quickly see what there machine will/should do under their OS of choice. The vital areas are video and sound, but other items such as Nics and capture cards would be beneficial.
If such a site already exists please post the url:-)
Re:No 3D acceleration??? (Score:2)
Look at the DRI Project website [sourceforge.net], read the docs. Read them again. Then come back and complain. OpenGL hardware acceleration works. You just have to read the documentation to get it going. Or if you don't want to upgrade to XFree86 4.0 just yet, keep using the Utah drivers, they are just as good.
Install XF65 4.0.1 on RedHat 6.9.5? (Score:2)
rest of the way and try this out?
-Mark
Re:The good and bad of this (Score:1)
My father uses OS/2 as his primary OS (I choose Linux), and he runs a G200 PCI as his graphics card. He's never had the slightest problem with the driver support. At all.
Oh, well. Speaking of OS/2, the interface is very VERY nicely designed. If I could get GTK+ to look and feel like that, I would be very happy indeed.
Suggestion to IBM: Work with the GNOME guys or something and try and get us an OS/2-like interface for Linux!
Yeah, I'm way off topic. So there. :-P
-RickHunter
Re:TROLL ALERT!!! Warning is bogus. (Score:1)
Did this work for anyone in Dual Head conf? (Score:2)
I tried to install this for my G400 Dual Head. After upgrading X to 4.0.1, I set up my dual screen's per the instructions, but I just get the following error:
Fatal server error:
Caught signal 11. Server aborting
The logs seem to show everything working perfectly fine.
Anyone get this to work in Dual Head?
Re:linux drivers! -yes (Score:1)
Sounds like someone dont want to take the time to make his wacked hardware work.
for dualhead, its still better to use TWO cards (Score:2)
all used 2 matrox cards of various memsizes and speeds.
as I understand it, even the 400 series is junk for dual head accel. use. so for me, its still "chew up an agp AND a pci slot for 2 video outs". oh well.
I do remember when matrox was on the shit-list for linux and xfree86 (oh, back in 95 or so). now, as far as I'm concerned, they're the card-of-choice for anything linux (or freebsd, etc).
ati varies too much. S3 used to be cool but that was many yrs ago. and all the other players are 3d based (and when moving xterms around, who cares?)
btw, the last xfree that correctly implemented dualhead with a pair of matrox cards was 3.9.16. nothing newer works for me and I'm still using that quite old beta. in a production environment, no less! ;-)
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Re:Install XF65 4.0.1 on RedHat 6.9.5? (Score:1)
Re:Nvidia vs. Others (Score:2)
Where I see the problem, and what I was trying to draw attention to with my post, is not in determining which graphics card has the best 3d performance but in determining which cards support what features (on what platforms) and how these features perform. In windows land you can buy a video card to handle 2d, 3d, video IO and dual-heading and know in advance what sort of performance you should achieve. If I want to know the same for linux I can't (at least not before I buy the card and stick it in my machine)! I can find out if a card has dri support (or some other form of hardware accelerated 3d) and I can figure out what sort of 2d modes it can support, but discovering what features have hardware acceleration and which don't is a non-trivial task (I haven't spent long looking at dri opensource site but it seems to only have mailing lists). Discovering if a cards video facilities are accessable is again much more difficult, for example you may know that a card will capture video in full-screen PAL, but will the linux drivers do it and if so in what formats and at what performance loads.
In summary, 2d graphics card performance has reached a very mature level where nearly any supported card will provide reasonable performance for all but the most demanding of applications (full-screen mpeg playback may push some cards beyond their abilities and not through the MPEG decoding which could be host processor based but through drawing the volume of final data). 3d performance is starting to become formalised and as such we need information on which cards support what features and how well they perform. Video4Linux should be providing us with some control over capture and output devices, but which consumer devices are supported and what will they do. We need a linuxhardware site which says that A is supported by B and will do C with D overheads, then we can all start to make some reasonably informed decisions about what video card to buy, and stop basing our decisions on the lowest common denominator of 2d and 3d support (and perhaps some of Tom's nice Quake III stats). Bemchmarking is the second stage, figuring out what a card will do is the first.
Re:Thanks very much, XFree86. Not. (Score:2)
HAND
Re:Quad-Head? How? (Score:2)
Re:Feature completeness of 3D? (Score:2)
From a SYSADMIN + DEVELOPER point of view..... (Score:1)
Re:Drivers (Open Source) (Score:1)
Just what I've been looking for! Oh, yeah! Thanks for posting!
Good-bye free time, hello carpal tunnel.
Vote [dragonswest.com] Naked 2000
Wow finally my Matrox G200 is fast (Woohoo) (Score:1)
Way to go Matrox!
Re:Install XF65 4.0.1 on RedHat 6.9.5? (Score:1)
I love your sig.
Red Green fans seem rather rare around here, yes? Pity...
Re:dos2unix!? (Score:1)
$ tr -d '\r' README.linux
Re:Dual monitor support with linux (Score:1)
Anyway, the matroxfb driver in the kernel has supported multihead (with multiple boards) for at least a year or two, and has supported G400 dualhead operation since kernel 2.3.43 or so.
HTH. HAND.
Re:linux drivers! -yes [offtopic] (Score:1)
It is! (Score:1)
Drivers (Score:1)
Re:Not to be a bitch but.....Great README (Score:1)
accelerated 3d with my matrox g400.
I compiled XFree 4.0.1 using the ports collection, since there were no binary packets for 4.0.1.
Re:The good and bad of this (Score:2)
I posted the link and the there is a
The good and bad of this (Score:1)
Things like this are great this allows linux users to worry less about being able to use video cards.
Bad
No source hardware drivers cause the biggest problem in system stablity if thier is a problem it can take long to fix.
Dual-Head working on my G400 Max (Score:1)
Re:The good and bad of this (Score:4)
One of the major problems with OS/2 was the video drivers. With good drivers it was rock-solid, but with the matrox drivers I had to use it crashed regularly - I eventually found this was the driver and not OS/2. But because Matrox regarded OS/2 as unimportant they never updated them - this was the main reason I abandoned it. If a Windows user tries Linux and discovers it crashes all the time because of an old driver - they're unlikely to come back.
If Matrox want the unix world to use their cards they'll have to release the sources.
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Re:Dual-Head working on my G400 Max (Score:1)
Re:Drivers (Open Source) (Score:1)
Hardware acceleration on the second monitor (Score:1)
Yes this sucks, even the mouse pointer on the second monitor isn't accelerated, its done entirely in software. You can look forward to lots of pointer flicker on rapidly refreshing windows (like video) with this card.
Matrox & Matrix (Score:1)
QuadHead, kinda makes you think of the matrix doesn't it? Go Matrox, We want IsocaHead cards for that real Matrix feel!
Re:The good and bad of this (Score:1)
Re:Hardware acceleration on the second monitor (Score:1)
The second head have no hardware cursor, but acceleration has nothing to do with the RAMDAC...
Simplified it looks like this:
Accelerator renders into card memory.
RAMDAC reads data from card memory and sends it to the screen.
In the case of the G400 you have two ramdacs but that doesn't stop the second head from having accelerated graphics. (I don't know what they've done in their windows drivers of course.)
Re:No 3D acceleration??? (Score:1)
Re:Damn ... (Score:1)
The new XFree 4.0.1 has now fixed this problem. So I think you should try that one.
Re:No 3D acceleration??? (Score:1)
Samba Information HQ
Re:Damn ... (Score:1)
What nasty things have you heard? I've yet to have a problem with their drivers. Actually, there was 1 problem (X using libglx.so and the nvidia drivers having a
Anyone try this in *BSD Yet? (Score:1)
Too bad the Riva TNT drivers don't use the XFree86 4.X drivers. Matrox not only gets kudos for using the XF86 module, but for releasing the source code! This is how it's supposed to be. Take notes NVIDIA.
If this does indeed work in FreeBSD, Matrox is going to get some business! Trying to sell the company into buying a bunch of workstations from hardware.bsdi.com that come w/ the dual-head cards. And if it doesn't work, we've got the source code to make it work
Re:Enjoy your VoodooX then.... (Score:4)
Xinerama and Matrox (Score:2)
xinerama.jpg [pobox.com] and
xinerama2.jpg [pobox.com]
enjoy!
Debian and XFree86 4.0.1? (Score:1)
Re:Did this work for anyone in Dual Head conf? (Score:1)
Re:linux drivers! -yes (Score:2)
Or maybe someone who is a little more conscious about the tons of waste s/he already produces each year? Or someone who knows those (cyanide-containing) CDR's are not really that harmless when burned or stashed away in some garbage dump? Or someone who wants to use the disks in a DvD-drive (which, as you may know, can not read CDR's but has no problems with CDRW)?
Please think for a minute before calling someone who does not think like you a moron. I do not like being called a moron, and that goes for most people...
Linux is now Ready For Prime Time! (Score:1)
Now I can use all my nice 19 inch monitors and do my web stuff in a realistic environment!
Any URLs? (Score:1)
Summary and Warning (Score:3)
There's a lot of confusion around here...
1. This is not open source; it's an open source wrapper around a proprietary "HAL" library which Matrox distributes in binary-only form. This bad, not only for philosophical reasons, but because it leaves non-x86 users out in the cold.
2. The G400 Dual-Head card does support acceleration on the second head, but the Windows drivers do not, which creates the common misconception that the second head is unaccelerated. Both heads share the same video RAM, and the accelerator can be used to write to either one. I don't know if the Linux drivers support acceleration on the second head.
3. If you're looking for 3D, you can apparently get DRI drivers, or at least information about them, from dri.sourceforge.net [sourceforge.net]. With a stock XF86 4.0.1 (without this driver!), I have DRI working on my G400. It's not terribly fast, but it's cute (accelerated 3D in a window!).
4. These drivers crashed my machine! It seems that no matter what I do, as soon as I launch X with this .o file, my machine locks solid. I have one G400 dualhead and one MII (which I've been using to drive the second head, waiting for dualhead support). Has anyone had the same experience?
tried that - same thing (Score:1)
I installed using the binary packages from xfree86.org - is an install from source in order?
Re:Not to be a bitch but.....Great README (Score:1)
Tom's Hardware even tested the GeForce 2 in Linux(!): http://www.tomshardware. com/graphic/00q3/000811/index.html [tomshardware.com]
and you _can_ compare it (using Quake 3 in Windows and Linux), which he did.
Why Open Source is Not the Only Answer (Score:1)
But it ain't a perfect world, you don't get a choice in the Win world, so deal with it.
I'd much rather get the same level of code and quality code at that, than get no code.
If you really wish there was an Open Source graphics driver for Matrox, start your own project now, instead of complaining. Crank out some code of your own - how do you think we got DVD?
The world is harsh sometimes, but I'd rather have some code as a wrapper than none at all.
Re:Quad-Head? How? (Score:1)
In addition to the G400 and G450, this driver supports the G200, which is available in quadhead. Indeed, the G200 itself supports up to four quadhead PCI boards in a single system to provide up to 16 displays. (Collect them all! Trade them with your friends!)
I have no idea if XFree86 will happily support all 16 displays. I do know neither my bank account nor my desk will.
Re:for dualhead, its still better to use TWO cards (Score:1)
I am using a G400 AGP & a G200 PCI with 4.0.1.
It works ok -- occasional crashes
They DID release the specs. (Score:3)
I prefer open source software, since it generally results in higher quality. I also believe that companies have an obligation to support their customers; for instance, NeoMagic has been very unhelpful with their specifications, and I think that sucks because their customers are the only reason they're in business. But Matrox has been helpful, and open source drivers have been written for most of their hardware. What's the problem, then, if they want to release their own binary-only driver?
Way to go, Matrox. I own a G400 Max, and I'm very happy with it. Keep up the good work.
-John
Re:Quad-Head? How? (Score:2)
Look at the
Also, there is a PCI version - so you could put up to 16 monitors on 1 PC! (their X driver supports it)
who needs the source when you have the chip spec. (Score:1)
other than lazyness (my self included here).
matrox release there chip set info and some other tools to go with it.
infact I'm sure i got an email the other day about the g800 chip set info being available soon or maby it was the g450?
anyhow were all to lazy so matrox had to write the driver themselves.
well done matrox, more beer and sleep for me.
Source Code! (Score:1)
It didn't build for me because I don't have the XFree 4.0.x headers, but....
*** Tough Love pinches himself & still doesn't quite believe he's not dreaming
--
Untrue! (Score:3)
Keep up the good work... matrox? (Score:2)
Keep up the good work Precision Insight! These drivers are developed by Presicion Insight, and other than the HAL, what Matrox released is more or less what's already available at DRI's CVS.
Nevertheless, Matrox is to praise for releasing specifications that allowed people to write drivers for their hardware, including but not limited to the Utah GLX drivers [sourceforge.net], as well as for releasing source code [matrox.com] (not all of it, mind you, but information comming reliable sources [geocrawler.com] suggests it will be there eventually) along with this "beta" driver [matrox.com]. So, go, Matrox, go!
And what about PI's drivers? (Score:1)
Wonder what happened to them.
Quad Head (Score:1)
I have gotten dual head once about a year ago and I was great!
But I can imagine if I ever get quad head, no acceleration will be needed...
Feature completeness of 3D? (Score:2)
Last I knew, the DRI 3D driver for the G400 was rather incomplete. It did only 16bpp, and the basic stuff. The Utah-GLX driver is more complete, in that it does 32bpp as well, but there's a bunch of noise about it's ability to use/accelerate stencils.
Even at that, there's not mention of extensions, like Environmental Bump Mapping, etc. (I know, do it, myself.)
This is a good start. But the key word is, "start".
Re:who needs the source when you have the chip spe (Score:1)
unfortunately, Matrox does not released specs
for all parts of their G200/G400/G450 boards.
I had to hack dualhead support for Linux
matroxfb myself without any doc available from
them. Not talking about that they DO NOT release
which memory types they connect to on-shop
devices, how fast are these cores and memories
and so on.
And BTW, I asked for engineering sample of G450
more than 2 months ago, but they even did not
bother with reply that they'll not send it to
me. Just plain silence.
And BTW#2, I do not think that mgaHALlib.a has
something to do with open source. Not even
saying that my PowerPC does not believe that
i386 code is appropriate...
Petr
Wooo :0 (Score:1)
This WILL rock for Blender addicts...
I have this 22"inch tube, It really looks amazing these sample anims of bats nd stuff
Hw accel at 1600 for modeler and desktop on 17"
hell I 'm gonna suxor GIMP...this is gonna roxor
YAM=Yet Another Mirror (Score:1)
Thanks very much, XFree86. Not. (Score:2)
And before you say "but the source is available", it isn't. The code in the tarball is just a wrapper around their "HAL" library.
"I want to use software that doesn't suck." - ESR
"All software that isn't free sucks." - RMS
Re:What this proves... (Score:1)
Precision Insight developed the direct rendering infrastructure currently only used for OpenGL.
Re:Spoke too soon :-( (Score:1)
Re:Summary and Warning (Score:2)
I've finally got it running!! (About damn time - the Mandrake X Setup has some goofy things that it took me forever. Developers - if your software dies because it can't find a file, *output an error*!).
The above point is correct - G400's are accelerated on both heads. But the mouse pointer is hardware on one head, software on the other, resulting in bad flickering. Add to that the fact that Windows apparantly has problems with AGP dual head (one card manufacturer apparantly gets around it by dropping the AGP connection down to a PCI via hardware), and you've got a card that has the hardware to function nicely, but is difficult to write drivers for. (It occurs to me that you generally only need to have a pointer on one head at a time *anyway*, so...).
I consider dualhead a "killer-app"... I ran MGA/CGA up through MGA/SVGA for years. Developing on only one monitor is (imho) like having sex with only one person involved (counting yourself).
I jumped to Linux *because* of XFree 4.x's dualhead support. Since then, I've been miserably trying to get what works in Windows to work in Linux (two ATI card, or a Matrox G400).
Oh, and to all the people who say that Matrox "sucks" - it's a nice, stable, single slot dual head. Since I've never installed Quake on any machine I've owned, and never even seen HalfLife running, I think it should allow for my gaming needs (Zork, corewars, and I've gotta get TradeWars 2002), in addition to letting me develop on two monitors.
Of course, the first thing I did when X came back up was jump to Slashdot... lynx lacks that teal and white beauty. :)
--
Evan
Re:Drivers - specs! (Score:2)
Re:Drivers (Score:4)
Please look at the CVS tree of the DRI project [sourceforge.net], Matrox had worked together with Precision Insight to develop this drivers and the source is there. This particular release seems to be mising one bit (the HAL), but it looks like that will be released, too. Look at the DRI mailing list archives [geocrawler.com] if you want more info about the current status of the DRI.
Spoke too soon :-( (Score:2)
Half a meg of binary goop!
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Re:Drivers (Open Source) (Score:1)
The one bit they haven't released is the documentation for the WARP engine, they have provided microcode that can be uploaded to the card instead. Other than that, the specs are there, and the source is there. Look at the DRI project pages [sourceforge.net] for more info.
Re:The good and bad of this (Score:1)
Look at the DRI project website [sourceforge.net]. The source is available via CVS.