radeonhd(4) AMD GPG (ATI) R5xx/R6xx/R7xx video driver

SYNOPSIS

Section "Device"
Identifier "devname"
Driver "radeonhd"
  ...
EndSection

DESCRIPTION

radeonhd is an Xorg driver for AMD GPG (ATI) R5xx/R6xx/R7xx based video cards.

At the time of this writing, radeonhd has the following limitations:

  • Support for hardware-based 2D acceleration and Xvideo needs more testing on R6xx and R7xx based cards.
  • No TV and Component connector support so far.
  • After using the fglrx driver, radeonhd might fail to work properly. This combination is not and probably will never be supported. A reboot fixes problems in most cases, sometimes a powercycle is necessary. Unloading the kernel module is typically not enough.

A more up-to-date list can be found on the wiki page.

SUPPORTED HARDWARE

The radeonhd driver supports video cards based on the following ATI chips:

RV505
Radeon X1550, X1550 64bit
RV515
Radeon X1300, X1550, X1600; FireGL V3300, V3350
RV516
Radeon X1300, X1550, X1550 64-bit, X1600; FireMV 2250
R520
Radeon X1800; FireGL V5300, V7200, V7300, V7350
RV530
Radeon X1300 XT, X1600, X1600 Pro, X1650; FireGL V3400, V5200
RV535
Radeon X1300, X1650
RV550
Radeon X2300 HD
RV560
Radeon X1650
RV570
Radeon X1950, X1950 GT; FireGL V7400
R580
Radeon X1900, X1950; AMD Stream Processor
R600
Radeon HD 2900 GT/Pro/XT; FireGL V7600/V8600/V8650
RV610
Radeon HD 2350, HD 2400 Pro/XT, HD 2400 Pro AGP; FireGL V4000
RV620
Radeon HD 3450, HD 3470
RV630
Radeon HD 2600 LE/Pro/XT, HD 2600 Pro/XT AGP; Gemini RV630; FireGL V3600/V5600
RV635
Radeon HD 3650, HD 3670
RV670
Radeon HD 3690, 3850, HD 3870, FireGL V7700, FireStream 9170
R680
Radeon HD 3870 X2
M52
Mobility Radeon X1300
M54
Mobility Radeon X1400; M54-GL
M56
Mobility Radeon X1600; Mobility FireGL V5200
M58
Mobility Radeon X1800, X1800 XT; Mobility FireGL V7100, V7200
M62
Mobility Radeon X1350
M64
Mobility Radeon X1450, X2300
M66
Mobility Radeon X1700, X1700 XT; FireGL V5250
M68
Mobility Radeon X1900
M71
Mobility Radeon HD 2300
M72
Mobility Radeon HD 2400; Radeon E2400
M74
Mobility Radeon HD 2400 XT
M76
Mobility Radeon HD 2600; (Gemini ATI) Mobility Radeon HD 2600 XT
M82
Mobility Radeon HD 3400
M86
Mobility Radeon HD 3650, HD 3670, Mobility FireGL V5700
M88
Mobility Radeon HD 3850, HD 3850 X2, HD 3870, HD3870 X2
RS600
Radeon Xpress 1200, Xpress 1250
RS690
Radeon X1200, X1250, X1270
RS740
RS740, RS740M
RS780
Radeon HD 3100/3200/3300 Series
R700
Radeon R700
RV710
Radeon HD4570, HD4350
RV730
Radeon HD4670, HD4650
RV740
Radeon HD4770. EXPERIMENTAL AND UNTESTED
RV770
Radeon HD 4800 Series; Everest, K2, Denali ATI FirePro
RV790
Radeon HD 4890
M92
Mobility Radeon HD4330, HD4530, HD4570. EXPERIMENTAL
M93
Mobility Radeon M93. EXPERIMENTAL AND UNTESTED
M96
Mobility Radeon HD4600
M97
Mobility Radeon HD4860. EXPERIMENTAL AND UNTESTED
M98
Mobility Radeon HD4850, HD4870

CONFIGURATION DETAILS

Please refer to xorg.conf(5) for general configuration details.

This section only covers configuration options specific to this driver, for Section "Device". Some options may be deprecated and considered to be removed or replaced by better implementations soon.

Option "AccelMethod" "none|default|shadowfb|xaa|exa"
Use the indicated accleration method.
none does not accelerate anything at all. Discouraged.
shadowfb
is a software-only acceleration technique. Does not work together with DRI at the moment.
xaa
is the older but stable hardware-based acceleration technique.
exa
is the newer but more experimental hardware-based acceleration technique.

Default value depends on the chipset and the acceleration techniques available for that chipset, and is chosen to give the best user experience.

Note that R600 and above require DRI to be enabled for "exa".

Rotation isn't supported for the AccelMethods "none" and "shadowfb".

Option "DRI"
Use this option to enable 3D and Xv acceleration using DRI. Default is on.
Option "OffscreenSize" "<integer>M|<integer>%"
Specify the amount of framebuffer memory used for offscreen pixmaps, in megabytes or percent of available memory. This amount of memory is not available for DRI. Certain hardware and software limits apply. The default is 10%.
Option "ScaleType" "none|center|scale|scale_keep_aspect_ratio|default"
Sets the scaling mode for laptop flat panels when used together with an external screen. The scaling engine is capable of scaling both up and down.
none means to not scale at all, i.e. the image will be displayed in the top left corner of the panel if the resolution of the external display is lower than the panel resolution.
center
means not to scale but center the image on the panel i.e. apply a black frame around the image on the panel if the resolution of the external display is lower than the panel resolution.
scale
means to always scale to the resolution of the external display filling the entire panel.
scale_keep_aspect_ratio
scales the panel display but keeps the aspect ratio of the external display, which means if the external display has a different aspect ratio than the panel it black borders will be added to the top and bottom or left and right.
default
keeps the aspect ratio, but does not to scale otherwise.

The default is to keep the aspect ratio.

Option "NoRandr"
Disable RandR 1.2 support. This turns the driver back to use standard modesetting behavior. The default is to enable RandR 1.2 support.
Option "SWcursor" "boolean"
Enable or disable the software cursor. The hardware cursor is inactive when the software cursor is enabled. The default is off.
Option "ForceReduced" "boolean"
Force the use of reduced blanking modes. Use this if your LCD monitor does not provide correct EDID data and you need a reduced blanking mode to drive a high resolution mode over a single link DVI connection. The default is off.
Option "UnverifiedFeatures" "boolean"
The radeonhd driver sometimes relies on unverified graphics card features. You can add Option "UnverifiedFeatures" "off" to disable those when you run into difficulties.
Option "RROutputOrder" "list-of-outputs"
RandR modesetting only.
Several legacy application rely on the Xinerama extension to determine the primary screen. RandR returns the viewport displayed on the first attached output of the internal table as the first Xinerama screen. If your outputs are ordered in the wrong way, you can reorder them by adding their names (separated by spaces or commas) to the list-of-outputs. Typically only the first (primary) output has to be listed, remaining outputs are added automatically. The default is none.
Option "IgnoreConnector" "string"
Standard (non-RandR) modesetting only.
Connector to be ignored during non-RandR modesetting. The default is none.
Option "UseConfiguredMonitor" "boolean"
Standard (non-RandR) modesetting only.
Use or ignore the monitor section in xorg.conf. In standard modesetting radeonhd ignores the EDID data if a monitor section is configured. This is different to what most drivers behave like and a common source of configuration problems. Thus the default is off (i.e. ignore).
Option "NoAccel"
Disable all hardware acceleration. The default is to enable hardware acceleration.

NOTE: Use of this option is considered deprecated. The AccelMethod option is considered to be more flexible.
Option "HPD" "auto|off|normal|swap"
Change the use of the hot plug detection (HPD) pins. On R5xx the according connector tables are often broken and have to be worked around.
Auto Select method depending on chipset and board
Off
Don't use HPD pins. Some connectors might not be able to detect connections at all
Normal
Use connector table information as-is
Swap
Swap HPD pin 1 and 2 in connector table

NOTE: Use of this option is discouraged. Whenever this option is needed to detect connected monitors correctly, please report to the mailing list. The default is Auto.

Option "ForceDPI" "integer"
Force the use of the specified pixel density in Dots Per Inch. The default is to use the monitor supplied values.

NOTE: Use of this option is discouraged. Monitors should return valid DPI values, and the Xserver should honour them correctly.
Option "UseAtomBIOS" "boolean"
Selects the mode setting path. The default is chipset dependent.

NOTE: Use of this option is discouraged. The driver should select the right path. If this option is needed to get your card working correctly, please report to the mailing list.
Option "Audio" "boolean"
This option enables the audio hardware, which is responsible for delivering audio data to the different HDMI capable connectors and used to communicate with the audio driver of the operation system. The default is off.
Option "HDMI" "string"
Possible values are "DVI-I_0", "DVI-I_1"..,"DVI-D_0","DVI-I_1",.., "all". This option enables HDMI-Audio and HDMI-Info packets on the specified connector. This is the only way enabling HDMI at the moment, since decoding E-EDID data to check if monitor supports HDMI is not implemented (yet).
Option "Coherent" "string"
There are two different ways to program the TMDS encoder in an output for best signal quality for the transmitter chip used inside a digital monitor. This option may be used to set the programming for each output individually. The string is a space separated list of <output_transmitter>=on|off. Possible values for <output_transmitter> are: TMDS_A, TMDS_B, UNIPHY_A, UNIPHY_B, AtomOutputTMDSA, AtomOutputLVTMA, AtomOutputKldskpLvtma, AtomOutputUniphyA, AtomOutputUniphyB. The log file should be consulted on which ones to use. The line: Option "Coherent" "TMDS_A=off TMDS_B=on" will set coherent mode to off for TMDS A and to on for TMDS B. The default for all outputs is off.
Option "TVMode" "tv-mode"
The TV standard to use on the TV output.
NTSC
NTSCJ
PAL
PALM
PALCN
PALN
PAL60
SECAM
CV
Composite Video

NOTE: This option isn't implemented yet and has no effect.

Option "ForceLowPowerMode" "boolean"
Enable to statically set GPU engine clock to a lower than default value. This can help reduce power consumption. The default is off.
Option "LowPowerModeEngineClock" "integer"
Engine clock frequency to use when ForceLowPowerMode is enabled, in Hz. If not set, the minimum known working frequency is used. If integer is negative, validation is skipped, and the absolute value is used for the engine clock.

RANDR OUTPUT PROPERTIES

The following properties can be queried with xrandr --prop and some of them can be set with xrandr --output <output> --set <property> <value> . Those not starting with an underscore '_' are RandR 1.3 standard properties. See the RandR 1.3 protocol description for more details. Properties marked Read-Only are provided by the driver for informational purpose only, those marked Static won't change during runtime.
SignalFormat Read-Only
Type: string
Range/List:
unknown VGA TMDS LVDS DisplayPort

Signal format / physical protocol format that is used for the specified output.

ConnectorType Read-Only Static
Type: string
Range/List:
unknown VGA DVI DVI-I DVI-A DVI-D HDMI Panel DisplayPort

Connector type, as far as known to the driver. Panel describes laptop-internal (normally LVDS) displays.

ConnectorNumber Read-Only Static
Type: int32
Range/List:
0-

Outputs that route their signal to the same connector MUST have the same connector number. Outputs with the same connector number MUST route their signal to the same connector, except if it is 0, which indicates unknown connectivity.

_OutputNumber Read-Only Static
Type: int32
Range/List:
0-

A card may route one internal output to several connectors. Connectors that are driven by the same output cannot be driven by different Crtcs and are thus only allowed to be used in clone mode. The driver SHOULD emit an error message and continue as gracefully as possible if using different Crtcs for the same internal output is requested.
Internal outputs are numbered from 1, 0 indicates that output routing is unknown.

_PanningArea
Type: string
Format:
<width>x<height>[+<xoffset>+<yoffset>]

Specifies the panning area in RandR mode per output.
It actually is a Crtc-specific property, but RandR doesn't support that yet. As the xrandr application typically always resets the framebuffer size with every action, --fb <width>x<height> has to be added on every invocation, unless there is an additional output configured that is using this size as its resolution.
This property cannot be changed when in a rotated mode.

NOTE: Use of this option is considered deprecated. The driver supports RandR 1.3 panning, which is included in Xserver 1.6. It is considerable more flexible, and should support rotated pans.

Backlight
Type: int32
Range/List:
0-255

Specifies the backlight intensity on laptop panels, if controllable by the driver.

_Coherent
Type: int32
Range/List:
0-1

Sets the coherent flag for TMDS signals. See also Option Coherent.

XVIDEO ATTRIBUTES

On R600 and above, the following XVideo attributes are supported. Use xvattr to query and set these values at runtime.
XV_COLORSPACE
Select the Y'CbCr color space of the source video. Accepted values are 'auto-detect'(0), 'Rec.601'(1), and 'Rec.709'(2).

Rec.709 is the standard which applies to high-definition television broadcasting and "HD" digital video in general; Rec.601 applies to all other digital video. When 'auto-detect' is selected, Rec.709 is used for videos encoded at least 928px wide, and Rec.601 is used otherwise. This cut-off is lower than 720p so that the correct color space can be applied to some media with non-standard resolutions that have high-probability of having originated from Rec.709 encoded content.

Default is 'auto-detect'(0).

KNOWN BUGS

As the radeonhd driver is still in development, some non-obvious things might not work yet. A list of major known bugs is maintained on the wiki. Other places to check for known bugs and solutions are the bugtracker at
https://bugs.freedesktop.org/query.cgi?product=xorg&component=Driver/radeonhd

and the mailing list archives at http://lists.opensuse.org/radeonhd/

radeonhd development caused a few bugs in Xorg and a number of bugs in xrandr(1) to be discovered. If you are using xrandr(1) versions older than 2007-11-10, you should try updating xrandr(1).
Alternatively, you can try to always specify different CRTCs for all monitors by explicitly selecting them with --crtc [0|1] on the xrandr(1) command line.

AUTHORS

Egbert Eich, Luc Verhaegen, Matthias Hopf, Hans Ulrich Niedermann, Christian Koenig, Alexander Deucher, and others.