[summit-announce] Beta Intel driver available

[XiG Support <support@xxxxxxx>]

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	Hello,

	We have placed a beta version of a new Intel driver on the FTP 
site in ftp://ftp.xig.com/pub/Summit/BETA/ .

        These packages include a completely rewritten Intel driver for
the i830, i845, i852/855, i865, and the new i915G chipsets.  It has
been rewritten to better support these chipsets in terms of
performance and features.

        The 915G driver is completely new and also supports hardware
OpenGL acceleration.

        This beta package is being provided so that current users of
the older Intel chips can test it (since we do not have access to all
of the older chips), and so that the Intel 915G driver can be provided
for those who wish to try it out before it is officially released.

        This beta package is only provided in the Platinum edition
form.  If you have an existing non-platinum license, you can still
use this package, however the features not allowed by your license
will not be available.

        We have not seen any laptops containing the Intel 915
series chips inhouse, so we welcome your feedback.

         Please direct all feedback regarding this driver to
support@xxxxxxx, and please include Xsupport output (see the FAQ
regarding Xsupport if you are not familiar with it).

Here are some notes regarding this new support.

- The i915G is the technical name for the graphics accelerator
  produced by Intel, referred to in literature as the:

     Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 900 (or 'GMA900')

  In Xsetup, you can choose the 'Intel i915G' graphics board entry if
  you have either a desktop or laptop computer that uses the GMA900.

- Three i915G selections are provided: 16Mb, 32MB, and 64MB.  Most
  users should choose the 32MB entry.  Use one of the other entries if
  you are trying to conserve memory or have a large desktop (e.g. in a
  DualView configuration).

- The i915 driver was tested with analog display ports in the initial
  release.

  Laptop LCD displays were not tested, but may work (contact us if you
  would like to loan us your laptop via the 'Laptop Loaner' program).

  DVI ports for desktop motherboards were not tested, but will be
  supported in time.

  Work is underway to support add-on ADD2 devices and other external
  transmitters (e.g. TV encoders) via the Intel SDVO interface.
  Contact us if you have a specific SDVO device that needs to be
  supported.

- The driver can be configured to drive different resolutions and
  refresh rates.  The driver is not dependent on the BIOS for setup
  and does not use 'pre-programmed' VESA modes.

  Special LCD resolutions (e.g. WSXGA or 1280x768) will be supported
  once we have a laptop with that size LCD to test with.

  DualView will also be supported on desktops and laptops.

- The driver supports hardware accelerated video overlays, or the
  XVideo extension.

- The driver supports 24+8 (PseudoColor+TrueColor) image overlays on
  both desktops and laptops.

- There is full 2D hardware acceleration.  x11perf benchmarks have
  yielded 150 Xmarks in 24bpp color on a 3GHz system with DDR2 memory.

- OpenGL is hardware accelerated.  This includes hardware support for
  the GL_EXT_texture_env_combine extension using the GMA900 pixel
  shader.  Work is underway to support hardware accelerated vertex and
  fragment programs with the GMA900.

- If you have an OpenGL application that uses a lot of textures,
  increase the AGP size from in Xsetup (the default is 16MB).  OpenGL
  performance will decrease if there is insufficient memory to cache
  textures.

- The RENDER extension is hardware accelerated.

- Fixed a problem (all Intel chipsets) that may have caused incorrect
  drawing when the RENDER extension was enabled.

Known Problems:

- It is suggested that you use the Linux VGA console with this driver.
  There may be occasional corruption of the console framebuffer if a
  VESA mode is used.  The corruption could happen when running
  xsvctest or when returning to text mode.  We are trying to find a
  permanent solution for this problem.

- Contact XiG if graphics mode fails to initialize properly, resulting
  in a lock or a black screen.  This might happen if you are using
  slow memory (e.g. DDR instead of DDR2).


Xi Graphics, Inc
http://www.xig.com
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