The NVIDIA Accelerated Linux Driver Set supports all standard VGA and VESA modes, as well as most user-written custom mode lines; double-scan modes are supported on all hardware. Interlaced modes are supported on all GeForce FX/Quadro FX and newer GPUs, and certain older GPUs; the X log file will contain a message "Interlaced video modes are supported on this GPU" if interlaced modes are supported.
In general, your display device (monitor/flat panel/television) will be a greater constraint on what modes you can use than either your NVIDIA GPU-based video board or the NVIDIA Accelerated Linux Driver Set.
To request one or more standard modes for use in X, you can simply add a "Modes" line such as:
Modes "1600x1200" "1024x768" "640x480"
in the appropriate Display subsection of your X config file (please see the XF86Config(5x) or xorg.conf(5x) man pages for details). The following documentation is primarily of interest if you compose your own custom mode lines, experiment with xvidtune(1), or are just interested in learning more. Please note that this is neither an explanation nor a guide to the fine art of crafting custom mode lines for X. We leave that, rather, to documents such as the XFree86 Video Timings HOWTO (which can be found at http://www.tldp.org).
While not directly a concern when programming modes, the bits used per pixel is an issue when considering the maximum programmable resolution; for this reason, it is worthwhile to address the confusion surrounding the terms "depth" and "bits per pixel". Depth is how many bits of data are stored per pixel. Supported depths are 8, 15, 16, and 24. Most video hardware, however, stores pixel data in sizes of 8, 16, or 32 bits; this is the amount of memory allocated per pixel. When you specify your depth, X selects the bits per pixel (bpp) size in which to store the data. Below is a table of what bpp is used for each possible depth:
| Depth | BPP |
|---|---|
| 8 | 8 |
| 15 | 16 |
| 16 | 16 |
| 24 | 32 |
Lastly, the "pitch" is how many bytes in the linear frame buffer there are between one pixel's data, and the data of the pixel immediately below. You can think of this as the horizontal resolution multiplied by the bytes per pixel (bits per pixel divided by 8). In practice, the pitch may be more than this product due to alignment constraints.
The NVIDIA Accelerated Linux Driver Set and NVIDIA GPU-based video boards support resolutions up to 2048x1536, though the maximum resolution your system can support is also limited by the amount of video memory (see USEFUL FORMULAS for details) and the maximum supported resolution of your display device (monitor/flat panel/television). Also note that while use of a video overlay does not limit the maximum resolution or refresh rate, video memory bandwidth used by a programmed mode does effect the overlay quality.
The maximum resolution is a function both of the amount of video memory and the bits per pixel you elect to use:
In other words, the amount of video memory used is equal to the horizontal resolution (HR) multiplied by the vertical resolution (VR) multiplied by the bytes per pixel (bits per pixel divided by eight). Technically, the video memory used is actually the pitch times the vertical resolution, and the pitch may be slightly greater than (HR * (bpp/8)) to accommodate the hardware requirement that the pitch be a multiple of some value.
Please note that this is just memory usage for the frame buffer; video memory is also used by other things, such as OpenGL and pixmap caching.
Another important relationship is that between the resolution, the pixel clock (aka dot clock) and the vertical refresh rate:
In other words, the refresh rate (RR) is equal to the pixel clock (PCLK) divided by the total number of pixels: the horizontal frame length (HFL) multiplied by the vertical frame length (VFL) (note that these are the frame lengths, and not just the visible resolutions). As described in the XFree86 Video Timings HOWTO, the above formula can be rewritten as:
Given a maximum pixel clock, you can adjust the RR, HFL and VFL
as desired, as long as the product of the three is consistent. The
pixel clock is reported in the log file when you run X with verbose
logging: startx -- -logverbose
5. Your X log should contain several lines
like:
(--) NVIDIA(0): Display Device 0: maximum pixel clock at 8 bpp: 350 MHz
(--) NVIDIA(0): Display Device 0: maximum pixel clock at 16 bpp: 350 MHz
(--) NVIDIA(0): Display Device 0: maximum pixel clock at 32 bpp: 300 MHz
which indicate the maximum pixel clock at each bit per pixel size.
During the PreInit phase of the X server, the NVIDIA X driver validates all requested modes by doing the following:
Take the intersection of the HorizSync and VertRefresh ranges given by the user in the X config file with the ranges reported by the monitor in the EDID (Extended Display Identification Data); this behavior can be disabled by using the "IgnoreEDID" option in which case the X driver will blindly accept the HorizSync and VertRefresh ranges given by the user (see Appendix D, X Config Options).
Call the xf86ValidateModes() helper function, which finds modes
with the names the user specified in the X config file, pruning out
modes with invalid horizontal sync frequencies or vertical refresh
rates, pixel clocks larger than the maximum pixel clock for the
video card, or resolutions larger than the virtual screen size (if
a virtual screen size was specified in the X config file). Several
other constraints are applied; see xc/programs/Xserver/hw/xfree86/common/xf86Mode.c:
xf86ValidateModes().
All modes returned from xf86ValidateModes() are then examined to make sure their resolutions are not larger than the largest mode reported by the monitor's EDID (this can be disabled with the "IgnoreEDID" option. If the display is a TV, each mode is checked to make sure it has a resolution that is supported by the TV encoder (usually only 800x600 and 640x480 are supported by the encoder).
All modes are also tested to confirm that they fit within the hardware's memory bandwidth constraints. This test can be disabled with the NoBandWidthTest X config file option.
All remaining modes are then checked to make sure they pass the constraints described below in ADDITIONAL MODE CONSTRAINTS.
The last three steps are also done when each mode is programmed, to catch potentially invalid modes submitted by the XF86VidModeExtension (eg xvidtune(1)). For TwinView, the above validation is done for the modes requested for each display device.
Below is a list of additional constraints on a mode's parameters that must be met. In some cases these are chip-specific.
The horizontal resolution (HR) must be a multiple of 8 and be less than or equal to the value in the table below.
The horizontal blanking width (the maximum of the horizontal frame length and the horizontal sync end minus the minimum of the horizontal resolution and the horizontal sync start (max(HFL,HSE) - min(HR,HSS))) must be a multiple of 8 and be less than or equal to the value in the table below.
The horizontal sync start (HSS) must be a multiple of 8 and be less than or equal to the value in the table below.
The horizontal sync width (the horizontal sync end minus the horizontal sync start (HSE - HSS)) must be a multiple of 8 and be less than or equal to the value in the table below.
The horizontal frame length (HFL) must be a multiple of 8, must be greater than or equal to 40, and must be less than or equal to the value in the table below.
The horizontal frame length (HFL) must be a multiple of 8, must be greater than or equal to 40, and must be less than or equal to the value in the table below.
The vertical resolution (VR) must be less than or equal to the value in the table below.
The vertical blanking width (the maximum of the vertical frame length and the vertical sync end minus the minimum of the vertical resolution and the vertical sync start (max(VFL,VSE) - min(VR,VSS))) must be less than or equal to the value in the table below.
The vertical sync start (VSS) must be less than or equal to the value in the table below.
The vertical sync width (the vertical sync end minus the vertical sync start (VSE - VSS)) must be less than or equal to the value in the table below.
The vertical frame length (VFL) must be greater than or equal to 2 and less than or equal to the value in the table below.
The following table provides the maximum DAC values for various hardware generations:
| GeForce2 and 3 | GeForce4 and newer | |
|---|---|---|
| HR | 4092 | 8192 |
| HBW | 1016 | 2040 |
| HSS | 4088 | 8224 |
| HSW | 256 | 512 |
| HFL | 4128 | 8224 |
| VR | 4096 | 8192 |
| VBW | 128 | 256 |
| VSS | 4095 | 8192 |
| VSW | 16 | 16 |
| VFL | 4097 | 8192 |
Here is an example mode line demonstrating the use of each abbreviation used above:
# Custom Mode line for the SGI 1600SW Flat Panel
# name PCLK HR HSS HSE HFL VR VSS VSE VFL
Modeline "sgi1600x1024" 106.9 1600 1632 1656 1672 1024 1027 1030 1067
Some functionality, such as Active Stereo with TwinView, requires control over exactly which mode timings are used. There are several ways to accomplish that:
If you only want to make sure that both display devices use the same modes, you only need to make sure that both display devices use the same HorizSync and VertRefresh values when performing mode validation; this would be done by making sure the HorizSync and SecondMonitorHorizSync match, and that the VertRefresh and the SecondMonitorVertRefresh match.
A more explicit approach is to specify the modeline you want to use (using one of the modeline generators available), and using a unique name. For example, if you wanted to use 1024x768 at 120 Hz on each monitor in TwinView with active stereo, you might add something like:
# 1024x768 @ 120.00 Hz (GTF) hsync: 98.76 kHz; pclk: 139.05 MHz
Modeline "1024x768_120" 139.05 1024 1104 1216 1408 768 769 772 823 -HSync +Vsync
In the monitor section of your X config file, and then in the Screen section of your X config file, specify a MetaMode like this:
Option "MetaModes" "1024x768_120, 1024x768_120"
An XFree86 modeline generator, conforming to the GTF Standard is available at http://gtf.sourceforge.net/. Additional generators can be found by searching for "modeline" on freshmeat.net.