mga(4)

mga(4) 💖

okay bestie, sit DOWN, because we're talking about mga — the Matrox video driver — and it's genuinely one of the classics. this is a section 4 manual page from the Kernel Interfaces Manual, so it's all about hardware drivers, and this one is giving vintage-graphics-card realness. 🎀

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✨ NAME ✨

mga — the Matrox video driver. that's it, that's the name, she's simple and she knows what she is 💅

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🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

this is how you actually summon her in your config file, no cap:

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

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🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

so mga is an Xorg driver for Matrox video cards. she is fully accelerated, which is the good stuff, and she provides support for these framebuffer depths: 8, 15, 16, 24, plus an 8+24 overlay mode. iconic lineup honestly.

about visual types, because this part matters:

• depth 8: all visual types are supported 💖
• the other depths: both TrueColor and DirectColor visuals are supported
• 8+24 mode: supports PseudoColor, GrayScale and TrueColor

multi-card configurations are supported. yes, MULTIPLE. she can handle it. 👑

XVideo works on G200 and newer systems, using either TexturedVideo or video overlay. and the second head of dual-head cards? supported for the G450 and G550. dual-head girlies, she sees you 🫶

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🔥 SUPPORTED HARDWARE 🔥

the mga driver supports PCI and AGP video cards based on the following Matrox chips. they're listed in approximate chronological order of production, with the most recent chipsets listed last — so consult this list when you're unsure whether your card is what's meant when references are made to 'G200 and later' chips, for example. iykyk ⭐

• MGA2064W
• MGA1064SG — Mystique
• MGA2164W — Millennium II
• G100 — Productiva G100
• G200 — Millennium G200 and Mystique G200
• G400 — Millennium G400, Millennium G400 MAX, Millennium G450, and Marvel G450 eTV
• G550 — Millennium G550 and Millennium G550 Dual DVI

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🎀 CONFIGURATION DETAILS 🎀

please refer to xorg.conf(5) for general configuration details, because this section only covers the stuff specific to this driver. keep it scoped bestie 💖

chipset stuff

the driver auto-detects the chipset type, but you can optionally specify the following ChipSet names in the config file "Device" section, and they will override the auto-detection:

"mga2064w", "mga1064sg", "mga2164w", "mga2164w agp", "mgag100",
"mgag200", "mgag200 pci", "mgag400", "mgag550".

also: the G450 is Chipset "mgag400" with ChipRev 0x80. noted, written down, memorized 📝

video memory

the driver will auto-detect the amount of video memory present for all chips except the Millennium II. in the Millennium II case it defaults to 4096 kBytes. when you're using a Millennium II, the actual amount of video memory should be specified with a VideoRam entry in the config file "Device" section. don't skip this one, fr fr.

the options (all of them, no skips)

the following driver Options are supported:

• Option "ColorKey" "integer" — sets the colormap index used for the transparency key for the depth 8 plane when operating in 8+24 overlay mode. the value must be in the range 2-255. Default: 255.
• Option "HWCursor" "boolean" — enable or disable the HW cursor. Default: on.
• Option "MGASDRAM" "boolean" — specify whether G100, G200 or G400 cards have SDRAM. the driver attempts to auto-detect this based on the card's PCI subsystem ID, and this option may be used to override that auto-detection. heads up: the mga driver is not able to auto-detect the presence of SDRAM on secondary heads in multihead configurations, so this option will often need to be specified in multihead configurations. Default: auto-detected.
• Option "NoAccel" "boolean" — disable or enable acceleration. Default: acceleration is enabled.
• Option "AccelMethod" "string" — chooses between available acceleration architectures. valid options are XAA and EXA. XAA is the traditional acceleration architecture and support for it is very stable. EXA is a newer acceleration architecture with better performance for the Render and Composite extensions, but the rendering code for it is newer and possibly unstable. the default is XAA. 👀 (pick wisely)
• Option "OverclockMem" — set clocks to values used by some commercial X Servers (G100, G200 and G400 only). Default: off.
• Option "PciRetry" "boolean" — enable or disable PCI retries. Default: off.
• Option "Rotate" "CW"
• Option "Rotate" "CCW" — rotate the display clockwise or counterclockwise. this mode is unaccelerated. Default: no rotation.
• Option "ShadowFB" "boolean" — enable or disable use of the shadow framebuffer layer. Default: off.
• Option "SyncOnGreen" "boolean" — enable or disable combining the sync signals with the green signal. Default: off.
• Option "UseFBDev" "boolean" — enable or disable use of an OS-specific fb interface (and it is not supported on all OSs). see fbdevhw(4) for further information. Default: off.
• Option "VideoKey" "integer" — this sets the default pixel value for the YUV video overlay key. Default: undefined.
• Option "TexturedVideo" "boolean" — this has XvImage support use the texture engine rather than the video overlay. this option is only supported by G200 and later chips, and only at 16 and 32 bits per pixel. Default: off.
• Option "OldDmaInit" "boolean" — this forces the driver to use the old DMA initialization path for DRI. use this option only to support an older version of the DRI driver with a newer DRM (version 3.2 or later). this option also disables the use of direct rendering on PCI cards. Default: off.
• Option "ForcePciDma" "boolean" — this forces the use of PCI DMA even if AGP DMA could be used. this option is primarily intended for testing purposes, but it could also be used on systems with a buggy or poorly functioning AGP implementation. Default: off.

⚠️ okay real talk: Rotate is unaccelerated, UseFBDev isn't supported on every OS, OldDmaInit is a very specific compat thing, and ForcePciDma is mostly a testing tool. read before you type, bestie 🙈

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💜 SEE ALSO 💜

Xorg(1), xorg.conf(5), Xserver(1), X(7)

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👑 AUTHORS 👑

authors include: Radoslaw Kapitan, Mark Vojkovich, and also David Dawes, Guy Desbief, Dirk Hohndel, Doug Merritt, Andrew E. Mileski, Andrew van der Stock, Leonard N. Zubkoff, Andrew C. Aitchison. absolute legends, every single one 🌈

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and that's the whole page, bestie!! this manual shipped with X Version 11, xf86-video-mga 2.0.0 — so go forth, configure your Matrox card, and slay 💅✨🌸