On 4 Oct 2001, Kjetil Torgrim Homme wrote: > XFree86 is now very clever, and can usually tell what modes will work > and which modes won't by asking your monitor and video card. This > means that we can use mostly the same XF86Config file on a variety of > workstations. The results aren't always optimal though. In our > default file, 1600x1200 is specified, but some monitors require X to > drop to a low refresh rate. > > By adding a keyword to the Display subsection, e.g., > > Subsection "Display" > Depth 24 > MinimumRefresh 85 > Modes "1600x1200" "1440x1080" "1152x864" > EndSubSection > > XFree86 would know that 1600x1200 only was wanted if the current > monitor was able to display that at 85 Hz, and drop down to 1440x1080 > if required. Notice that this would take effect after upgrading or > downgrading your monitor -- only restart X, no configuration change > required.
That is an interesting idea. I think you can get the same effect by not having anything less that 85 in the VertRefresh range of the Monitor section. > A similar suggestion in this vein, is to tell XFree86 that the numbers > returned by the video card and/or the monitor should be taken with a > grain of salt. As you all know, pushing the RAMDAC or the monitor to > its absolute limits will degrade the image. A SafetyMargin (in > percent) could be one way of solving this problem (overclockers would > love to try to specify a negative SafetyMargin, I'm sure ;-). Today, > the solution is to specify bandwidths explicitly, which is prone to > failure when you switch monitors. I have submitted a patch (4955) to make the server use the monitor hsync and vrefresh values probed by DDC when the config file doesn't specify them. If the probed and config file values disagree there will be a warning in the logfile, but I haven't allowed a user configurable margin for error. I've assumed that the config file always knows what it is doing. With this patch, leaving this values out of the monitor section is allowed, but it does mean that the server may behave differently if the monitor is powered down when the server starts up. -- Dr. Andrew C. Aitchison Computer Officer, DPMMS, Cambridge [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.dpmms.cam.ac.uk/~werdna _______________________________________________ Xpert mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://XFree86.Org/mailman/listinfo/xpert
