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Location: Northeastern Michigan, where Carhartt is a Designer Label
Distribution: Slackware 32- & 64-bit Stable
Posts: 3,541
Rep:
Matrox Graphics, Inc. MGA G200eW WPCM450 (rev 0a)
I've got a pair of Dell PowerEdge T110 II servers that come with a Matrox Graphics MGA G200eW WPCM450 (rev 0a); Slackware 64-bit 14.0 stable, fully patched.
It works, but it sort of files like a ruptured duck (and, yeah, it's a server, not a desktop, I know that). I don't expect 3-D rendering or much of anything else, but would be kinda nice if everything wasn't big-gunky if you know what I mean. Looks like 1280x800 is about as good as it'll do (but it should be able to do better according to specs).
I've been looking but haven't turned up anything that looks useful, no drivers from the company, not much else.
Does anybody have any experience with these things and are there any ways to improve resolution -- just make the thing look better?
I've got a pair of Dell PowerEdge T110 II servers that come with a Matrox Graphics MGA G200eW WPCM450 (rev 0a); Slackware 64-bit 14.0 stable, fully patched.
The Linux kernel got a new driver for the MGA200 series with kernel 3.5, Slackware 14.0 uses a 3.2 kernel. Try it with a newer kernel.
It's not really that a big a deal, nobody's actually supposed to be working on this thing but me, I can read it, it's just clunky as all get-out (looks like a Win98 sort of thing, ugh.
But, yeah, a $30 graphics card or two may be in the offing (hopefully an Intel graphics card at that).
I've had a number of hp-blades with the same built-in graphics - and yeah, it sucks. X is a nogo, might as well go X-less and use vga=773 (or was it 771? - 800x600 is the most you can hope for)
Anyways, I bought some old FX5200-adapters (believe they cost me some 30-40 bucks each - had to be PCI/X) and that changed the gameplan completely - no more worries and nouveau was playing beautifully with it :-)
Location: Northeastern Michigan, where Carhartt is a Designer Label
Distribution: Slackware 32- & 64-bit Stable
Posts: 3,541
Original Poster
Rep:
Yeah, I know that Intel doesn't make cards (dang it, a guy can dream, can't he?).
Gotta wonder what's up with Dell and H-P for using that thing (I mean, how much can the Intel chips cost, eh? They put 'em in everything else for crying out loud). On the other hand, they're servers, not gamers (or much of anything elsers), so, essentially, you're not supposed to care all that much. Sigh.
Anyway, it's really not that important -- X does work, Firefox does work, Thunderbird does work, terminal emulator does work and the application (DSpace) works too. That pretty much covers it (I can even play Patience 4-suite Spider while I'm waiting for something. It ain't pretty, it's a little clunky, but what the heck. Just runs like a three-legged dog with a busted tail (and it's so nice to plug the monitor back into my desktop). Oh, yeah, from the desktop, things hum along just fine (DSpace runs in Apache Tomcat via a browser).
I'll look around for something cheap just for grins, thanks for the suggestions.
8MB of video RAM... you might get higher resolutions if you run it in 16 bit colour if that's possible.
Seriously though, if you don't want to run it headless, just buy any half decent "entry level" PCI-e AMD/Nvidia card.
With a little math you will see that 8MB is enough to run 1920x768 with 32 bits, if you don't use a compositing WM. I would still give a newer kernel a try, it costs nothing and maybe solve the problems.
Gotta wonder what's up with Dell and H-P for using that thing (I mean, how much can the Intel chips cost, eh? They put 'em in everything else for crying out loud). On the other hand, they're servers, not gamers (or much of anything elsers), so, essentially, you're not supposed to care all that much. Sigh.
I bet they use the G200 for the sole reason of all Windows editions and Enterprise Linux supporting that thing out of the box without having to install any drivers. And that's all you need for a server GUI console, no fancy stuff required. With recent Intel GPUs that doesn't work.
The G200 should be properly supported using the 3.10.x kernels and X.Org 7.7 with the "mga" driver. The only cards not support are the G500 series and those have no modern kernel and xorg compliant drivers at all.
XiGraphics supports most Matrox cards through their Summit driver which, unfortunately however, is not free software or freeware of any kind. However, their website at this time, mostly is still broken.
Yeah, I know that Intel doesn't make cards (dang it, a guy can dream, can't he?).
Up to the iX series, intel video ranged from 'meh' to 'really awful'. There is a reason why intel droped out of the video card market.....
I know they are popular with some linux users because of the open drivers, and intel video does work, but they could never compete with nVidia/ATI/3DFX/Matrox/S3/etc..
Quote:
Originally Posted by tronayne
Gotta wonder what's up with Dell and H-P for using that thing (I mean, how much can the Intel chips cost, eh? They put 'em in everything else for crying out loud). On the other hand, they're servers, not gamers (or much of anything elsers), so, essentially, you're not supposed to care all that much. Sigh.
The chipset is from the 'Cougar Point' family without the video chip found on earlier intel chipsets.
Intel has no video on some of the Xeon 1200/1200 V2 CPUs, so no intel iX video. Well, they could have used it with the CPUs that do have a video chip on the CPU.
Because they would still 'need' video, they would have added another addon video chip anyway. That would put more traces on the motherboard, increased costs and complexity, and even with the better researched/more technically advanced server users I'd bet there would be plenty of 'argh, video isnt working' moments.
With a little math you will see that 8MB is enough to run 1920x768 with 32 bits
I missed where the OP specified what resolution he was trying to achieve. I only read the reference to 1280x800 not being good enough in the original post.
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