Laptop display chips (was: Dell laptops)

[Greg 'groggy' Lehey]

On Wednesday, 12 July 2006 at 14:47:25 -0400, David Gilbert wrote:
>>>>>> "Daniel" == Daniel Eischen <deischen at freebsd.org> writes:
>
> Daniel> I didn't make the mistake of getting a system with an nvidia
> Daniel> chip ;-) It's an Intel 945 of some sort and I don't have X set
> Daniel> up on it yet, so it's strictly console right now.
>
> Well... given my sister's Dell's problems with it's intel chipset
> video, I would definately stay away from that.  I also value 3D
> performance and the Nvidia 6800 in the XPS is "somewhat" better than
> the Intel 945 (to understate the issue).

I didn't mention this before, because it's not directly relevant to
FreeBSD, but I've also had serious problems with the graphics chip in
my Inspiron 6000: I can't get it to drive a projector correctly.  This
is a machine with 1920x1200 display and the following chip set (sorry
for the Linux):

01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc M22 [Radeon Mobility M300] (prog-if 00 [VGA])
        Subsystem: Dell Unknown device 2003
        Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 11
        Memory at d0000000 (32-bit, prefetchable) [size=128M]
        I/O ports at de00 [size=256]
        Memory at dfdf0000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=64K]
        [virtual] Expansion ROM at dfd00000 [disabled] [size=128K]
        Capabilities: [50] Power Management version 2
        Capabilities: [58] Express Endpoint IRQ 0
        Capabilities: [80] Message Signalled Interrupts: 64bit+ Queue=0/0 Enable-
        Capabilities: [100] Advanced Error Reporting

The LCD display works perfectly with FreeBSD and also most versions of
Linux (some don't recognize the aspect ratio or the resolution of the
screen).  But I can't get X to change the horizontal frequency, which
is set at 74.1 kHz, too high for most projectors.  The driver just
ignores any attempts to set a mode line with a different frequency.  I
assume this is a bug in the X driver.

FWIW, the chips with which I've had the fewest problems have been
nVidia, though all my experience with them has been in desktop class
machines.

Greg
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