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setmclk(1)		       Svgalib User Manual		      setmclk(1)

NAME
     setmclk - adjust the memory timing of certain Cirrus cards.

SYNOPSIS
     setmclk

DESCRIPTION
     This program sets the memory clock of Cirrus 5424/26/28 cards.

     The  first  three values could be set by utility programs that came with my
     card (AVGA3), but somewhat higher values  seem  to  work  (on  my	card  at
     least).  It  may  be  that better and more recent Cirrus cards use a higher
     value as boot-up default. It should depend on DRAM speed, but it  seems  to
     be more dependant on the card logic.

     I have the impression that many Cirrus 542x cards suffer from horrible BIOS
     version/DRAM  timing  misconfigurations.  Perhaps even some versions of MS-
     Windows drivers change the MCLK register. In any case, the boot-up BIOS de-
     fault (0x1c) may be inappropriately low for the type of  DRAM  timing  most
     cards use.

     Using  a  higher memory clock gives a very significant performance improve-
     ment; with high dot clock modes (like 640x480x16M or 1150x900x256)  perfor-
     mance  can  be more than twice that of the standard 50 MHz clock. This goes
     for both (VLB) framebuffer access and accelerated features  (bitblt).  This
     also  helps XFree86 server performance, but only if the XFree86 Cirrus dri-
     ver doesn't set the memory clock register (it should work for  XFree86  1.3
     and 2.0).	Use at your own risk!

     Note  that  the  dot  clock is something entirely different. There does not
     seem to be much correlation between the two (i.e. if a high dot clock gives
     screen problems, using a high memory clock is not likely to fix  it,  other
     than improving speed).

     The  actual  memory clock is hard compiled into the program. It defaults to
     0x1c. You can change this value and some suggestiong come in th  source  of
     the utility.

     This utility is part of svgalib and can be found in the utils/ subdirectory
     of  the  original svgalib distribution. However, it is not installed by de-
     fault, s.t. it is unclear where you can find it if your svgalib was install
     linux distribution.

     In case of any such problem, simply get an svgalib  distribution  from  the
     net.  You	don't need to install it. Just make in the utils/ subdirecty. As
     of this writing, svgalib-1.2.12.tar.gz is the latest version and can be re-
     trieved  by  ftp  from  sunsite.unc.edu  at  /pub/Linux/libs/graphics   and
     tsx-11.mit.edu  at /pub/linux/sources/libs which will most probably be mir-
     rored by a site close to you.

SEE ALSO
     svgalib(7), vgagl(7), libvga.config(5), convfont(1),  dumpreg(1),	restore-
     font(1),  restorepalette(1),  restoretextmode(1), runx(1), savetextmode(1),
     fix132x43(1), textmode(1).

AUTHOR
     This manual page was  edited  by  Michael	Weller	<eowmob@exp-math.uni-es-
     sen.de>. The exact source of the referenced utility as well as of the orig-
     inal documentation is unknown.

     It  is  very  likely  that both are at least to some extent are due to Harm
     Hanemaayer <H.Hanemaayer@inter.nl.net>.

     Occasionally this might be wrong. I hereby asked to be excused by the orig-
     inal author and will happily accept any additions or  corrections	to  this
     first version of the svgalib manual.

Svgalib (>= 1.2.11)		   2 Aug 1997			      setmclk(1)

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