Problem with Matrox MGA G200eW video driver.

[Ben Greear]

I have a fancy and quite new E5 processor server system that has a Matrox VGA port in it:

e:04.0 VGA compatible controller: Matrox Electronics Systems Ltd. MGA G200eW WPCM450 (rev 0a)

This appears to use the mgag200 kernel module.

When this module is loaded, the Xorg log complains saying the module must be unloaded
and I end up running 'llvmpipe' and performance is horrible.

If I blacklist the module, it still runs in emulation mode and performance is horrible.

Here is what I think is the interesting part for the black-list variant:

[    26.079] (II) Module vgahw: vendor="X.Org Foundation"
[    26.079]    compiled for 1.14.2, module version = 0.1.0
[    26.079]    ABI class: X.Org Video Driver, version 14.1
[    26.079] (--) MGA(0): Chipset: "mgag200 eW Nuvoton"
[    26.079] (--) MGA(0): Linear framebuffer at 0xF9000000
[    26.079] (--) MGA(0): MMIO registers at 0xFB800000
[    26.079] (--) MGA(0): Pseudo-DMA transfer window at 0xFB000000
[    26.150] (II) MGA(0): Creating default Display subsection in Screen section
         "Default Screen Section" for depth/fbbpp 24/32
[    26.150] (==) MGA(0): Depth 24, (--) framebuffer bpp 32
[    26.150] (==) MGA(0): RGB weight 888
[    26.150] (**) MGA(0): Enabling KVM
[    26.150] (==) MGA(0): Using HW cursor
[    26.150] (**) MGA(0): Using "Shadow Framebuffer" - acceleration disabled
[    26.150] (--) MGA(0): Video BIOS info block at offset 0x07D60
[    26.150] (==) MGA(0): VideoRAM: 16320 kByte


So, first question:  Should I be blacklisting the driver?

And second, any idea on how to either get the acceleration working,
or make gnome work OK w/out it?  I don't care at all about 3D affects,
I just need basic desktop functionality to work w/out too much overhead.

Thanks,
Ben

-- 
Ben Greear <greearb at candelatech.com>
Candela Technologies Inc  http://www.candelatech.com