Driver Documentation
Intel® 965 Express Chipset Family and Intel® G35 Express Chipset Graphics Controller PRM
- Volume One: Graphics Core
- Volume Two: 3D/Media
- Volume Three: Display Registers
- Volume Four: Subsystem and Cores
Supported Hardware
The Linux graphics drivers from Intel support the following Intel® chipsets:| Short name | Full name |
|---|---|
| G35 | Intel® G35 Express Chipset |
| Q35 | Intel® Q35 Express Chipset |
| Q33 | Intel® Q33 Express Chipset |
| G33 | Intel® G33 Express Chipset |
| 965GM | Mobile Intel® GM965 Express Chipset |
| 965G | G965 Integrated Graphics Controller |
| 965Q | Q963/Q965 Integrated Graphics Controller |
| 946GZ | 946GZ/GL Integrated Graphics Controller |
| 945G | 945G Integrated Graphics Controller |
| 945GM | Mobile 945GM/GMS/940GML Express Integrated Graphics Controller |
| 915G | 82915G/GV/910GL Express Chipset Family Graphics Controller |
| 915GM | Mobile 915GM/GMS/910GML Express Graphics Controller |
| 865G | 82865G Integrated Graphics Controller |
| 855GM | 82852/855GM Integrated Graphics Device |
| 845G | 82845G/GL[Brookdale-G]/GE Chipset Integrated Graphics Device |
| i830M | 82830 Chipset Graphics Controller |
| 815 | 82815 Chipset Graphics Controller |
| 810 | 82810 Chipset Graphics Controller |
| 810-DC100 | 82810-M DC-100 System and Graphics Controller |
Consistent with many Linux commands and drivers, there is a manual page with detailed information available for this driver. This is a good place to start to manually set up and trouble shoot the driver - the Option "MonitorLayout" is a good candidate to look at if you are having trouble.
If you would like to build the driver from scratch, you can reference the user guide for driver build.
See the information in the Hardware Matrix where anyone can leave tips and tricks for configuring the hardware.
Frequently Asked Questions
Question: Is the BIOS still used for mode setting?
Answer
The Intel X.org driver version 2.0 now includes native mode setting code that no longer relies on the BIOS to configure the chip. Most Linux distributions continue to ship older versions of the driver which rely on the BIOS for mode setting.Question: What is the difference between the GM965 and X3100?
Answer
The Mobile Intel® GM965 Express Chipset is the whole piece of silicon, including PCI Express, memory, and CPU interfaces along with the graphics accelerator. The Mobile Intel® Graphics Media Accelerator X3100 is just that part of the GM965 which is used for graphics.Question: Where can I buy a notebook with the Mobile Intel® GM965 Express Chipset?
Answer
Many major vendors have announced products using this chipset as part of the Santa Rosa platform. Make sure the notebook is using the Mobile Intel® Graphics Media Accelerator X3100 for graphics instead of an external graphics processor.Question: Does the i965 3D driver support vertex shaders and other advanced GL functionality?
Answer
Yes, the i965 hardware supports a fully programmable GL pipeline and the driver exposes it through the GL API.Question: Does the driver support the Xv extensions?
Answer
To better support the Composite extension, the Intel graphics driver supports --for i915 and later-- textured video which uses the 3D hardware to paint the video directly to the frame buffer instead of using an overlay. This means there's no funny 'blue' image caused by the color key, and it means you can capture video frames with normal X tools.Question: Where can I buy a motherboard with Intel graphics?
Answer
Many vendors produce motherboards with onboard Intel graphics, including Intel. Please click on this link to view a list of Intel motherboards.Question: Since there is no PCI-E graphic from Intel, I have to buy a mainboard with onboard graphics. But there is only one mainboard in the Intel offering with DVI-D, and none with DVI-I support. Nor is there any dual head DVI-I support, and the remaining boards have only one VGA connector. I didn't figure out if the g965 supports dual head with different xsessions. (Btw, I'm talking about connectors - please leave the hands of these HDMI since I need no content protection on an open source system).
Answer
You can purchase (for around $20) an 'sDVO' card which plugs into the PCI-E slot and offers DVI support in various flavors. This is just an adapter board which connects the onboard graphics chip with a DVI connector using the sDVO portion of the PCI-E standard; it's not an external graphics adapter. You are right though, Intel doesn't offer a stand-alone PCI-E graphics adapter.Question: As far as I see there are dual sDVO cards available for the 965g. Is it possible to build a dual head system, with dual independent X-servers? (For s.t. like a so called Hydra System? two Keyboards, two Monitors etc.)
Answer
Not easily; there is only one graphics adapter, and we've never built an X server that can share one adapter between two people.Question: I am looking for a translation table between chipset names and commercial names.
For example, a Dell Inspiron 640M laptop uses the "Intel(r) Graphics Media Accelerator 950TM," according
to the Dell website. But according to your page, the Dell Inspiron 640M laptop uses 945GM.
Are 945GM and GMA950 the same chipset?
Answer
GMA950 is the graphics core that is integrated into the 945GM and 945G chipsets.So one is the graphics core name and one is the chipset name. The graphics core may be used across multiple chipsets. (Mobile and Desktop in this case.)
See: http://www.intel.com/products/chipsets/gma950/index.htm