6. Video cards

Linux will work with all video cards in text mode, VGA cards not listed below probably will still work with mono VGA and/or standard VGA drivers.

If you're looking into buying a cheap video card to run X, keep in mind that accelerated cards (ATI Mach, ET4000/W32p, S3) are MUCH faster than unaccelerated or partially accelerated (Cirrus, WD) cards.

"32 bpp" is actually 24 bit color aligned on 32 bit boundaries. It does NOT mean the cards are capable of 32 bit color, they still display 24 bit color (16,777,216 colors). 24 bit packed pixels modes are not supported in XFree86, so cards that can do 24 bit modes to get higher resolutions in other OS's are not able to do this in X using XFree86. These cards include Mach32, Cirrus 542x, S3 801/805/868/968, ET4000, and others.

AGP (Accelerated Graphics Port) support is growing fast. Most of the X-servers (both freely available and commercial versions) have more or less support for AGP.

6.1. XFree86

Please note that this section has not been updated recently!

For the most recent information about cards and chipsets supported by XFree86, see the Driver Status page and the XFree86 3.3.6 card list.

The following information was last updated for XFree86 3.3.2.

6.1.1. Accelerated

ARK Logic ARK1000PV/VL, ARK2000PV/MT
ATI Mach8
ATI Mach32 (16 bpp supported for cards with RAMDAC ATI68875, AT&T20C49x, BT481 and 2Mb video ram)
ATI Mach64 (16/32 bpp supported for cards with RAMDAC ATI68860, ATI68875, CH8398, STG1702, STG1703, AT&T20C408, 3D Rage II, internal, IBM RGB514)
Chips & Technologies 64200, 64300, 65520, 65525, 65530, 65535, 65540, 65545, 65546, 65548, 65550, 65554
Cirrus Logic 5420, 542x/5430 (16 bpp), 5434 (16/32 bpp), 5436, 544x, 546x, 5480, 62x5, 754x
Diamond Viper 330
Gemini P1 (ET6000 chip)
IBM 8514/A
IBM XGA-I, XGA-II
IIT AGX-010/014/015/016 (16 bpp)
Matrox MGA2064W (Millennium)
Matrox MGA1064SG (Mystique)
Number Nine Imagine I128
Oak OTI-087
S3 732 (Trio32), 764 (Trio64), Trio64V+, 801, 805, 864, 866, 868, 86C325 (ViRGE), 86C375 (ViRGE/DX), 86C385 (ViRGE/GX), 86C988 (ViRGE/VX), 911, 924, 928, 964, 968
- see Appendix A for list of supported S3 cards
SiS 86c201, 86c202, 86c205
Trident 9440, 96xx, Cyber938x
Tseng ET4000/W32/W32i/W32p, ET6000
Weitek P9000 (16/32 bpp)
- Diamond Viper VLB/PCI
- Orchid P9000
Western Digital WD90C24/24A/24A2/31/33

6.1.2. Unaccelerated

Alliance AP6422, AT24
ATI VGA Wonder series
Avance Logic AL2101/2228/2301/2302/2308/2401
Cirrus Logic 6420/6440, 7555
Compaq AVGA
DEC 21030
Genoa GVGA
MCGA (320x200)
MX MX68000/MX68010
NCR 77C22, 77C22E, 77C22E+
NVidia NV1
Oak OTI-037C, OTI-067, OTI-077
RealTek RTG3106
SGS-Thomson STG2000
Trident 8800CS, 8200LX, 8900x, 9000, 9000i, 9100B, 9200CXr, 9320LCD, 9400CXi, 9420, 9420DGi, 9430DGi
Tseng ET3000, ET4000AX
VGA (standard VGA, 4 bit, slow)
Video 7 / Headland Technologies HT216-32
Western Digital/Paradise PVGA1, WD90C00/10/11/30

6.1.3. Monochrome

Hercules mono
Hyundai HGC-1280
Sigma LaserView PLUS
VGA mono

6.1.4. Alpha, Beta drivers

EGA (ancient, from c. 1992)

6.2. SuSE X-Server

Note: Xsuse has been integrated into XFree86. This section will be removed when the XFree86 section is updated.

SuSE is building a serie of X-servers based on the XFree86 code. These X servers support new video cards and are bug fix releases for XFree86 X servers. SuSE is building these X servers together with The XFree86 Project, Inc. These X servers will be in the next XFree86 version. These X servers can be found at SuSE's web site. At this moment SuSE X servers are available for the following video cards.

XSuSE Elsa GLoria X-Server
- ELSA GLoria L, GLoria L/MX, Gloria S
Video cards with the Alliance Semiconductor AT3D (also AT25) Chip
- Hercules Stingray 128 3D
XSuSE NVidia X-Server (PCI and AGP support, NV1 chipset and Riva128)
- ASUS 3Dexplorer
- Diamond Viper 330
- ELSA VICTORY Erazor
- STB Velocity 128
XSuSE Matrox. Support for Mystique, Millennium, Millennium II and Millennium II AGP
XSuSE Trident. Support for the 9685 (including ClearTV) and the latest Cyber chipset
XSuSE Tseng. W32, W32i ET6100 and ET6300 support.

6.3. Commercial X servers

Commercial X servers provide support for cards not supported by XFree86, and might give better performances for cards that are supported by XFree86. Contact the vendors directly or check the Commercial HOWTO for more info.

6.4. Kernel Framebuffer (fbdev)

The kernel supports a graphical console on some video cards. This support was originally designed for non-x86 architectures which generally do not have text-capable video cards. It was integrated into the kernel in 2.2, and now supports various video cards.

More information can be found at linux-fbdev.org.

The following cards are supported:

Amiga builtin chipset (amifb)
ATARI builtin chipset (atafb)
ATI Rage128 (aty128fb)
ATI Mach64, RageII, RageII+, RageIIc (atyfb)
Hercules Graphics Adaptor (hgafb)
Matrox Millennium I, Millennium II, Mystique, G200 (matroxfb)
PowerMAC "platinum" (platinumfb)
S3 Savage4 (savagefb)
3Dfx Voodoo, Voodoo2, Voodoo3 (tdfxfb)
S3 Trio64 (trio64fb)
All VESA 2.0 cards (vesafb)

6.5. SVGALIB (graphics for console)

VGA
EGA
ARK Logic ARK1000PV/2000PV
ATI VGA Wonder
ATI Mach32
Cirrus 542x, 543x
OAK OTI-037/67/77/87
S3 (limited support)
Trident TVGA8900/9000
Tseng ET3000/ET4000/W32