dear lazyweb: svdo? add2? mec? confusion.

so i’ve decided to go all-intel with my new computer. i’ve bought a new case, new memory, a new core 2 duo cpu and this new intel mainboard. the idea is that with the x3000 onboard with dvi output i wouldn’t need to worry about any proprietary video crud.

putting the computer together yesterday i realised that btx is absolutely and utterly incompatible with atx. the mainboard is completely backwards from how you might expect. furthermore, even the heatsink doesn’t attach to the mainboard properly (since the holes are different).

so i have a choice and i think that btx will lose. i *really* like the atx case i have. i don’t feel like buying another heatsink.

so now i think that the mainboard needs to go back. the thing is: i want an intel mainboard with x3000 video and i want it on a dvi port. the reason i bought this specific board is that it has dvi onboard. the only boards that have this (as far as i can see) are btx.

there are, however, 5 suitable atx mainboards with x3000. they don’t have dvi out, but i understand that i can use this svdo/add2/mec thing in order to get dvi out of it. i’m confused, though. there are a lot of acronyms flying around and i don’t know what is what. do i need special software support? will i need to run modesetting branch? i have no idea. different sources appear to have different information.

ideally, someone would tell me “oh, by the way, intel does make an atx board with dvi onboard”. slightly less than ideally, someone will explain to me exactly what i need to do to make this work.

any help is appreciated.

9 thoughts on “dear lazyweb: svdo? add2? mec? confusion.”

  1. I have an X3000 and I have had nothing but trouble with it:

    – It is not automatically recognized in Feisty. Well, easy fix.

    – Using the i810 driver, 3D works perfectly fine with AIGLX + Compiz, except when I activate it and used it a little, my machine crashes (automatically reboots) without any hint why (log contains no errors). Happens so often that I had to deactivate 3D entirely.

    – I can’t get screen resolutions > 1600×1200 to work at all. The 915resolution tool does not do it (using it only reduces the screen resolution to 640×480), and when using the new “modesetting” driver, no output is produced at all. I hear that this might have something to do with the fact that I use an ADD2 card for output.

    I can not recommend this card at all. I am now seriously thinking about getting an additional (non-onboard) card. It might require proprietary software, but at least it works… :-(.

  2. It is why AMD has created a new DTX standard that is full backwards compatibility with ATX. It is cheaper for the companies to make it without have to make big change.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DTX_(form_factor)

    There is no point to have BTX these day when AMD/Intel are making their chipests lower power and lower heat. Intel created BTX for P4’s sake that create a lot of heats.

  5. Why not get an AMD motherboard with build in ATI chipset – like the xpres200M. AMD even supply linux drivers that let you run games like glxgears.

  8. ADD2 is the name for the card, SDVO is the name for the protocol (ie, I Can’t Believe It’s Not PCIE). MEC is some fancy new lie that means the same thing as ADD2. Sort of the same way it’s really a 965 graphics chip but you keep calling it X3000.

    At this point the modesetting branch has been merged to master. So you’ll need to run an intel driver with a version number of 1.9.91 or higher, and a 1.3 RC X server or newer. Fedora 7 will have both out of the box.

    I’ve got like three of these cards at the office, they work pretty well so far. Let me know if you have trouble with it.

  9. desrt: I have not idea (it’s a stock PC, and the docs don’t contain that information). It does seem to show up in lspci. The only things I see there:

    00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation 82G965 Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 02)
    00:02.1 Display controller: Intel Corporation 82G965 Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 02)

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