.TH setmclk 1 "2 Aug 1997" "Svgalib (>= 1.2.11)" "Svgalib User Manual"
.SH NAME
setmclk \- adjust the memory timing of certain Cirrus cards.
.SH SYNOPSIS

.BI setmclk

.SH DESCRIPTION
This program sets the 
.B 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
default (0x1c) may be inappropriately low for the type of DRAM timing most
cards use.

Using a higher memory clock gives a very significant performance improvement;
with high dot clock modes (like 640x480x16M or 1150x900x256) performance 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 driver 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
.B 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
.B 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
.I utils/
subdirectory of the original svgalib distribution. However, it is not installed
by default, 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
.B make
in the
.I utils/
subdirecty. As of this writing,
.I svgalib-1.2.12.tar.gz
is the latest version and can be retrieved by ftp from
.IR "sunsite.unc.edu" " at " "/pub/Linux/libs/graphics"
and
.IR "tsx-11.mit.edu" " at " "/pub/linux/sources/libs"
which will most probably be mirrored by a site close to you.

.SH SEE ALSO

.BR svgalib (7),
.BR vgagl (7),
.BR libvga.config (5),
.BR convfont (1),
.BR dumpreg (1),
.BR restorefont (1),
.BR restorepalette (1),
.BR restoretextmode (1),
.BR runx (1),
.BR savetextmode (1),
.BR fix132x43 (1),
.BR textmode (1).

.SH AUTHOR

This manual page was edited by Michael Weller <eowmob@exp-math.uni-essen.de>. The
exact source of the referenced utility as well as of the original 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 original author and will happily accept any additions or corrections
to this first version of the svgalib manual.