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== Introduction ==
Nowadays, many people use their computers with wide-screen monitors. But, these resolutions aren't in VESA standards, the video drivers/framebuffers deal with them by themselves.
Unfortunately, NVIDIA's proprietary drivers for Linux don't provide framebuffer drivers. We have to use VESA compatible framebuffer and standard VESA resolution only. Therefore, we get poor resolutions in text-mode ttys when we using NVIDIA's proprietary drivers. Or, we could use Nouveau and get great resolutions with nouveaufb, but the 3D graphics performance is poor.
Intel i915 users had the same issues before, they invented 915resolution to hack the VBIOS. In fact, for NVIDIA cards, the similar method also works, the Hackintosh community used them, and integrated them in bootloaders for many years. nvresolution is a tool, that ported methods from Hackintosh community to Linux, it hot-patches the video BIOS of the NVIDIA GPU. Like the famous 915resolution, it modifies the video BIOS (in RAM, not EEPROM), replaces a resolution mode to custom resolution, in order to use the native resolutions of your monitors.
== Safety ==
It modifies the video BIOS?! Yes, but it is a hotpatch. The video BIOS area it modifies which is mapped into the RAM. It means the modifications of the BIOS are transient. The modification will lose after shutting down. There is no risk of permanent modification of the BIOS. It also means that nvresolution must be run every time the computer boots.
In the worst case, if it breaks your graphics, just reboot your computer.
But, please keep in mind:
This is free software; see the source for copying conditions. There is NO warranty; not even for MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
== Limitation ==
It must build into GRUB, or build into initramfs before uvesafb starts. It should work on GTX 400 and newer GPUs. But only tested with my GTX 460.
It must unlock PAM registers to modify the VBIOS memory. Unlike i915, the method of unlocking PAM registers is depends on CPUs, because i915 is a part of motherboard chipsets, there is a general way to unlock the registers, but NVIDIA cards are not.
It should works on Intel Core i-series processors Gen1/Gen2/LGA2011. But only tested with my Core i7 2600K (belongs to Gen2).
Core i-series processors Gen3 and newer processors are not supported. AMD processors are not supported, because I don't have manuals or hardwares.
== Note ==
I wrote the program in 2014, for myself. I don't have enough time to provide technical supports (installation Q&A, AUR package, troubleshooting) for the community, so I didn't introduce the project to anywhere. But, I think advanced users and developers may take the benefic for the project. Well, feel free to ask anything.
== Learn More ==
https://github.com/biergaizi/nvresolution
Last edited by biergaizi (2015-02-28 14:55:01)
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