Problem with video card or configuration...
 

I've never really been big on computer gaming. Any games I play (or used to play) did not demand much from my graphics card. After recently installing Fedora Core 3, I began to notice something. I was browsing through everything that was installed with the OS, and I found tuxracer. It looked like a cool game, so I decided to play it. Instantly, I noticed something was wrong. I don't know much about video cards or anything, so I don't know if the problem is coming right from the video card, or if it is in some type of configuration file. So anyway, the game was going painfully slow. The refresh rate seemed horribly low, and I think this is what caused my problem. Is it because my video card sucks (nVidia GeForce 4 MX) ? Or do I need to configure something to allow for better game play ? I figured it was the latter, because I didn't think such a game would demand much from a video card. I could be wrong though. Anyways, any ideas on what's going on here ? Is there any way to fix it, or does my video card just suck ? Thanks in advance.

Re: Problem with video card or configuration...
 

I've recently had a similar sounding problem, but that was after I did my daily update (as a gentoo user), the newer kernel version that I'd installed didn't like the version of the driver that I was running.

Now I can't say for you mreinecker, because I had to change some gentoo related things to get the latest unstable version (well it's unstable according to the gentoo portage tree (that's the package manager source), so??).

The problem had manifested itself in that, my desktop was slow, tuxracer was "choppy". When I'd upgraded the kernel version, the same version of nvidia driver wouldn't compile (again, don't forget I'm using gentoo which uses source code that is then compiled, and not as you probably are, binary packages in the form of RPMs).

I don't know how you'd check, but you may have to look and see what kernel version you're running, what version of the nvidia driver youre using, and whether if there's like a testing/unstable version you could get???


you could have a look to see what youre getting by way of FPS with the command "glxgears" (presuming that you've got all the necessary edit's to your xorg.conf or XFree86.conf file for the nvidia driver - see the readme at the nvidia site for linux drivers which should point you in the right direction - I can't cos I'm using a different distro)(oh and don't forget, no quotation marks with the glxgears command).

for example, with my screen resolution set at 1280 x 1024 @ 85hz I can get

The first figures @ about 900 or so FPS is with the little graphic box that pops open after the "glxgears" command, and when it drops to 80/85 FPS, that's after I've made the graphic full screen.

Nowhere good enough for UT2004 or doom 3, but perfectly adequate for tuxracer.

I know I'm using a different distro, but that lot might point you in the right direction (hopefully)!

regards

John

I'm pretty sure my problem is that I need new drivers for my nVidia card. However, I'm having the hardest time actually finding the right one to download, and how to install it. It's so confusing.

Well here's the link to the one that I'm using now, from the nvidia site. Though the one that I was using that f****d up with the kernel upgrade that I mentioned above was called 6629 (I think).

Again, I'm guessing, because I've never used Fedora, but under mandrake, it was always a case of, checking what kernel you are using, then looking at the available packages (from mandrake, but Fedora will have a similar asset) and getting the kernel-sources (you need both the kernel and the kernel sources), installing that, then download the driver AND the readme from the nvidia site, dig through the readme, to the bit that tells you how to run the package (it's a one line command, done as root i.e. su in user account, followed by root password) I've then always been in the habit of printing off the page that tells me that, and the one that tells you what you need to change in your xorg.conf (or xfree86.conf if you still use that) then as root you can issue the init 3 command or if you have it installed/enabled ctrl+alt+backspace (or it might be delete) together to stop the xserver, then again as root, you cd /home/mreinecker or whatever location you downloaded the driver to, and issue the command and (in theory) it should fire up the nvidia installer. You will have to "accept" their t's & C's but that's exactly how I used to run it everytime mandrake issued a new kernel. Though that's also the normal install method (as I found it anyway).

don't print of the whole readme there's shitloads of it, you only really need the pages that I mentioned above.

Once it's finished, do the mod to the xorg.conf i.e. uncomment "Load glx", change the driver name to "nvidia" instead of "nv" and I don't recall if there's anything else to change in that file, but if you haven't already tried to restart after you installed the driver, but before you modded the xorg.conf you can either just reboot or it should work with startx command.

You'll know if you've got it, because you should see the nvidia splash screen on restart.

Oh and sorry if the above has wasted your time, but that's just how I used to do it, so.......



Hope that helps a little.

Good luck

regards

John