Get your 3D acceleration working UPDATED 11/30/09
Website is back down. Some off-site links WON'T work.
NEED HELP W/ATi. Make posts, please! ATi section is far out of date! UPDATED: Now includes ATI, NVidia, VIA\S3 Savage, and Intel!! You can also vote on this thread. Let me know how it is. I have seen ALOT of questions concerning this issue. After starting this thread, I have also noticed alot of people reading this. If you have ANY experience, good or bad, trying to enable DRI on your card/chip, please post them. All experiences can be learned from. This is also a constantly changing post. Come back and read it again. I'm adding/removing/changing the post constantly, to try to reflect new information as it becomes revealed. But first, a disclaimer: READ YOUR DOCUMENTATION I use Slackware 13 64bit, Multi-lib working. I do not know if any of the following will definitely work in any other distribution! Also, be aware that this may not work on your hardware. My experience with this issue is mostly with the i810 family of chipsets, and now extensively Nvidia. But, as a general guide, it can be applied to most circumstances. Check the various sections for your chipset/video card But remember: Sometimes, because of BIOS limitations, or the card/chip itself, it just won't work Links to external sites for various related topics: This website: www.freedesktop.org/wiki/FrontPage has a ton of info on cards and standards. *********************************************************** In General: READ YOUR DOCUMENTATION Direct Rendering (DRI) is dependant on many things, among them are kernel support, BIOS (both video and system), memory for the video (either onboard the card itself, or shared system memory), your xorg.conf, and the driver for your card/chip itself. There are three things that are generally needed for 3D Acceleration (DRI) to take place:
Correct Drivers: IF YOU WANT 3D ACCELERATION FOR NVIDIA/ATI, YOU MUST USE THE PROPRIETARY DRIVERS. The open source/kernel drivers DO NOT SUPPORT 3D Download them. Borrow from a friend. Steal them from your roommate/brother/sister/that weird guy from down the street. As I said, with the Intel card/chip, the ones installed w/X11 are fine (i810). ATI (if needed)and all NVidia, get them. Edit /etc/X11/xorg.conf Now come the variables. There are three general things that must be done (Your hardware driver may not allow these,check your documentation):
Checking if DRI is working: Restart your X session, (restart it, reboot, whatever). When X is up, get a terminal window open. Type "glxinfo". On the second or third line it should say "Direct rendering: yes" .If so, it's working. Type "glxgears", and see what the frames per second is. Disable DRI by not loading the DRI driver in xorg.conf. Restart x and see what the FPS is now in glxgears. SHould be radical. Edit xorg.conf again, renable DRI, restart X, and try glxgears again...Wow. Big difference. What if DRI is not running: Try logging in as root, and trying. Your driver may not show that it is functional if you are not root. Also, look in /var/log/Xorg.0.log and see if there are any errors (EE) in there, and what was going on just prior to the error. That ought to steer you in the correct direction. If this post helps, let us know. And, by the same token, if it doesn't let us know. Let me know. As things change, I will edit this. This is not an all-emcompassing howto. It is just a general guide. Your experience may vary. If you would like a copy of my xorg.conf, or my kernel config, they can be found here: www.cwwilson721.dyndns.org The individual files are: xorg.conf and config ************************************* NVidia: READ YOUR DOCUMENTATION Here's how to get 3D working with Nvidia:
It's that easy. If you don't want the Nvidia Splash screen when X starts, raska has this tidbit: Quote:
ATI: READ YOUR DOCUMENTATION I need more input here. What is the simplest, easiest way to get the ATi drivers installed? Most of the info here is old/outdated The following is for Slackware 10.2 only. (Per Old_Fogie) This was sent to me by Old_Fogie (Had to edit for length...Sorry dude. Read the complete post in this thread) Quote:
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S3/Savage/Via Kernel drivers is all you have. Run "xorgsetup", and you're done ************************************ Sorry about the editing and putting some of the text off-site, but this post is getting LONG....lol Thanks again to all who contributed |
Thanks for the guide. I have the very same video card. I tried your configuration, but the X server did not come up. I have gotten DRI to work on the card, but I had to comment out the VideoRam section. Are you sure that it needs to be commented out?
Edit...I didn't have agp and the intel card compiled as a module. I'm going to re-compile the kernel (2.6.14.4) again. |
Yep. It needs at least 24 MB (I do believe) for DRI to be functional at the 24bit color depth. Look at my website www.cwwilson721.dyndns.org/slack and my complete kernel config file plus my entire xorg.conf file is available there. Look through them. My i830m chip is running glxgears at 740fps when without DRI was running at 125. And as I said, I run it at 24bit.
The details of the videoram, etc I got from the man i810 page. It has alot of info there |
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user@toaster:~$ glxinfo Running at 1024x768 As I said, differences in bios. Is your DRI running? |
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Could be the i810 vs the i830. But beleive me, it's running 24bit and DRI works. I never knew you couldn't do it, so I went ahead and did it...lol
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Hey guys,
cwwilson721, excellent tip! I've been looking for a good tip on how to set up XVideo. (I'm pretty new to Linux.) Your post actually made me realize that my X was using the VESA Framebuffer and not the i810 driver. Could I just add something? I think this section in xorg.conf need to be changed too (change in bold): Code:
Section "Screen" Code:
Section "Device" What does both those options mean? VideoRam worked for me. (I've got a 24bit color depth, so I guess I needed it. Even though I don't know what it really does..) Once again, thanks for the tip! (I can watch DivX-movies without any problems in Xine now.. A Xine-Check doesn't give me any complaints anymore.) |
The monitor layout part is because the intel chip can drive two monitors at the same time. Change the 'LFP,CRT' to 'CRT,CRT'. the LFP means 'Local Flat Panel' (I have a laptop...lol). Changing it to CRT,CRT should work for you. If it's a LCD panel, look at man i810. It should say what to use.
The Device presence is to check IF you have another monitor on the second port. You can comment if you want. I do occasionally hookup to a crt or another monitor on my external port, so I leave it in. In reference to the screen section, here is mine Code:
Section "Screen" Here is the link for the config file: http://www.cwwilson721.dyndns.org/slack/config-2.6.13h And for the xorg.conf: http://www.cwwilson721.dyndns.org/slack/xorg.conf Thanks for the questions/comments |
cwwilson,
Do you have any idea why commenting out the VideoRam section prevents the X server from coming up? |
Could be because you are asking for more ram than the video bios, or system bios, would allow you to have. You do/can run into BIOS issues with DRI. Sometimes, you just can't do it.
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stormtracknole-
Check the /var/log/Xorg.0 log, see if that gives you a clue |
Oh, there's a guide for this now :D
I had to search like an idiot on google to just find bits of info on many websites. Found a script that fixes the job for me, but it's only for nvidia cards. If anyone wants it, I'll be happy to host the file as soon as i'm finished configuring my computer. |
I made the guide to help others who seem to have a problem with it. I also made it as general a possible so it maybe able to help as many as possible w/out getting into specific cards/bios/hardware (ALOT of pitfalls there).
But, go ahead and give us the script. The more, the merrier |
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