How do I enable Fast Writes and SBA support for my NVIDIA card?

Crushing Belial · 12-28-2005, 10:07 PM

I'm running Debian testing, with the 1.0-8178 driver installed, and I've followed the guide from Linux Gamers, to tweak my settings, but the instructions are alittle fuzzy. I tried adding
"options nvidia NVreg_EnableAGPSBA=1 NVreg_EnableAGPFW=1" to my modules.conf file, and that didn't do anything, and adding it to xorg.conf doesn't work either. I know my card supports SBA and FW, but "cat /proc/driver/nvidia/agp/status", gives me:

Status: Enabled
Driver: AGPGART
AGP Rate: 4x
Fast Writes: Disabled
SBA: Disabled

Thanks.

HappyTux · 12-28-2005, 10:24 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Crushing Belial

I'm running Debian testing, with the 1.0-8178 driver installed, and I've followed the guide from Linux Gamers, to tweak my settings, but the instructions are alittle fuzzy. I tried adding
"options nvidia NVreg_EnableAGPSBA=1 NVreg_EnableAGPFW=1" to my modules.conf file, and that didn't do anything, and adding it to xorg.conf doesn't work either. I know my card supports SBA and FW, but "cat /proc/driver/nvidia/agp/status", gives me:

Status: Enabled
Driver: AGPGART
AGP Rate: 4x
Fast Writes: Disabled
SBA: Disabled

Thanks.

Try creating a file as root /etc/modprobe.d/nvidia with this for the contents.

Code:

## Added by me for fast writes and side band addressing
options nvidia NVreg_EnableAGPFW=1 NVreg_EnableAGPSBA=1

This of course assumes you are using a 2.6 kernel if using a 2.4 kernel then put the file in the directory /etc/modutils then run update-modules to have the information entered into the modules.conf. You will have to logout of X and remove the driver as root (rmmod nvidia) then load it again (modprobe nvidia).

Crushing Belial · 12-28-2005, 10:39 PM

Thanks alot, according to "cat /proc/driver/nvidia/agp/status", SBA, and FW are enabled, but I'm not seeing any performance improvements. Another quick question I was hoping you could solve. Sometimes when I load GLX Gears, I get upwards of 1000 FPS, and other times, I only get around 80 FPS. Any idea why that is?

HappyTux · 12-28-2005, 11:41 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Crushing Belial

Thanks alot, according to "cat /proc/driver/nvidia/agp/status", SBA, and FW are enabled, but I'm not seeing any performance improvements. Another quick question I was hoping you could solve. Sometimes when I load GLX Gears, I get upwards of 1000 FPS, and other times, I only get around 80 FPS. Any idea why that is?

GLX Gears seems to be affected by things running in the background, resolution you are running ... things like that, I usually just look at the highest reading running it a couple of times and use that as a guide.