GeForce 8400GS rubbish and slow with compiz.
 

Hi there

After a hardware problem I upgraded my computer with a new motherboard, Intel Dual core processor and new graphics card. I bought an Nvidia GeForce 8400GS as it was dirt cheap, and I don't need to play games with it.
I installed Suse 10.3 64 bit edition and everything worked nicely.... I then used the 'One click' install of the Nvidia driver from the Suse website and all went well. Glx gears works, the driver is given as nvidia and 3D is working.. of sorts.

The Graphics are VERY slow though and there are constant problems. None of the window blue-bars show up (ie those with the minimise, maximise and close icons in the top RHS) so I can't move, resize or close a window. Also, parts of the screen keep going fuzzy. If I open new tabs in firefox for example, the tag are of the page goes fuzzy and is missing! Parts of each page are unreadable if I move the mouse over them. If I scroll the page a little, the text comes back, but trying to open a hyperlink makes that part of the page go fuzzy. Typing in a terminal is often unreadable!

I have a 3D cube working, but am very disappointed at such poor performance.
Anyone?

Have you checked /var/log/Xorg.0.log for any error messages? And of course, it could simply be the driver. The 8400 is a fairly recent addition so it's quite possible that nvidia has some more work to do before it works as it should. The funny thing is, I have an nvidia 7600GST and although I don't like Suse at all, I have to admit that there isn't a single distro that gives me better 3D performance...

Nvidia 7900gs Slow
 

Hi.

Well i have the exact same thing except i have a newer Geforce 7900GS.
Desktop "3D" is fine also screensavers ect.
Games are slow like 0.1 FPS.....

Also another thing, the nvidia-settings program warns about not being the nvidia-driver.

I have tried everything suggested.

It is something to do with the driver.. is there any new beta drivers available?

jay 73 - I looked for error messages but saw nothing that I could easily decipher.

I have given up for the moment to be honest as I mostly use my laptop anyway. It really is poor though - tabs on Firefox disappear, buttons and graphics fuzz out etc. Not the card as it boots in XP lovely.

I have a Geforce 6800 and have absolutely NO trouble with 3D performance.. I'm looking forward to upgrading the motherboard so I can buy one of the newer PCI Express nVidia cards.

There has to be a configuration issue somewhere if my older card can handle playing 3D games (Quake Series, UT Series, Doom 3, bzflag, Savage, and the list goes on and on.. ) actually for the performance I am currently getting I can't justify the upgrade at this time. :(

have you used the available tools to look at your Graphics settings ? the mesa-utils package has a tool called glxinfo that will pull up info about your 3D.. ( run as non-root user on the PC in question, in a shell while X is running )

glxinfo | grep rendering

Direct Rendering should be YES

LQ Troubleshooting 3D rendering

Gento also has a nice page on troubleshooting 3D and making sure Direct rendering is enabled. ... http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/dri-howto.xml

Xorg.conf problem?
 

Make sure your Xorg.conf (or x11.conf) file has the following line under Devices:

Option "AddARGBGLXVisuals" "True"
EndSection

This fixed similar problems I had with my nvidia card.

I did this.... but no change. Basically my PC is almost unusable with this graphics card.
I'm either going to change distro... or change my graphics card. Seems a shame.

It is yes.

I wonder if it has to do with the drier from the Suse site...

Have you tried installing the driver from nvidias website ?

I know when I experimented with Suse that YAST wanted to tke control of all my settings, and trying to do things manaully the way i wanted them done was a battle for me. One of the reasons I left Suse for Debian. That was a while back. so I don't know what sort of challenges Suse will pose if you try to install the driver manually.

If you DO decide to try the manual install approach, make sure you uninstall the driver that Suse installed before installing the driver from nVidia. Failing to remove the driver from teh Debian repository before installing the driver from teh nvidia website caused me problems on Debian in the past..

Wish I had more to offer, but what you are describing is similar to issues I get when using the nv drier on my laptop as opposed to the nvidia driver on the same hardware. I don't know why you would be experiencing the types of problems you are having.