No Direct rendering with Nvidia Geforce 2 (solved)
 

Problem: Frame rate of around 350 fps with glxgears. Nexuiz so slow it's unplayable.

System: Ubuntu 6.06, kernel 2.6.15-29, Video Card, Nvidia GeForce 2, Drivers from repo (not the nVidia ones)

Here is the output of glxinfo

Here is my xorg.conf:
Why isn't this working? I have tried several methods of turning on the direct rendering. No joy.

1. Try the "nv" drivers instead.
2. in xorg.conf add "Load "dri"" to the Module section
3. Update to a more current Xorg version

I thought the "nv" driver was 2d. I am trying to get the 3D rendering on and boost the frame rate. Also have been told all over the place that DRI needs to be turned off for 3D to work. On a side note what is DRI anyway? How do I update the Xorg? Do I download it off the web and compile it, or what?

Is your user a member of the video group? DRI=Direct Rendering Infrastructure, which is a fancy way of saying that the video hardware handles graphics processing.

FWIW, you do not need to load DRI when using the real 'nv' driver. The nVidia driver implements DRI on its own, and will work by itself..

I'm not up on the ins and outs of installing the 'nv' driver into Ubuntu, but you can get the installer binary from http://www.nvidia.com/Download/index.aspx?lang=en-us and I suspect that for your card, it will *probably* be the ...9631... version. *Maybe the newest one will work, but I'm not sure. the new one is something like version 100.14 or something.

I thought the Ubuntu updater (Apt-whatever) offered the nv driver? Oh well..

Do: "grep WW /var/log/Xorg.0.log" and "grep EE /var/log/Xorg.0.log" - Check for any warning (WW) or error (EE) from the log. Maybe you can get some clue what had happened.

By the way, reading from NVIDIA, it seems you should download the 96.43.xx series driver.

The repos offer the nv driver but that is not what I want. I want direct rendering. for that I need the "nvidia" driver, which I have installed and is working. But direct rendering is turned off. I want it on. I am using the 3D driver from the repos. Should I use the ones from nvidia instead?

The var log you asked for are

My user is a member of the video group and has hardware acceleration privilages. I can play 3D games but the frame rate is slow (around 350 fps)

Yes, my apologies -- I had mixed the two drivers up momentarily. The real one is "nvidia", and the non-real one is 'nv' -- apologies again.

Everything else I said was correct, and yes, if you want DRI, you need the real "nvidia" driver, which DOES implement DRI all by itself. And that last part, which I mixed up also, was supposed to read "I thought the repos offered the real "nvidia" driver," but I am likely mistaken there, as you just stated that it offers the 'nv' driver instead.
:)

Should I use the drivers offered by the nvidia website instead?

If you want full 3D acceleration and maximum performance, then Yes.
However, that said, I personally am not aware of, nor knowledgeable about, any issues, IF there are any, with installing it in Ubuntu. It's generally a pretty simple process, I mean it literally takes me about 30 seconds to hop into init-3, killing X in the process, and execute the installer (pressing YES and OK a few times) and then jump to init-4 which restarts my X.

Ubuntu may not be so slick; Ubuntu uses Init-5, for one thing, and uses GDM rather than my KDM and KDE, which needs to be stopped using "killall gdm" in a root console (or with sudo.)

so you'll likely want to do something like:

sudo killall gdm
telinit 1 (or maybe 2 or 3, I'm not sure on 'buntu)
./<installer-package-name>
<follow-instructions>
<restart GDM>

and that should do it, in a perfect world :)

I should add too, another thing I know absolutely nothing about, is the "envy" installer. As I understand, it is another means of installing nVidia driver into Ubuntu, but you really would need to look into that if it comes to it; because I honestly know zilch about it. Back when I started into Linux (less than a year ago) I tried 'buntu for like a day or two, and then got rid of it and have been using Slackware ever since. Therefore, many of the intricacies of doing stuff as efficiently in Ubuntu as I can in Slack, are beyond me.

If I can help at all, don't hesitate to ask, and perhaps another person will add something or correct me, but meanwhile, you may as well download the driver.

I have downloaded the driver and will install in the morning. I am going to look into envy and see what's what with it. Ubuntu is getting to be more trouble than it's worth. I am thinking of going with Debian (I like the apt-get package manager).

Righto then, good luck on the Envy thing, AND with the install, if you proceed in the mroning :)

No point shifting to Debian from Ubuntu for apt-get, they both use it as standard.

I've used the Nvidia proprietary drivers in the past but kept on having issues with them. If it is the only way to get 3D working then good luck...

I have GeForce4 MX 4000 and GeForce 8500 GT, both work fantastically well. The driver installation is so easy I can get it working even with -rc kernels. Compare with another major graphic provider, *cough*ATI*cough*, where there is always a possibility for manual patching or hacking the installer when upgrading kernel, I will go with NVIDIA with every Linux system I built.