I have a Sony PCG-F580K with a PIII 700, 384MB RAM, and Neomagic NM2380 (MagicMedia 256XL+) video in a dual boot with Ubuntu 9.10 and Windows 2000. I originally posted my issues to the Ubuntu forums here http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1445432 . Now I'm thinking that maybe it's not just an Ubuntu issue so I wanted to continue it here.

The biggest symptom is higher CPU usage than Win2K when playing DVD or other video. VLC seems to have about the same CPU usage in Win2K and Ubuntu but Ubuntu shows X using an additional 20-30%. Is this normal? I even had to change my MTRR settings to get that.

The other issue is that Win2K can play an h.264 video in full screen with a few tweaks but Ubuntu has to display it in a smaller window or the video is corrupt. The video in question is 960 x 540. I will be glad to post any output or files one might need to help me.

Thanks,
Chris

It's likelly your videocard. You got a pretty crappy onboard card what's worst in performance and linux compatibility than even the S3 unichrome.

I agree that it's a poor video card but the point is I don't believe it's living up to its full potential in Linux. I took the opportunity today to try OpenSuse and Fedora and the results are the same. The newer Kernel doesn't even give any 2D acceleration because it fails to set the MTRR's at all. I gathered some data from Windows and Ubuntu and here's what I have.

From Windows 2000:
0xA0000-0xBFFFF Intel 82443BX Pentium(r) II Processor to AGP Controller OK
0xA0000-0xBFFFF NeoMagic MagicMedia256XL+ OK
0xFE800000-0xFECFFFFF Intel 82443BX Pentium(r) II Processor to AGP Controller OK
0xFE800000-0xFECFFFFF NeoMagic MagicMedia256XL+ OK
0xFC000000-0xFDFFFFFF Intel 82443BX Pentium(r) II Processor to AGP Controller OK
0xFC000000-0xFDFFFFFF NeoMagic MagicMedia256XL+ OK
0x40000000-0x40FFFFFF Intel 82443BX Pentium(r) II Processor to AGP Controller OK
0xFEC00000-0xFECFFFFF NeoMagic MagicMedia256XL+ OK


Notice that there are 3 locations shared between the CPU and Video.

From Xorg.log
(--) NEOMAGIC(0): FB base address is set at 0xFC000000.
(--) NEOMAGIC(0): MMIO base address is set at 0xFE800000.
(--) NEOMAGIC(0): MMIO base address2 is set at 0xFEC00000.
(II) NEOMAGIC(0): Using linear framebuffer at: 0xFC000000
(--) NEOMAGIC(0): 4718592 bytes off-screen memory available
(II) NEOMAGIC(0): Overlay at 0x480000

From lspci
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: Neomagic Corporation NM2380 [MagicMedia 256XL+] (rev 10)
Subsystem: Sony Corporation Device 8088
Flags: bus master, fast Back2Back, medium devsel, latency 128, IRQ 9
Memory at fc000000 (32-bit, prefetchable) [size=32M]
Memory at fe800000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=4M]
Memory at fec00000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=1M]
Capabilities: [d0] AGP version 1.0
Capabilities: [dc] Power Management version 1
Kernel modules: neofb

cat /proc/mtrr
reg00: base=0x000000000 ( 0MB), size= 256MB, count=1: write-back
reg01: base=0x010000000 ( 256MB), size= 128MB, count=1: write-back
reg02: base=0x0fc000000 ( 4032MB), size= 8MB, count=1: write-combining

So what isn't right with this picture?

I recently read something about DirectFB but I can't seem to find the answers I need. Is DirectFB the Linux equivalent of DirectX? Would it help in my situation? If so, how would I implement it?