ASUS A7N8X Deluxe rev. 2.0 runs Slack 12.1 like an old woman..
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It renders 3D "nicely", but can't seem to keep up when the drives start to work on something. The glxgears freezes for 2-3 seconds then start rotating smoothly again. Windows in general redraw themselves as if it was 1992 even under the slightest CPU load and general load times for applications seem to suck in general.
After some googling I have managed to find a bunch of threads regarding poor performance on the A7N8X board. They talk of adding the amd74xx module to the kernel and all will be glorious.
Is there any truth to this? If so, where do I start?
So far my Slackware experience has been gained on old boxes which ran nicely with no other "must fix" items than adding stuff to the .conf files in /etc and making stuff executable in /etc/rc.d.
Any help on resolving this would be groovy.
Note: I'll donate a cheezburger to the person(s) that helps me figure this out.
amd74xx is an IDE chipset driver. To insert it into the kernel you would normally use the modprobe command like this:
Code:
modprobe amd74xx
This fails for me because the module can't be found. Since it is a chipset driver I assume it was compiled into the kernel, so you don't need to load it manually. This would make sense because without it you wouldn't be able to boot as you couldn't access the hard drive.
Maybe you should take a look at the hdparm utility which lets you fine tune your hard disk settings.
Yes, I believe it is supposed to be compiled into the kernel as of 2.6.x. However, a thread which I thought I had bookmarked spoke of disabling generic IDE support in the kernel and then enable the amd74xx thingy which was hidden under ATI somewhere in menuconfig. I can't seem to find the option regarding amd74xx (I've read pretty much every help screen there is) and "something hidden under ATI" seems to be hidden too well for me atleast.
This might sound like complete gibberish and that is because it mostly is. I vaguely remember what the thread said, but the description of the problem was spot on in regards to the issue I'm having.
Please don't shoot me for saying this. But when I was running XP on this box, the problem I have now was pretty much identical only to a lesser degree. It was however solvable by installing the NForce driver package.
I've already looked into hdparm and jacked up my drives to the best of my ability. I posted the hdparm output along with read-write speeds in the code box in the first post. This had no effect on removing the "stop and go" thing my machine seem to be doing when starting up simple apps like mousepad.
It seems to be a DMA issue, however; I still lack a suspect.
PS: I'm drop dead serious about them cheezburgers. I need this box at somewhere close to peak performance before my brain implodes.
I have A7N8X Deluxe motherboard as well, same lspci output exept network card
(mine has Marvell instead of 3Com)
I use custom kernel, for IDE, I have enabled these features
in Devices Drivers > ATA/ATAPI/MFM/RLL support:
Enhanced IDE/MFM/RLL disk/cdrom/tape/floppy support (BLK_DEV_IDE) [built-in]
Include IDE/ATA-2 DISK support (BLK_DEV_IDEDISK) [built-in]
Include IDE/ATAPI CDROM support (BLK_DEV_IDECD) [module]
IDE ACPI support (BLK_DEV_IDEACPI) [built-in]
legacy /proc/ide/ support (IDE_PROC_FS) [built-in]
AMD and nVidia IDE support (BLK_DEV_AMD74XX) [built-in]
Ha! Ofcourse.... The AMD and nVidia IDE support option. How did I miss it...
As it was already built in to the kernel, I disabled generic IDE support, changed processor type from Intel Pentium Pro (-.-) to AMD Athlon and then recompiled. Problem solved.
Thanks a bunch, man!
I'll be sending you a pm about that cheezburger, keefaz.
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