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Old 06-16-2004, 08:42 PM   #1
187807
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Location: North Carolina, USA
Distribution: Slackware 11
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Don't shoot me please! Another glxgears/nvidia thread...


I've seen many threads about nvidia and "low" glxgears performance. Yes, I know glxgears isn't really that reliable an indicator of performance, but...

I ran my Athlon 850 (Gigabyte m/b), 256MB ram with a Diamond Monster Fusion 16MB (voodoo banshee) for some time. After I installed the appropriate 3dfx dri packages from the second Slackware cd my glxgears performance jumped from 200 or so fps to about 1200 fps. Great...that was cool.

I replaced my banshee with a M64/VANTATV board...from what I gather it's a TNT2 board (32MB memory).

I downloaded and installed the nvidia drivers (NVIDIA-Linux-x86-1.0-5336-pkg1.run). I'm running a custom compiled 2.6.6 kernel. The nvidia installer said it couldn't find precompiled modules for me so it compiled them by itself. I don't recall getting any error messages.

I changed my XF86Config (as will be shown below). I get the nvidia splash screen when X starts. I made the nvidia-specified modifications to XF86Config.

glxgears now returns a whopping 85 fps. WOW...that's FAST! NOT!

One note....I remember *trying* to run Enemy Territory before (with my Banshee) and it ran pretty slowly (okay, it ran so slowly that it was pretty much useless).

Just for shits and giggles I tried ET again with my nvidia card installed. Whoa! The intro movie looks REALLY good...very nice...I was pleased that I thought that this was much better than before.

Since I've never played ET online (or at all) I joined a game to see how well it played. I had 800x600 (the "FAST" setting in video config) set and joined a couple of games. After being warned about shooting my own people (I couldn't tell who was who) I noticed that the frame rate in the game was pretty good. It was totally playable. Felt kind of like what Quake 1.09 might look/feel like at the same resolution in DOS.

Sooooo.....glxgears is lying? What the hell? All the threads I've seen about Nvidia and glxgears fps I see no resolution to the issue. The original posters seem to either give up or live with it.

Oh...and I d/l'ed and compiled SPECviewperf (7.1.1 I think it was). It ran so slow that I had to kill the process. The result files showed I was garnering about 0.5-0.8 fps mean in 3dsmax. I looked up the results database at www.spec.org and the systems shown (which blow my machine out of the water as far as vid card and processors) were kicking about 10-30 fps in the same 3dsmax run. Given that the machines in that database ran processors on the order of about 3-4 times faster than my Athlon, and considering the chipset optimisations, FSB speed, mem speed, not to mention the fact that they were running fairly high-horsepower late-release vid cards I guess 0.5-0.8 is not too bad in my results.

Damn...I did it again...made this post so long and convoluted that I won't get any responses. I am "the thread killer."

Oh...thanks for any responses.

###############
Following is:
XF86Config (snipped)
glxinfo output
lspci output
output of "lsmod | grep vid"
###############

---XF86Config--- (snipped)
# **********************************************************************
# Module section -- this section is used to specify
# which dynamically loadable modules to load.
# **********************************************************************
#
Section "Module"

# This loads the DBE extension module.

Load "dbe" # Double buffer extension

# This loads the miscellaneous extensions module, and disables
# initialisation of the XFree86-DGA extension within that module.
# SubSection "extmod"
# Option "omit xfree86-dga" # don't initialise the DGA extension
# EndSubSection

Load "extmod"


# This loads the Type1 and FreeType font modules
Load "type1"
Load "speedo"
Load "freetype"
# Load "xtt"

# This loads the GLX module
Load "glx"
# This loads the DRI module
# Load "dri"

EndSection

(snip)

# **********************************************************************
# Graphics device section
# **********************************************************************

# Any number of graphics device sections may be present

# Standard VGA Device:

Section "Device"
Identifier "Standard VGA"
VendorName "Unknown"
BoardName "Unknown"

# The chipset line is optional in most cases. It can be used to override
# the driver's chipset detection, and should not normally be specified.

# Chipset "generic"

# The Driver line must be present. When using run-time loadable driver
# modules, this line instructs the server to load the specified driver
# module. Even when not using loadable driver modules, this line
# indicates which driver should interpret the information in this section.

Driver "vga"
# The BusID line is used to specify which of possibly multiple devices
# this section is intended for. When this line isn't present, a device
# section can only match up with the primary video device. For PCI
# devices a line like the following could be used. This line should not
# normally be included unless there is more than one video device
# intalled.

# BusID "PCI:0:10:0"

# VideoRam 256

# Clocks 25.2 28.3

EndSection

# Device configured by xf86config:

Section "Device"
Identifier "Diamond Monster Fusion"
Driver "tdfx"
#VideoRam 16384
# Insert Clocks lines here if appropriate
Option "backingstore"
EndSection

Section "Device"
Identifier "NV AGP"
VendorName "nvidia"
Driver "nvidia"
VideoRam 32768
EndSection

# **********************************************************************
# Screen sections
# **********************************************************************

# Any number of screen sections may be present. Each describes
# the configuration of a single screen. A single specific screen section
# may be specified from the X server command line with the "-screen"
# option.
Section "Screen"
Identifier "Screen 1"
Device "NV AGP"
Monitor "Systemax19"
DefaultDepth 16

Subsection "Display"
Depth 8
Modes "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
ViewPort 0 0
EndSubsection
Subsection "Display"
Depth 16
Modes "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
ViewPort 0 0
EndSubsection
Subsection "Display"
Depth 24
Modes "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
ViewPort 0 0
EndSubsection
EndSection

# **********************************************************************
# ServerLayout sections.
# **********************************************************************

# Any number of ServerLayout sections may be present. Each describes
# the way multiple screens are organised. A specific ServerLayout
# section may be specified from the X server command line with the
# "-layout" option. In the absence of this, the first section is used.
# When now ServerLayout section is present, the first Screen section
# is used alone.

Section "ServerLayout"

# The Identifier line must be present
Identifier "Simple Layout"

# Each Screen line specifies a Screen section name, and optionally
# the relative position of other screens. The four names after
# primary screen name are the screens to the top, bottom, left and right
# of the primary screen. In this example, screen 2 is located to the
# right of screen 1.

Screen "Screen 1"

# Each InputDevice line specifies an InputDevice section name and
# optionally some options to specify the way the device is to be
# used. Those options include "CorePointer", "CoreKeyboard" and
# "SendCoreEvents".

InputDevice "Mouse1" "CorePointer"
InputDevice "Keyboard1" "CoreKeyboard"

EndSection

# Section "DRI"
# Mode 0666
# EndSection

--------------end XF86Config


---------------begin glxinfo output
name of display: :0.0
display: :0 screen: 0
direct rendering: Yes
server glx vendor string: NVIDIA Corporation
server glx version string: 1.3
server glx extensions:
GLX_EXT_visual_info, GLX_EXT_visual_rating, GLX_SGIX_fbconfig,
GLX_SGIX_pbuffer, GLX_SGI_video_sync, GLX_SGI_swap_control
client glx vendor string: NVIDIA Corporation
client glx version string: 1.3
client glx extensions:
GLX_ARB_get_proc_address, GLX_ARB_multisample, GLX_EXT_visual_info,
GLX_EXT_visual_rating, GLX_EXT_import_context, GLX_SGI_video_sync,
GLX_NV_swap_group, GLX_SGIX_fbconfig, GLX_SGIX_pbuffer,
GLX_SGI_swap_control, GLX_NV_float_buffer
GLX extensions:
GLX_EXT_visual_info, GLX_EXT_visual_rating, GLX_SGIX_fbconfig,
GLX_SGIX_pbuffer, GLX_SGI_video_sync, GLX_SGI_swap_control,
GLX_ARB_get_proc_address
OpenGL vendor string: NVIDIA Corporation
OpenGL renderer string: RIVA TNT2/AGP/3DNOW!
OpenGL version string: 1.4.1 NVIDIA 53.36
OpenGL extensions:
GL_ARB_imaging, GL_ARB_multitexture, GL_ARB_point_parameters,
GL_ARB_texture_env_add, GL_ARB_texture_mirrored_repeat,
GL_ARB_transpose_matrix, GL_ARB_vertex_buffer_object, GL_ARB_window_pos,
GL_EXT_texture_env_add, GL_EXT_abgr, GL_EXT_bgra,
GL_EXT_compiled_vertex_array, GL_EXT_draw_range_elements,
GL_EXT_fog_coord, GL_EXT_multi_draw_arrays, GL_EXT_packed_pixels,
GL_EXT_point_parameters, GL_EXT_rescale_normal, GL_EXT_secondary_color,
GL_EXT_separate_specular_color, GL_EXT_stencil_wrap,
GL_EXT_texture_edge_clamp, GL_EXT_texture_env_combine,
GL_EXT_texture_lod_bias, GL_EXT_texture_object, GL_EXT_vertex_array,
GL_IBM_rasterpos_clip, GL_IBM_texture_mirrored_repeat,
GL_KTX_buffer_region, GL_NV_blend_square, GL_NV_fog_distance,
GL_NV_packed_depth_stencil, GL_NV_texgen_reflection,
GL_NV_texture_env_combine4, GL_SGIS_multitexture, GL_SUN_slice_accum
glu version: 1.3
glu extensions:
GLU_EXT_nurbs_tessellator, GLU_EXT_object_space_tess

visual x bf lv rg d st colorbuffer ax dp st accumbuffer ms cav
id dep cl sp sz l ci b ro r g b a bf th cl r g b a ns b eat
----------------------------------------------------------------------
0x21 16 tc 0 16 0 r y . 5 6 5 0 0 16 0 16 16 16 16 0 0 None
0x22 16 dc 0 16 0 r y . 5 6 5 0 0 16 0 16 16 16 16 0 0 None
0x23 16 tc 0 16 0 r . . 5 6 5 0 0 16 0 16 16 16 16 0 0 None
0x24 16 tc 0 16 0 r y . 5 6 5 0 0 0 0 16 16 16 16 0 0 None
0x25 16 tc 0 16 0 r . . 5 6 5 0 0 0 0 16 16 16 16 0 0 None
0x26 16 dc 0 16 0 r . . 5 6 5 0 0 16 0 16 16 16 16 0 0 None
0x27 16 dc 0 16 0 r y . 5 6 5 0 0 0 0 16 16 16 16 0 0 None
0x28 16 dc 0 16 0 r . . 5 6 5 0 0 0 0 16 16 16 16 0 0 None

-----------end glxinfo output

-----------begin lspci output
00:00.0 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8363/8365 [KT133/KM133] (rev 03)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8363/8365 [KT133/KM133 AGP]
00:07.0 ISA bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82C686 [Apollo Super South] (rev 40)
00:07.1 IDE interface: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82C586A/B/VT82C686/A/B/VT823x/A/C/VT8235 PIPC Bus Master IDE (rev 06)
00:07.2 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT6202 [USB 2.0 controller] (rev 16)
00:07.3 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT6202 [USB 2.0 controller] (rev 16)
00:07.4 SMBus: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82C686 [Apollo Super ACPI] (rev 40)
00:09.0 Communication controller: ESS Technology ES2838/2839 SuperLink Modem (rev 01)
00:0c.0 Ethernet controller: National Semiconductor Corporation DP83815 (MacPhyter) Ethernet Controller
00:0f.0 Multimedia audio controller: Creative Labs SB Live! EMU10k1 (rev 07)
00:0f.1 Input device controller: Creative Labs SB Live! MIDI/Game Port (rev 07)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation NV5M64 [RIVA TNT2 Model 64/Model 64 Pro] (rev 15)

------------end lspci output


--------------begin output of "lsmod | grep vid"
bash-2.05b$ lsmod | grep vid
nvidia 2074696 12
bash-2.05b$
---------------------------end output of "lsmod | grep vid"
 
Old 06-17-2004, 11:43 AM   #2
Nis
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Location: Virginia
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id games usually have great FPS for some reason. UT2003 is almost unplayable on my mahcine, but ET cranked way up works great. Has to do with OpenGL rendering and how much CPU that takes. But anyway. Try adding this to your XF86Config under 'Driuver "nvidia"':
Code:
Option "RenderAccel" "True"
Now this is experimental and might now work at all. It helps me though.
If you don't want that Nvidia logo popping up add this in the same place
Code:
Option "NoLogo" "True"
Another good thing to do is add an option to use AGPgart if possible (works better than Nvidia's).
Code:
Option "NvAGP" "3"
 
Old 06-17-2004, 05:20 PM   #3
187807
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Registered: Oct 2003
Location: North Carolina, USA
Distribution: Slackware 11
Posts: 174

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Thanks for the reply and suggestions.

I inserted the lines you mentioned into XF86Config.

glxgears still reports same fps but I'm beginning not to care about it as much. The bootup logo is gone...I like that.

Next time I play ET I'll have to see if those mods improve my framerate.
 
Old 06-17-2004, 06:03 PM   #4
320mb
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turning on the DMA will also help system wide performance........

Code:
man hdparm
 
Old 06-17-2004, 06:52 PM   #5
187807
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Quote:
Originally posted by 320mb
turning on the DMA will also help system wide performance........

Code:
man hdparm
Thanks for the suggestions. Looks like my DMA is already enabled. -i shows my drive set by default in mode UDMA5. From the transfer rates (and my oldish machine: Athlon 850, Gigabyte m/b, 256MB SDRAM) I'm thinking these numbers are not bad.

Following are my observations (these are on boot-up, I did not change any settings):

-----------------------------------------------------------------
bash-2.05b# hdparm -Tt /dev/hda

/dev/hda:
Timing buffer-cache reads: 520 MB in 2.01 seconds = 258.87 MB/sec
Timing buffered disk reads: 68 MB in 3.03 seconds = 22.43 MB/sec
-----------------------------------------------------------------



-----------------------------------------------------------------
bash-2.05b# hdparm /dev/hda

/dev/hda:
multcount = 16 (on)
IO_support = 1 (32-bit)
unmaskirq = 1 (on)
using_dma = 1 (on)
keepsettings = 0 (off)
readonly = 0 (off)
readahead = 256 (on)
geometry = 65535/16/63, sectors = 78165360, start = 0
-----------------------------------------------------------------



-----------------------------------------------------------------
bash-2.05b# hdparm -i /dev/hda

/dev/hda:

Model=ST340810A, FwRev=3.39, SerialNo=3FB1VLR6
Config={ HardSect NotMFM HdSw>15uSec Fixed DTR>10Mbs RotSpdTol>.5% }
RawCHS=16383/16/63, TrkSize=0, SectSize=0, ECCbytes=4
BuffType=unknown, BuffSize=2048kB, MaxMultSect=16, MultSect=16
CurCHS=4047/16/255, CurSects=16511760, LBA=yes, LBAsects=78165360
IORDY=on/off, tPIO={min:240,w/IORDY:120}, tDMA={min:120,rec:120}
PIO modes: pio0 pio1 pio2 pio3 pio4
DMA modes: mdma0 mdma1 mdma2
UDMA modes: udma0 udma1 udma2 udma3 udma4 *udma5
AdvancedPM=yes: unknown setting WriteCache=enabled
Drive conforms to: device does not report version:

* signifies the current active mode
-----------------------------------------------------------------
 
Old 06-28-2004, 09:06 PM   #6
XPediTioN
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if you are using nvidia, why do you have DRI enabled? What is the normal FPS rate for a Riva TNT2 Model 64 Pro? I get 287.400 as my best. Is this bad?
 
Old 06-29-2004, 10:14 AM   #7
a3Rogue
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@187807: Hey, ive got a brilliant tweak for glxgears....If you put it behind another window, your FPS shoots right up!!!

hehe, on a side note, I get around 3368.200 FPS (on a Ti4200)
 
Old 06-30-2004, 07:19 PM   #8
187807
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New nVIDIA drivers.....better results....

Well...I saw on NVIDIA site that they have new drivers as of today (they are 6106 drivers).

I installed them and tried glxgears again. With the previous drivers (5xxx something) I was getting 85fps.

So immediately after installing the 6106 drivers I'm getting 171fps. Almost double!

Then I turned off Folding at Home that I have running on a different terminal in the background. I didn't think it would matter but when I turned of FAH my glxgears went up to 512fps.

Then I covered the glxgears output window with my xterm window while it was running and my rate jumped to 1454fps.

Finally, I maximized the glxgears window and get 69fps.

Maybe you guys try the new drivers. Seems like they made some improvements in the speed (in glxgears at least).

I'm eager to try Enemy Territory and see if it runs faster.
 
  


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