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If I don't run X, if I am simply using the console window at logon (before I "startx"), then when I type glxinfo, I get "Error: unable to open display (null)"
Then I "startx", go into xfce, and glxinfo gives me great info!
Perhaps you're not actually starting X when you run KDE. That could be an issue somewhere over in xinitrc...
The OpenGL renderer string just reflects the different video card models and can basically be ignored. However, it should be noted that you are using the 100.14.19 version of the driver whereas I am using the 100.14.11 version (apparently they updated the driver on September 18). I haven't tried this new driver, but I will try it probably tomorrow. You may want to try the older driver (which you can find in the nVidia archives) or just hold out until later.
It is interesting though that your glxinfo output from XFCE matches mine from KDE almost exactly, yet you can't get your card working with KDE. Strange. It's either a driver issue (ie the new one broke something) or KDE is not set up correctly. You may want to uninstall KDE-related packages and reinstall them from the CD in case something was corrupted/.../etc. It is also possible that your CD is corrupt (ie it did not burn properly) -- did you verify the md5sum of the CDs/DVD when you burned it? (or maybe you ordered it, in which case I would think it should be fine...?)
Note that my suggestions aren't really helping much -- I'm just throwing out as many suggestions as I can think of.
I don't know if I should be adding to this thread or not... but you all seem to know a lot about nvidia drivers so here goes.
I've just installed the nvidia drivers for the first time on Slackware 12. I have the PCI version of the Geforce 6200. I have dual head displays and everything works great, except dvd playback. It seems to jump a lot. Also, the refresh rate is about 60Hz. I used to get 75Hz with my ATI dual head configuration at 24 bit colors.
Does anyone have any ideas or suggestions? I'm almost thinking about tweaking the refresh rates in my xorg.conf file: They are currently:
HorizSync 30.0 - 82.0
VertRefresh 56.0 - 76.0
But I don't think this is the issue because the CPU is getting hammered by the X server. This not typical with DMA enabled DVD playback. It almost seems like the GPU is not taking the workload off the CPU like it's supposed to. And please, no one need ask what my driver designation is. It's not vesa or anything, it's nvidia.
Any ideas on the poor performance and high CPU usage?
Last edited by meetscott; 10-01-2007 at 12:01 AM.
Reason: spelling
You should probably start a new thread, but here goes. I'm not very knowledgeable in this field, but do you have direct rendering enabled (ie what is the ouput of "glxinfo | grep direct")? I'm not even sure if this impacts video playing, but I figure it's worth a shot.
As for the refresh rates, those really depend on your monitor, not your video card (well, I guess your video card must support these refresh rates, but it's the monitor that must be able to handle it). You should look up the refresh rates (Horizontal Sync and Vetical Refresh) for your monitor and set them accordingly. That will give you the optimal refresh rate (I think).
I understand what your are saying about the refresh rates. The monitors can handle 75Hz. However I don't think the refresh rates have anything to do with the skipping video or the high CPU usage from X. I cranked up the settings but could not get that to change anything. DRI is enabled.
I'm inclined to think there is something wrong with the driver or my settings. I believe the graphics card is capable but is simply not doing its job like it's supposed to.
I will look through the Nvidia documentation again on manually configuring X. Maybe there's some setting I'm missing. I already did the automated way. It seems like they aren't using some of the settings from xorg.conf with the Nvidia driver.
I've always written my xorg files by hand but this Nvidia thing is new to me. I'm almost thinking about trying to revert back to the open source nv driver. In fact, I might try that tonight.
I haven't loaded up a new rev of the nvidia kernel module in a year, but it always used to say that you didn't want to have DRI loaded, as it conflicts with the nvidia module.
I read the same thing in the documentation from nvidia on writing xorg.conf manually. I'm still frustrated with the performance of the card. I've been searching for some insight somewhere for a solution. It seems to me the playing of a video has actually taken a step back as time goes on. There's no reason for X to hit the CPU like that. The reason you use a graphics card is to off load display rendering from the CPU to the GPU. I might as well be using the vesa driver for my graphics rendering.
I'm open to any ideas that anyone has on why this would be the case. Thanks for the response.
I was just getting ready to write that you should check the NVIDIA forums for more expert advice. Then I thought, hey why don't I check my laptop (which I upgraded to Slack 12) to see what it shows. I'll be darned if I'm not having exactly the same problem. I'm getting 1,700 fps @ 100% CPU power. My little GeForce Go 6100 dropped 90% of its performance. (I do most of my work on my desktop, which still runs Slack 11. glxinfo tells me I get 21,000 fps on the GeForce 7900.)
NB: I have done NO optimizing whatsoever. I simply performed the "upgrade" version of Slack 12 on my laptop, recompiled the nvidia driver, ran xorgconfig, compiled the nvidia driver again, and let nvidia mod the xorg.conf.
I went ahead and tried the vesa driver just to see if the GPU was doing ANYTHING. The comparison showed it was doing some work. But like you said, it wasn't very much.
It seems like I've been running into a lot of things with Slackware 12. I'm not going to go as far as to say it was a bad upgrade, but it hasn't been smooth the way most Slackware upgrades have been in the past. Also, the ATI Radeon 7000 card I was running before was much better under earlier versions of Slackware. I ran into stability issues with my system which are now fixed as a result of installing this Nvidia card. But I'm still troubled by some of these issues as well as the ATI issue. I know that most of this is due the the X Server maintainers and not Slackware, but usually Slackware has done a good job of avoiding this kind of thing in the past.
One of the other things I ran into, was that one of my DVD drives causes the system to crash when I try to use it. I just use the other drive, but it's still annoying.
I'd just like to offer a couple words to close this plot line.
1. I think your DVD player is trying to use significant CPU time that is already going to the nvidia driver that is trying to ply the DVD media. If we got the GPU to take the brunt of the load, it ought to make the DVD player run more smoothly.
2. Slack 12 is not normal Slackware. Slack 10 and 11 were based on the 2.4 kernel. Pat wrote plenty of times in the -current Changelogs that switching over to the 2.6 kernel was causing issues that they'd been spending plenty of time trying to hammer out. And that didn't even get into the new X. Some of the libraries that otherwise worked on Mandriva or RedHat or other distros wouldn't work right on the architecture of Slackware. I think that Slack 12 is more like a pioneering 1st generation and that it'll take until Slack 13 for more stability, because the ([leftover] fundamental) bugs will be ID'd and handled by then.
I'm pretty happy with the way Slack 12 works on my laptop, tho there are some fundamental issues with Xfce, X, and acrobat. I'll be researching how to fix those before I push Slack 12 onto my Slack 11 desktop.
Not the case with me on the DVD. I'm getting high CPU usage no matter where the media is coming from, be it the hard disk or the DVD drive. This is the case with any type of media file. It's an X rendering issue for me.
Also, I'm not buying the kernel idea because I've been running the 2.6 kernel series since Slackware 10.2. I was compiling my own before Slackware officially went over to 2.6.
I'm sure you're right about some of the X issues though. X has been upgraded and I think the shared libraries were also upgraded on the rest of the system.
I'm optimistic that you're right about the beta nature of Slackware in this release. I've never had this much trouble with it. Well that's not entirely true.... In the mid nineties I had issues I couldn't ever get past ;-) But lately, that last few years, it's been really good.
I'll keep searching as well. Thanks for the input.
I've tested some other media files and what I said still stands but now I have more to add.
I'm getting the high CPU usage due to X windows when I play certain types of media files, certain AVI files but not all AVI files. I'm also getting the high X usage from DVDs. So I'm starting to think this is some kind of codec issue. Perhaps there is something with the new shared libraries that's making the codecs inefficient.
So my next course of action is to find updates to some codecs and see if there's something going on with those. If I find out why my DVDs and those certain files are having trouble, I'll post back what I did.
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