LinuxQuestions.org - tweaking xorg and ATI

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- - tweaking xorg and ATI (https://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/slackware-14/tweaking-xorg-and-ati-520371/)

tweaking xorg and ATI

Now first off, I am not asking specifics on how to do this as I see all the stickies and what not. I just mainly want to know success stories and little tidbits that may come in handy...and of course if I will benefit from this. This the current specs of my system:

ECS NForce4-754 mobo
1.8GHz AMD Sempron, OCed to 2Ghz
1GB RAM
Asus Radeon X300SE video card w/ 128MB RAM
M-Audio Audiophile 2496 soundcard
Samsung 250GB HD
Seagate 40GB HD
Plextor DVD Burner
Lite On DVDROM
6 in 1 card reader + floppy drive
Samsung 930B LCD monitor

I don't play any games on my system....mainly browse the net, check email, listen to music, watch videos/DVDs, and the like. One thing I have noticed is if I go to a myspace page that's just packed full of videos and other special crap, my browser is incredibly slow. I am mainly wondering if tweaking my xorg and loading the right ATI drivers will help me with that. Aside from that, I haven't noticed any other major slowdowns with my system.

Currently, I just loaded a basic setup on xorg where I use the default ATI driver. So will I notice a major performance factor with the updated driver? And it is my understanding that this is basically the process in a nutshell...

-download a 2.6 kernel (I am currently with the Slackware 11 default kernel of 2.4.33.3), compile it , and run it
-download the ATI driver from their site....then of course make the necessary changes and such to xorg.

Anything else I need to know? Any assistance would be appreciated. And as I said, I don't want a step by step process...but just general things. ;)

Only a suggestions:

You can as well use kernel-generic 2.6.17 from CD or 2.6.18 in testing, since you don't need to compile kernel then.
Then download ATI driver, install it and make changes to xorg :D

Quote:

if I go to a myspace page that's just packed full of videos and other special crap, my browser is incredibly slow. I am mainly wondering if tweaking my xorg and loading the right ATI drivers will help me with that.

I doubt it. Since you can watch DVDs on your system, your graphics configuration is good enough to cope with anything that would fit through the www-bottleneck.

i have a similar problem with my Ati radeon 9250 128MB.I have kernel 2.6.17.13,a pentium 2,93Ghz,1GB RAM.I had about 100 fps in glxgears,but after installing the ati drivers,mounting the tmpfs in /dev/shm,i got +/- 1400 fps in the small glxgears window,but when i run it in fullscreen i only get 87 fps ....what could be wrong??i have Direct rendering on.
Also with xvidcap,i cannot record windows larger than a simple console window or it records only 3/4 frames per second..here is my glxinfo output:

Quote:

name of display: :0.0
display: :0 screen: 0
direct rendering: Yes
server glx vendor string: SGI
server glx version string: 1.2
server glx extensions:
GLX_ARB_multisample, GLX_EXT_visual_info, GLX_EXT_visual_rating,
GLX_EXT_import_context, GLX_OML_swap_method, GLX_SGI_make_current_read,
GLX_SGIS_multisample, GLX_SGIX_hyperpipe, GLX_SGIX_swap_barrier,
GLX_SGIX_fbconfig
client glx vendor string: ATI
client glx version string: 1.3
client glx extensions:
GLX_EXT_visual_info, GLX_EXT_visual_rating, GLX_EXT_import_context,
GLX_ARB_get_proc_address, GLX_SGI_video_sync, GLX_ARB_multisample,
GLX_ATI_pixel_format_float, GLX_ATI_render_texture
GLX extensions:
GLX_EXT_visual_info, GLX_EXT_visual_rating, GLX_EXT_import_context,
GLX_ARB_multisample
OpenGL vendor string: ATI Technologies Inc.
OpenGL renderer string: RADEON 9200 Series DDR Generic
OpenGL version string: 1.3.1091 (X4.3.0-8.28.8)
OpenGL extensions:
GL_ARB_multitexture, GL_EXT_texture_env_add, GL_EXT_compiled_vertex_array,
GL_S3_s3tc, GL_ARB_occlusion_query, GL_ARB_point_parameters,
GL_ARB_texture_border_clamp, GL_ARB_texture_compression,
GL_ARB_texture_cube_map, GL_ARB_texture_env_add,
GL_ARB_texture_env_combine, GL_ARB_texture_env_crossbar,
GL_ARB_texture_env_dot3, GL_ARB_texture_mirrored_repeat,
GL_ARB_transpose_matrix, GL_ARB_vertex_blend, GL_ARB_vertex_buffer_object,
GL_ARB_vertex_program, GL_ARB_window_pos, GL_ATI_element_array,
GL_ATI_envmap_bumpmap, GL_ATI_fragment_shader, GL_ATI_map_object_buffer,
GL_ATI_texture_env_combine3, GL_ATI_texture_mirror_once,
GL_ATI_vertex_array_object, GL_ATI_vertex_attrib_array_object,
GL_ATI_vertex_streams, GL_ATIX_texture_env_combine3,
GL_ATIX_texture_env_route, GL_ATIX_vertex_shader_output_point_size,
GL_EXT_abgr, GL_EXT_bgra, GL_EXT_blend_color, GL_EXT_blend_func_separate,
GL_EXT_blend_minmax, GL_EXT_blend_subtract, GL_EXT_clip_volume_hint,
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_texgen_reflection, GL_EXT_texture3D,
GL_EXT_texture_compression_s3tc, GL_EXT_texture_cube_map,
GL_EXT_texture_edge_clamp, GL_EXT_texture_env_combine,
GL_EXT_texture_env_dot3, GL_EXT_texture_filter_anisotropic,
GL_EXT_texture_lod_bias, GL_EXT_texture_mirror_clamp,
GL_EXT_texture_object, GL_EXT_texture_rectangle, GL_EXT_vertex_array,
GL_EXT_vertex_shader, GL_HP_occlusion_test, GL_NV_blend_square,
GL_NV_occlusion_query, GL_NV_texgen_reflection, GL_SGI_color_matrix,
GL_SGIS_generate_mipmap, GL_SGIS_texture_border_clamp,
GL_SGIS_texture_edge_clamp, GL_SGIS_texture_lod, GL_SUN_multi_draw_arrays
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
----------------------------------------------------------------------
0x23 24 tc 0 32 0 r y . 8 8 8 8 0 24 8 16 16 16 16 1 0 Slow
0x24 24 tc 0 32 0 r . . 8 8 8 8 0 24 8 16 16 16 16 1 0 Slow
0x25 24 tc 0 32 0 r y . 8 8 8 8 0 24 0 16 16 16 16 1 0 Slow
0x26 24 tc 0 32 0 r . . 8 8 8 8 0 24 0 16 16 16 16 1 0 Slow
0x27 24 tc 0 32 0 r y . 8 8 8 8 0 24 8 0 0 0 0 1 0 None
0x28 24 tc 0 32 0 r . . 8 8 8 8 0 24 8 0 0 0 0 1 0 None
0x29 24 tc 0 32 0 r y . 8 8 8 8 0 24 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 None
0x2a 24 tc 0 32 0 r . . 8 8 8 8 0 24 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 None
0x2b 24 dc 0 32 0 r y . 8 8 8 8 0 24 8 16 16 16 16 1 0 Slow
0x2c 24 dc 0 32 0 r . . 8 8 8 8 0 24 8 16 16 16 16 1 0 Slow
0x2d 24 dc 0 32 0 r y . 8 8 8 8 0 24 0 16 16 16 16 1 0 Slow
0x2e 24 dc 0 32 0 r . . 8 8 8 8 0 24 0 16 16 16 16 1 0 Slow
0x2f 24 dc 0 32 0 r y . 8 8 8 8 0 24 8 0 0 0 0 1 0 None
0x30 24 dc 0 32 0 r . . 8 8 8 8 0 24 8 0 0 0 0 1 0 None
0x31 24 dc 0 32 0 r y . 8 8 8 8 0 24 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 None
0x32 24 dc 0 32 0 r . . 8 8 8 8 0 24 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 None

ps: im using slackware 11.0

Well that's correct, if you use full screen (probably 1024x768) your graphics adapter has to render quite a few pixels more than in windowed mode (don't know exactly about 480x 320 )

Quote:

Originally Posted by baikonur

I doubt it. Since you can watch DVDs on your system, your graphics configuration is good enough to cope with anything that would fit through the www-bottleneck.

Found out recently that I need to keep my overall processes down in order to watch DVDs flawlessly. Apparently I was running some SuperKaramba desktop themes that made my DVD playback skip some. I do think though I will jump into kernel compiling as it's something I have little experience with. Although I am gonna do some reading up on it first before I dive in.

Still not sure about the browser thing though. I know in the grand scheme of things it's just poorly coded and extremely bloated myspace pages...most pages are fine, but there are some that must be so decked out that they make Firefox go at a snails pace. I know sometimes in other systems those pages might be a little bit quicker than what I am experiencing.

just fyi, I'm running the 2.6.19.1 kernel and I have my x800gt setup properly with DRI and Opengl and whatnot. I get about 5000 fps in glxgears if that's any sort of a reference point. However alot of web pages that use flash run like crap for me too using the flash 9 beta, I'm not sure if this is adobes fault or ati's, both companies are pretty shitty for linux support so I'd just put fault on one or the other, your system is probably fine, but I would recommend using the fglrx drivers. If you need any help here's what I do and it works totally fine:

Just dl the automated installer, run it and install the drivers.
add the following line to your /etc/fstab:

Code:

tmpfs /dev/shm tmpfs defaults 0 0

then go to /lib/modules/fglrx/build_mod and run the make.sh, go up a dir (/lib/modules/fglrx) and run make_install.sh, and then restart the xserver and everything should be good. Check with fglrxinfo and it should say ur cardname and whatnot (right now it probably says Mesa w/e). Hope that helps.