I recently upgraded from 9.3 to 10.0, and overall I am very happy with 10.0. I have noticed though that the kernel is much slower than the one used in 9.3. The 2.6.11 seems to be much faster in just about everything, at least from my testing.

I have talked to many people, and it seems to be a problem with the 2.6.13-15 kernel and ATi powered video. I upgraded my ATi drivers to the newer versions, and it didn't improve much.

Does anyone know of a different kernel I can try, short of getting a vanilla kernel and pulling my hair out. Or does anyone have any clues on what the slowdown is if it isn't kernel related?

* I d/l'd a project kernel from SuSE ftp, and it made the system scream, but I can't find source for it...so installing and reconfiguring becomes a real PITA.

Thanks guys

CUCPSC_Geek,

Silly question but you mentioned you are using the "Powered by ATI" drivers, which presumably indicates the proprietary driver and not the open source one. You need to recompile the kernel with agpgart off - this is in the install instructions on ATI's web site. I ran into a similar problem on a machine I just configured yesterday - recompiling the kernel (AGAIN) with that option disabled resulted in a reduction of CPU utilization AND a tenfold(!) increase in FPS when running glxgears.

You got your FPS to increase by 10 thousand times!? That is REALLY impressive... I can even get my ATI card to have 3d acceleration, how did you do that part?

And as a newbie, how do I recompile the kernel with agpart off?

tenfold = 10 times

Went from 300fps to over 3,000fps.

As far as the basics on recompiling the kernel are concerned, use the search link above.

Regarding AGPGART:

Run menuconfig (see the many various existing threads covering kernel compiling) and go to:

Make sure that ATI Radeon does NOT have "M" or "*" in it; it should be blank.

Definitionally fold means 1000 times. I know common usage has kind of forgotten that, but call me a traditionalist. So 10 fold, is 10,000 times.

I will look into recompiling the kernel and agpgart, but I will have to wait till the weekend when I have some more time.

Will this agpgart get the 3d acceleration working as well? Is that the hidden trick?

I recompiled the kernel last night...and nothing really changed. My FPS increased a little bit, but overall it was still slow. I honestly think it's just the kernel itself. I downloaded a vanilla kernel from kernel.org, and spent some time getting it to work...and bam, it's back to being lightning fast, no more dragginess, and once again I am pleased.

Thanks for the help though, I wish it would have been that easy.

2 entries found for tenfold.

tenfold

\Ten"fold`\, a. & adv. In tens; consisting of ten in one; ten times repeated.

The grisly Terror . . . grew tenfold More dreadful and deform. --Milton.

Source: Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary, © 1996, 1998 MICRA, Inc.

tenfold

adj : containing ten or ten parts [syn: denary] adv : by ten times as much; "the population increased tenfold"

You didn't have to recompile your kernel. The reason 3d is not working for you is that you may have forgotten to enable posix memory in the /etc/fstab. To do this add the line tmpfs /dev/shm tmpfs defaults 0 0 in the /etc/fstab file.

I added that line, exactly as you wrote it, to my fstab.

It did nothing at all, I still have no 3d acceleration.

Mine already that enabled, as I thought that was the problem. I had 3D working with no problems on the default kernel, but it was slower than should have been. For instance in glxgears, I was getting only around 1800FPS.

Once I switched to the vanilla kernel, pulled my optimizations, and enabled 3D....I'm getting my usual 3500-4000FPS.

If it improves speed so massively in general too, maybe I will try going to a vanilla kernel too, which one did you go to that works so cleanly? And you mentioned you had some issues that took overcoming, anything that wasn't too intuitively obvious to a newb like me? Just following instructions from somewhere?