Hi, I have a ati 9600se gpu and have just installed the lastest ati drivers 8.22.5 or something I ran glxgears in max view and got
846.73 fps when I am not looking at it (it is in the background) and 175-230 fps when I look at it and 1200-1300 in default minimized screen, looking at it and 8000+ in min. size not looking at it(in the background).

Pardon Me but WTF? I know it not a benchmark but what is this?

Also I get about 40 fps in GL-117 when it is done configuring

Please help

That sounds about right. If you don't have hardware 3D acceleration working (i.e. Mesa) you will get around 200-300fps in the default window of glxgears. Anything higher than that means that your hardware is working.

I've been trying to understand this myself. I can't actually get the ATI drivers yet because my source hasn't compliled a module for the 2.6.15 kernel. Using the 6.9 Vesa drivers the glxgears program reports 480 fps (while I'm watching). Using the xorg ati driver with exa acceleration, that moves up to 540 fps. With either driver, glxinfo shows that Direct Rendering is off.

When I get the ati drivers, should I expect Direct Rendering to be on, and a higher fps?

I would believe that you shoud get a mentionable rate increase, you can test the state of direct rendering by typing glxinfo and it about three down.

It would be good to state which card you use.

You need the kernel sources to match you kernel, you also need make, gcc, etc..

There are a variety of ways to do the install, I took a little from all them. I would suggest while downloading the driver if you use a gui environment, not to use the default browser and also make to work with it in a /tmp dir.

Make sure to chmod 764 to the download to make it executable if it already isn't

I know how to install it, I just don't mess with it until I can get a binary module.

My questions arise because I never paid any attention to hardware acceleration before, and I'm just not sure what I should be looking for or what to expect if it's working.

My ATI grahpic card:

The result of fglrxinfo:

The result of glxgears when looking at it:

The result of glxgears when it is minimized:

The result of fgl_glxgears when you look at it: (actually this one is pretty cool, it's a spinning cube in 3D and in each face runs the typical glgears):