XFree, DRI, distro and a bunch of stuff..

[laclasse]

Hi all

First i am glad to see a very good activity on the linux forum despite the 'times' we are living. Second here folows an update on my experimentations. Please please comment as i NEED feedback from other sager linux users and if they are running in the same issues that i am.

Opensource, communication, exchange for better knowledge, overall and in depth.

Anyhow, First let me comment a bit on the recent evenements in XFree86 devel mailing lists. I am still mad :mad: at the fact that :

1) It has now been revealed that ATI has been providing patches to the xfree source tree as soon as their hardware got released. They know the linux market is turning towards ATI as nvidia still uses prop code.

2) This just plain slackiness as the current DRI loads only an ATI 7500 microcode as our ATI M9 have higher potential. The hydravision and all on chip ati video accelerations are not being exploited at the moment.

3) The BOD ( Board of Developpers ) of XFree86 is just a very closed area, and a fork of the project has been 'anticipated' by one of the key developper, who says he is not impress with the current stage of work.

4) Ridiculous for us end user as the opensource community is shooting themselves in the feet. What will happen if ATI get discouraged providing patches that never get commited to the source code ? Um, yeah that might be why they already ship binaries.

So it means that to trully EXPLOIT all of our card possibilities, we are stuck up at the moment waiting for ati to realease new drivers for X 4.3.0.

Anyhow, here are a few accelerations tricks of your DRI ( i consider that you are using the DRI and the radeon 1.7.0 kernel module that you compiled and moved to the right module directory of your kernel ). First the config :

Section "Device"
Identifier "ATI 9000 Mobility"
Driver "radeon"
# VideoRam 65536
BusID "PCI:1:00:0"
Option "AGPMode" "4"
Option "CloneDisplay" "0"
Option "EnablePageFlip" "on"
# Option "AGPFastWrite" "on"
# Insert Clocks lines here if appropriate
EndSection

So as you can see, VideoRam is commented cause it gets autodetected.
BusID line will speed up X starting as it doesn't have to probe it.
AGPMode needs forced to '4' or it will default to 1.
CloneDisplay as well, if you are not using TV out, to speed up the X launch.

Option "EnablePageFlip" "on" will really speed you up too

# Option "AGPFastWrite" "on" This will be lovely, but on my 5660, it just corrupts the Display, the config file and freezes, just have to hard reboot. Please someone tell me why.

Then second, to really speed things again, when you compile the radeon module as in the http://dri.sourceforge.net/doc/DRIcompile.html

Just compile it with :
# make CFLAGS="-march=pentium4 -mfpmath=sse" -f Makefile.linux

Yes this will enable the pentium4 extensions and use sse and sse2 instaed of the classic mmx instructions, understating that the gcc version you are using is at least 3.2.X ( type gcc -v in aterm to find out ).

I got real improvements with it.

Now i am running a 2.4.21-pre5-ac3 kernel and have been really happy has the new A.C. Sheduler has taken a lot of my overhead/latency on the IDE subsystem and I/O are much better.
ACPI is nearly top notch but the latest pacth 2.4.21-pre5 diff was runnign but buggy for me. I reverted to 2.4.21-pre4 acpi patches.

Well, please comment, hope i could get my hand on these ati patches and recompile X, i could then give X as a binary.
Till soon.

[NeoCORE]

My current view is that Xfree are only but too willing to support nVidia... but when I comes to ATI, we're loosing out... The ATI drivers provided for linux are literally useless comparing to their windows equilavent in most cases... come on!


Anyway... the way I got my machine running reasonably fast is by using the gaming-sources from Gentoo. Their pretty fast, and give me decent results (comparing to other sager's) in glxgears.

I would like to test it on actually 3d games, but winex2 refuses to compile on my machine due to glib version I use (too up to date... bah!) and as for winex3, I would prefer a garantee that it would work bfore handing over $15 (not much.. but me = student) If any1 would like to let me preview winex3.. get in touch :)

My general take is that linux can easily out perform win if they get the drivers... this really is the deciding factor, I can only tweak my kernel so much :S

Cheers
NeoCORE

[laclasse]

Hey

I have been on lots of linux chats on irc and it is a general problem. Winex will not run if ya have too recent glibc even 3.

By the way. AGPFastwrites works ?
Whats your glx gears score ? Tweak tweak tweak .....

[chiphart]

Originally posted by laclasse

Section "Device"
BusID "PCI:1:00:0"
Option "CloneDisplay" "0"
Option "EnablePageFlip" "on"
EndSection


# Option "AGPFastWrite" "on" This will be lovely, but on my 5660, it just corrupts the Display, the config file and freezes, just have to hard reboot. Please someone tell me why.


First - I added the three options above to my XF and it added ~3-500 FPS in glxgears. Woohoo.

FWIW, I added the AGPFastWrite option and it didn't mess me up - just lowered glxgears to ~200FPS (from ~1700).

Turned that back off and things are smoother than ever. q3 still sucks a little wind, so I'm thinking about compiling DRI with the newer drivers. We'll see.

Thanks!

[laclasse]

Umm define suxs ?
Cause yeah yeah, we are far from the ATI binary drivers performance, but the DRI is far acceptable. I get 2089 av fps in glxgears untouched unresized, and quake 3 runs at 1154x864 at 40/60 FPS av with 90/100 peaks.

But not FULL SCREENED. Try window ing it. ;)))
much better no ? I have this FPS at max textures, max settings, Trilinear 32 bits.
Let me know....

[chiphart]

Sux == 25-40 FPS vs the 125+ I was getting with the DRI drivers. I know I could do better windowed, but I like using all my pixels!

It's plenty playable, certainly.

[prairiedog2k]

Laclasse,
Do you mean the DRI from the
dri.sourceforge.net site?
or something else entirely?

I tried compiling according to their instructions, but was unable to install as the -lXpm library could not be found in my DL'd DRI-CVS directory.

I had to scrap the whole monster.

That sucked.

From where is the radeon module you speak of above being derived?

Thanks in advance.
-pd2k

[laclasse]

The DRI from sourceforge on the site is an old version. You get the newer radeon kernel modules and other DRI with XFree 4.3.0.

Hope that answers it.

[prairiedog2k]

that answers it
I have added the load "dri" and

Section "DRI"
Mode 0666
EndSection

to my XF86Config-4

and things work well until I log out of KDE
at which point it hangs.

I know I've seen this sort of problem in the forums (either here or at the other Sager Linux forum). Anyway, what have you done to correct this problem?

-pd3k