Nvidia / OpenGL / Quake 3 / Poor Performance / Linux Native

[Mandr4ke]

I figured i'd start a new topic to help clean things up a little bit on the discussion. I'm running Quake 3 in 640x480 and it seems to run choppy and only getting 120 fps and drops to 30... I have a Geforce 3 Ti-200.. In Windows i get 300-500 fps and usualy have to cap it at 125-200.

I've tried with and Without Frame Buffer, VESA, and Riva/NV
It's very strange, The poor FPS are when i have Lightmap's on.. but when i use Vertex Lighting i get the normal FPS, although it's still pretty choppy in both light settings, and is not normal.. it's not the mouse i know that much..

I've been reading some Doc's online about Nvidia and Linux.. and One of the casues of Poor Performance (Slow GL Performance) in their trouble shooting is a conflict with MESA libGL.so and Nvidia..

I do have both nvidia-kernel/glx with opengl-update nvidia setup.

I was wondering if anyone else has had conflicts with MESA's GL and if there is a good way to remove it so only Nvidia's GL is present so there is no way it can be using the wrong library...

this is about all i can come up with as i've seemed to have tried everything else already with no luck... Anyone else have this problem and fix it???

[Kabuto]

Don't rember about Q3 but usually you could rename the GL driver that the game came with/using and it would find the NVIDIA driver. You can also look at the info Q3 will spit out in setup on what GL driver it is using. It should say something about NVIDIA Corp. Also you can check to make sure AGP is enabled by "cat /proc/driver/nvidia/agp/status". This will tell you what AGP driver is or isn't running.

[Kabuto]

Oh and make sure mtrr is compiled with your kernel. "cat /proc/mtrr".

[Mandr4ke]

[Mandr4ke]

AWESOME!!! that did it.. adding the "NvAGP" 1, and the MTRR Everything is running SWEET AS HELL!!!! Thanks man so much!!! been working on this all day.. phewwwwwwwwwww

Hope this also helps anyone else..


Q: Although it's working.. i'm not sure what i need for Console->Frame Buffer..

VESA / VGA or RIVA/NV or am i suspose to have Both??? I have both set on right now... Thanks!!!

I'm asking this becasue i have a weird problem with SIM.. ICQ.. when i click on it.. everything freezes and i get kicked out of KDE... But everything else seems ok...

Didn't have this problem will i did the NvAGP 1 and the MTRR...

[Kabuto]

Glad it worked. Basically without MTRR you were accessing video memory using interrupts which is a lot slower than DMA.

Some people say using kernel AGPGART is better. Also some people can have problems running AGP 4X but run fine with AGP 2X. I would try these and see if it fixes your ICQ problem.

[Kabuto]

Oops. Oh yeah about frame buffer. I would disable it. It can cause problems if you switch between terminals with X running. I think some have done VESA without any problems so you can try that. I am running NVIDIA frame buffer and it locks X up when I switch back to X. Just been too busy/lazy to disable or try VESA.

[aardvark]

When you want to use fb for console, here are my experiences:
(I have a tnt2pro card, so a little older than yers.)
I tried the nvidia fb driver but it has big clashes with the nvidia driver.
I tried the vesa driver: all is fine! : so I only have the vesa driver

I put "vga=0x314" in my grub - menu.lst - kernel line for 800x600 res

thus:
kernel /boot/bzImagedef root=/dev/hda6 hdd=ide-scsi vga=0x314 mem=nopentium
for me

0x314 gives you 800x600
0x317 gives you 1024x768 (i believe)
There are resources, to be googled up, for more settings.

BTW: the mem=nopentium option fixes sporadic freezes on my athlon system.

[Mandr4ke]

Awesome.. Thanks for the Tips!! I will defently try those..

[Kabuto]

Check out the nvidia-glx README in /usr/share/doc. It gives some sample parameters when you load the module. You might also be able to just set AGP speed in the BIOS. The README is a good read anyway.

[Mandr4ke]