what is agpgart?

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Apreche · Post by **Apreche** » Tue Dec 23, 2003 7:21 pm

Ok, so I've been wondering. What exactly is agpgart? I mean, I know it has to do with the agp video card and the graphics and such. But I don't believe that I have it, yet my graphics are excellerated just fine. So what I'm asking is, what is agpgart? do I need it? if I want to have it, how can I make it go?

Post by **NeddySeagoon** » Tue Dec 23, 2003 7:43 pm

Apreche,

AGPART is a driver that gets the best out of your AGP hardware. It is aimed at setting up the hardware to get the best data rate on the AGP interface. This is not the same as accelerated graphics.

Accelerated Graphics is a way of having the graphics card take the load off the processor. For eacmple, the graphics card gets a command to draw a shap and fill it with colour instead of the processor drawing every pixel and doing all the calucations for the drawinf too.

Do you need AGPART?
Only for apps that benefit from a lot of video bandwith. This has typically been to shift 3D graphics textures from main memory to the display.

How do you get it?
Check by doing

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grep AGP /usr/src/linux/.config

You should only have your one configured and do use a module becuse if it breaks you don't have to load it.

If you still want to add agpart, you may need to rebuild your kernel.

Regards,

NeddySeagoon

mike4148 · Post by **mike4148** » Tue Dec 23, 2003 10:50 pm

Do also note that nVidia supplies binary-only AGP drivers specific to their 3D chips. If you're using an nVidia card, one or the other might be faster for you; if you're not, then agpgart is the only way to go. For more info on that, search the forum system for nvidia and read the 12 billion posts on the issue.

Apreche · Post by **Apreche** » Wed Dec 24, 2003 12:20 am

okay, so is it safe to assume that nvidia-kernel and agpgart are redundant, and that I should only use one or the other?

rsk · Post by **rsk** » Wed Dec 24, 2003 3:09 am

Yes, nvidia provides their own AGP module. So if you include the kernel one as a module, that's fine, the nvidia driver will attempt to load its own anyway. You can set

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Option NvAGP 1

in you XF86Config file under your device section to tell the nvidia drive to use its own AGP garp module. The values (0-3 are described in the nvidia readme)