X slowness on HP zv6130us (CPU usage @ 50%) [RESOLVED]

[RR64]

System specs:

AMD athlon 64 3200+
512 MB DDR RAM
80 GB
ATI Radeon Xpress 200m Vid Card
Gentoo 2.6.12 Kernel (but switch b/w Gentoo 2.6.9 kernel to initally fix and compare a vid card issue)


Problem:

After battling with ATI's fglrx issues, I finally got X started. Problem is its really laggy and Gnome system monitor says I'm always over 50% CPU usage. When I'm reading or writing to a disc, system response is almost nothing (mouse does not move). Top says that I'm not using as much as Gnome reports.

Does this have anything to do with no DMA on my harddrive? Any ideas what is using all my system resources and making it slow? Id like to optimize my notebooks speed.


Thanks in advance!

I'm a gentoo noob so simple responses would be appreciate. A friend is helping with the install.

[denstark]

Sounds to me like your graphics card isn't accellerated. Have a try looking at the ATI Faq ( http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/ati-faq.xml ) and see if you've set it up correctly. Hope that helps.

[RR64]

THANKS for the reply! I'll have my friend take a look at the link.

Something I also wanted to mention was we used FF7 advent children's movie trailer just to see how the graphics card performed on gentoo (gnome) with mplayer. It ran fine when it was regular size, but double clicking or pressing "f" would not allow it to go fullscreen. Itd just be the same size with black borders. When extended the movie out manually (friend typed in some commands, didnt catch them) and made it full screen, it was horribly choppy.

Just thought I toss that out there, not sure if its relevant or not.

Also, we couldn't get X working correctly with 2.6.12 so we downgraded to 2.6.9 and did a bit of tweaking (again, friend did this part, i'll see if he can reply to this thread) and he got it to work. Tried to boot into the 2.6.12 kernel just out of curiousity and it worked.

Please help, I'd like to enjoy 64 bit linux. After seeing my friends notebook and the way it runs, I was contemplating ditching this laptop for the almost identical model in hardware, but with a nvidia 440 64 mb. I'd really not like to give up on this card because it has twice as much dedicated memory (128mb) and HL2 looks great in windows with all options turned to high.

Thanks.

[RR64]

Sounds to me like your graphics card isn't accellerated. Have a try looking at the ATI Faq ( http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/ati-faq.xml ) and see if you've set it up correctly. Hope that helps.

2.f. 3D Video Acceleration Support

ATI Radeon Cards

ATI has finally released 64-bit drivers for Radeon cards newer than the 9200. Use the command ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="~amd64" emerge ati-drivers in order to install them. If the proprietary drivers don't work properly for you, then the development team suggests that you try the open sourced "radeon" driver included with xorg. However, the "radeon" driver only includes 2d Accelleration.

from

http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/base/amd6 ... #doc_chap6

So if we used that open source driver, could this be the problem why the system is running so slow? If only 2d acceleration is supported then does that mean no 3d games (half life, doom 3, ET) can be played using that driver and the only way around it is to use another driver?

Please pardon my mistakes if anything I post does not correlate with the problem, i'm VERY new to gentoo but trying my best to learn.

[denstark]

Ahhh... I didn't know you were running at 64 bit mode. Shit, I didn't even look to see what forum this was in... Well, it seems my help got you at least somewhere...

Erm... I have no expertese on this at all =(

lmao. Well, The only thing I would say is to see if someone else can reply.

If all else fails you could always run in 32 bit mode, but that would suck. I have an AMD64 and Ran Gentoo @ 32 Bit mode for a while, it was fast as hell, but now I have Windows on it (Needed for games).

[RR64]

No worries, its cool .

But what you is still VERY helpful. I talked to my friend whose is doing the install and he said it makes sense. He turned off 3d to just get X started at 2d to keep everything simple. After I told him what you suggested, he thinks that the CPU is compensating for the video card therefore taking up alot of resources. Correct me if I'm wrong, but would that be the cause of no activity that would warrant that much CPU usage NOT show in "top"?

*EDIT* My glxgears are running @ 200-300 FPS. I found a forum strictly dedicated to zv6000 series and their compaq counterparts so when I get this resolved, I'll be sure to post back. Searching the forums finds quite a bit of zv6000 problems as far as the ATI stuff goes.

[RR64]

FIXED IT! First time resolving a problem with gentoo!!

I was in grub.conf and added this line to my boot line

"no_timer_check"

And after reboot my CPU usage was "normal" and heres my glxgears results:

3063 frames in 5.0 seconds = 612.600 FPS
3480 frames in 5.0 seconds = 696.000 FPS
3600 frames in 5.0 seconds = 720.000 FPS
3600 frames in 5.0 seconds = 720.000 FPS
3480 frames in 5.0 seconds = 696.000 FPS
3600 frames in 5.0 seconds = 720.000 FPS
3480 frames in 5.0 seconds = 696.000 FPS
3600 frames in 5.0 seconds = 720.000 FPS



So although from what I compare to my friends zv5000 the results arent excellent, its alot better than the 336 FPS I was getting. I'll do more tweaking to see if I can it faster. Still need to try the 3d acceleration.

BTW, can someone please explain to me WHY the "no_timer_check" command worked?:oops:

[denstark]

FIXED IT! First time resolving a problem with gentoo!!

I was in grub.conf and added this line to my boot line

"no_timer_check"

And after reboot my CPU usage was "normal" and heres my glxgears results:

3063 frames in 5.0 seconds = 612.600 FPS
3480 frames in 5.0 seconds = 696.000 FPS
3600 frames in 5.0 seconds = 720.000 FPS
3600 frames in 5.0 seconds = 720.000 FPS
3480 frames in 5.0 seconds = 696.000 FPS
3600 frames in 5.0 seconds = 720.000 FPS
3480 frames in 5.0 seconds = 696.000 FPS
3600 frames in 5.0 seconds = 720.000 FPS



So although from what I compare to my friends zv5000 the results arent excellent, its alot better than the 336 FPS I was getting. I'll do more tweaking to see if I can it faster. Still need to try the 3d acceleration.

BTW, can someone please explain to me WHY the "no_timer_check" command worked?:oops:

Hrm... well glad it got resolved

Maybe the no_timer_check command tells the kernel not to check the timer on the video card, thus its not restricted? I dunno, thats a shot in the dark.

Glad it worked out, anyways

[oiper]

RR64, what screen resolution are you using?

[RR64]

RR64, what screen resolution are you using?

1280 x 800