M3N78-VM onboard geforce 8200 has no AGP?

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mahdi · Post by **mahdi** » Sun Feb 08, 2009 4:55 pm

After upgrading my motherboard to an ASUS M3N78-VM and getting my network problem solved (udev, go figure) I tested the graphic performance using the nvidia driver. Previously I had an AGP x4 GeForce 6800 which was fairly decent performance so I figured with an 8200 (even an on board) I'd get at least comparable performance. It runs ok but gets bogged down quickly, Flash video playback is choppy, small Flash games run ok but the more going on the laggier they get and Savage2 ran ok until there were more then 3 people on screen.

Confused as to why this has such shotty performance I discovered there is no /proc/driver/nvidia/agp/ setting. Since this is my first PCI-e board is there something I'm missing in the setup or am I out of performance luck with this until I get a "real" video card?

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# cat /proc/driver/nvidia/registry 
EnableVia4x: 0
EnableALiAGP: 0
NvAGP: 3
ReqAGPRate: 15
EnableAGPSBA: 0
EnableAGPFW: 0
Mobile: 4294967295
ResmanDebugLevel: 4294967295
RmLogonRC: 1
ModifyDeviceFiles: 1
DeviceFileUID: 0
DeviceFileGID: 27
DeviceFileMode: 432
RemapLimit: 0
UpdateMemoryTypes: 4294967295
UseVBios: 1
RMEdgeIntrCheck: 1
UsePageAttributeTable: 4294967295
EnableMSI: 0
MapRegistersEarly: 0
RegistryDwords: ""

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# cat /proc/driver/nvidia/cards/0  
Model: 		 GeForce 8200
IRQ:   		 15
Video BIOS: 	 62.77.2f.00.00
Card Type: 	 PCI
DMA Size: 	 40 bits
DMA Mask: 	 0xffffffffff
Bus Location: 	 02.00.0

Relivent Xorg section

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Section "Device"
	Option     "hw_cursor"
	Option	   "AddARGBGLXVisuals" "true"
	Option     "AllowGLXWithComposite" "true"
	Option     "Coolbits" "1"
	Option     "NoAccel"
	Option     "RenderAccel" "true"
	Option     "CursorShadow" "true"
	Option     "NvAGP" "1"
	Identifier "Card0"
	Driver     "nvidia"
EndSection

it looks like NvAGP set itself to 3 on the card, probably because it was unable to find an AGP to use? Is this a case where I need to build the AGP in the kernel?

mahdi · Post by **mahdi** » Tue Feb 10, 2009 4:14 am

I can't figure out why the AGP module isn't loading. Does anyone have any suggestion? Is this even normal to see with PCIe? Information on this is extremely scarce

drescherjm · Post by **drescherjm** » Tue Feb 10, 2009 4:16 am

It should not be loading. You do not have AGP. You have PCIe which is faster.

BTW, what nvidia-driver are you using? Are you shure that it is enabled for opengl

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eselect opengl set nvidia

I am using 180.27

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jmd0 ~ # equery list nvidia-drivers
[ Searching for package 'nvidia-drivers' in all categories among: ]
 * installed packages
[I--] [ ~] x11-drivers/nvidia-drivers-180.27 (0)

mahdi · Post by **mahdi** » Tue Feb 10, 2009 4:19 am

Yes it is but it's not and thats the problem...

at least i can stop looking into a possible agp problem

I'm going to let this linger for a bit, it is an 8200 onboard card. So I've ordered a 9800 GTX, if I still have troubles THEN I'll really start to worry =P

mahdi · Post by **mahdi** » Mon Feb 16, 2009 4:24 pm

The 9800 does make a HUGE difference, I'm still a little concerned about the performance with Flash and Firefox but at least it's usable now.

Also changing the module settings helped a lot too.

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options nvidia NVreg_EnableAGPSBA=1 NVreg_EnableAGPFW=1 NVreg_NvAGP=1 NVreg_DeviceFileU
ID=0 NVreg_DeviceFileGID=27 NVreg_DeviceFileMode=0660

Took me forever to track down those options