glxgears slows down after installing graphic card drivers

[Barney_DK]

Hi,

I have been trying to get my ATI Radeon 9600XT card working in Suse 9.0 ever since I took the plunge over to linux.
I have tried a few of the "howto" guides and finally got fglrxinfo to come back with the right driver and get direct rendering = yes in glxinfo by installing the 3.7 drivers from Suse's site.
I can also see that both fglrx and agpgart are running in lsmod with processes using them.

I used a guide which involved using fglrxconfig to use the external agpgart, including

load "dri" in the X86Config file

and include /sbin/insmod agpgart in /etc/init.d/boot.local

The problem I have is that the fps rate in glxgears has dropped from around 300 (with no 3d enabled) to around 70 with the new setup.

I'm still very new with linux so been on a bit of a steep learning curve, so could someone give me a hand to find out where I can start investigating to see what's wrong?
I first thought that after installing the drivers over and over I must have messed something up, but after a fresh Suse install yesterday, I still get the same result when I repeat the procedure to get the card recognised.

I get the feeling that I must be pretty close to having 3d working properly but seem to have hit a brick wall now..

Any ideas where I start?
Many thanks

PC details
ASROCK P4VT8, 800FSB
1GB ram
ATI Radeon 9600XT, 128MB DDR
Intel Pentium4 3,2GHz 800Mhz FSB

[bwkaz]

Do you have the "direct rendering: yes" output now when you run glxinfo?

I only get about 100fps in glxgears with a GF4 Ti4200 card -- but it works great with any 3D game. (I'm pretty sure it won't work well with Doom 3, but any 3D game that's been released for Linux so far. :p)

glxgears is NOT the greatest benchmark... ;)

[fatTrav]

I get around 800 (running glx gears in the small box, not full screen) fps with my G3. But it has run tux racer, chromium, scorched3d, rune, rtcw, all the UTs fantastic. Try out a game and see how she runs, that's the real benchmark.

[Barney_DK]

ok,

Thanks for the suggestions guys,

I will try on of the 3D games later and see how it looks.
I did try installing Battlefield in Cedega without success, but it may have been a Cedega setup problem that let to it not working.

[cs02rm0]

I only get about 100fps in glxgears with a GF4 Ti4200 card -- but it works great with any 3D game.

I get around 2500 with my gf4 ti4200...

[bwkaz]

I know; most people do get somewhere around those numbers. And yes (before somebody says to try this), I have tried it with NvAGP set to 3, 2, and 1, and none of those settings made any different.

I used to get about those numbers on kernel 2.4, also, but once I moved to 2.6, the glxgears speed dropped way down. It didn't affect actual games in the least, though, so I bet it has something to do with the extreme simplicity of the glxgears gear drawing. That's so simple to do that the whole frame rate thing depends MUCH more on your processor than your video card, once you're up over a certain threshold. Anyway, games are a lot more involved (anything with textures is more involved than glxgears ;)), so they rely on the card (and therefore the drivers) a lot more than they rely on the CPU.

[fatTrav]

what's more important: glxgears frame rates or frame rates in an actual game?

[bwkaz]

Without a doubt: Framerates in actual games.

:D

[Barney_DK]

Great suggestions guys.
I borrowed UT2004 from a friend last night and installed it. It seems to work perfectly (at 1024 x 768) and in either full screen or windowed. One question. How do I find out the FPS in UT2004? Is there a utility program that comes with it? I couldn't see any options.

By the way, I didn't have any luck installing Battlefield through Point2Play but it must be a Cedega issue I have..

Cheers
Nigel

[rocketpcguy]

a GF4 Ti4200 card -- but it works great with any 3D game. (I'm pretty sure it won't work well with Doom 3,

no, your card will run super with doom 3, at 1024x768 with low detail and all special effects. try it out when a demo comes.

and barney, just press ~ and type "stat fps"

[bwkaz]

Originally posted by rocketpcguy
no, your card will run super with doom 3, at 1024x768 with low detail and all special effects. I know. I want to run it just like all the rest of my video games, though, at 1280x1024, at high detail, with all the special effects.

If I ran it at 1024x768, my monitor's output would not be synced to the correct pixel clock, and the sides of the screen would be all screwy (it wouldn't surprise me if the screen was also a lot wider than my desktop), since my monitor is calibrated for my desktop resolution and refresh rate: 1280x1024@75Hz. And I just don't like low detail. :p

That's why I said "it won't work well with Doom 3" -- I probably should have specified what I meant by "well" a little better. ;)