# [a7n8x] AGP/OpenGL DISTRESS HELP!

## decker in flux

After having spent countless hours, reading hundreds of forum posts, and general suffering from some unknown hell, i am here... hoping i can get some help.

The Setting:

asus a7n8x-dx

xp-2400+

maxtor 94091U8

geforce mx 440 ( 8x AGP )

2x Samsung DDR400 CL3 ( Asus Tested )

The Problems:

The central problem is OpenGL rendering frame rates... i.e. when gaming there are nasty spikes.  I have attempted the following things w/ results mentioned:

1) Audio:

First i thought it was the PCI audio card i had, a Hercules Muse XL ( crap ).  So i proceeded to move to i810_audio using the kernel .o  -- this works great, but didnt do a damn thing for my frame rates.

2) DMA:

Ok, so then i realized that my hdparm -t /dev/hda scores were total crap ( on the order of 4MB/s ), so proceeded  to fondle IDE Chipset support with immediate ( although partial ) success acheiving scores ~30MB/s... but this still didnt do a damn thing for my frame rates. 

3) Ok it must be the kernel....

I said that about 14 kernels and 3 days ago.  I have tried:

linux-2.4.20-ck4

linux-2.4.20-gentoo-r1

linux-2.4.21-pre4-aa3

linux-2.4.21-pre4-ac7

linux-2.4.21-pre5-ac1

linux-2.4.21-pre5-ac2

linux-2.5.64

linux-2.5.64-mm1

linux-2.5.64-mm2

Plus a few others that I got very pissed off w/ and deleted along the way.  Those are the kernels that i have managed to get to boot ( actually w/ the expection of mm2 which does an Ooops because of devfs, almost certainly because i forced it to mount at boot ), they have also had everything working ( except the 2.5 kernels, which i just starting playing w/ a few hours ago )... everything being.... sound, nvagp, nvnet, dma, etc etc... everything seems very happy... except my opengl frame rates... 

EVERY SINGLE KERNEL I USED GAVE ME SCORES ~1700FPS!! :/

4) WTF It must be the drivers...

Well, convinced that the problem wasnt related much to the kernel ... i started playing w/ the nvidia drivers, using different version, and FW/SBA.  The conclusion is simple.....

I am stuck -- i have tried every reasonable kernel... configured as responsibly or aggresively for each one... i have tried every other system aspect that could be affecting the problem... also to no avail....  The scores for the driver test where ~1700 regardless of the settings...

any help would be greatly appreciated...

could it be the "nvnet.o" ?  ... what is recommended for the 3c920?

has someone had more promising results?  What kernel?  What modules/devices/patches? Are there any known issues here that I have miraculously missed? 

thanks in advance to anyone who can help... and thanks again to rommel for already trying to help me out

-d

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## handsomepete

Just out of curiousity, are you using the onboard video or a separate gf4mx card?  

Is your first display set to AGP in the bios?   Do you have PCI VGA palette snoop turned on (if so, disable)?  Do you have video bios shadow enabled (if so, disable)?

Do you get solid (but slow) frame rates using the regular "nv" driver?  

Are you running anything like seti@home that can cause CPU usage spikes in the background?  

Have you tried a light window manager for comparison like fluxbox/blackbox/whatever?

Hope at least one of these questions helps in a solution.

Edit: Also, if you're running an agp card and actually running it at agp 8x, knock that sucker down to 4x at least.  Who knows if agpgart or even nvidia's agp driver is ready for 8x primetime yet (and obviously, whoever *does* know will jump in and correct me here  :Smile:  )

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## decker in flux

Oh man,

I have actually fondled all the settings you suggest... and I happen to use fluxbox exclusively ( ok ok a little waimea every now and then )....

I am using an AGP-Slot card , and have the BIOS configured properly w/ that in mind.

As far as the AGP goes, i understand that AGPGART simply does not support 8x.

Nvidia 3123 certainly doesnt, but 4194 does ( for me at least -- even quite stable ).

A general update is:

I have managed to fix the actual QUALITY of my fps, that is glxgears give about 2200-2800 depending on my settings/kernel/etc...

THE PROBLEM IS AS FOLLOWS:

Any OpenGL rendering like quake3 gets nice fast frame rates, but as soon as any sound is played there is a massive momentary drop in FPS!!

I am using 2.4.21-pre4-aa3 w/ the built in i810_audio driver atm, but it has been the same for every kernel i mentioned above... Still havent gotten 2.5.* to work too well, but i will battle on later today.

edit: glxgears now gives me ~3200fps w/ aa3, but i am still having major problems w/ frame loss because of sound... moving to ALSA

edit2: omholy the grammar and typos

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## decker in flux

UPDATE:

Since the last post i have stuck w/ the pre4-aa3 kernel, and i have tried the following things:

1) Alsa sound.... yay.... made no difference at all... infact quake3 still lags out even though it cant touch the sound driver....  :Sad: 

At least now i know it is not the sound for sure.... sooooo

2) I downgraded X from 4.3.0 to 4.2.1 in the hope that THAT was the problem....

again no positive result....

The Plan:

I am rebuilding the kernel ( again ) to use the SMP ( who knows, it might work ), and removing any sort of non-vital features.  If this doesnt produce a beneficial result... well then about all i can think to do is downgrade gcc back to 3.2 ( or even the linus recommend 2.95.3[?] ) and recompile....

If that doesnt work .... then i am going to rebuild the whole system as conservatively as possible in an attempt to isolate this problem...  :Sad:   :Sad: 

-d

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## decker in flux

I changed the title... i am at a total loss...

Summary:

I have done exactly as i mentioned i would... and have ended up rebuilding THE WHOLE SYSTEM!?!?!?! 

AND THE FRAME RATES ARE STILL LAGGY WTF IS WRONG????

glxgears: ~3400fps .... now... but that makes no difference w/ the huge spikes i get...

simply put its as if while doing anything particularly intense ( e.g. running quake ) the kernel struggles to handle hardware interrupts ( ?!?! ), so i am thinking APIC... right?  Well maybe... but no... Every possible combination of every possible APIC related settings ( BIOS and Kernel ) produces no result.

I thought maybe the GFX card was having problems, so i did some tests... had a look at the hardware ... it doesnt even get warm when its pulling along in glxgears for a few minutes....

Maybe it is IRQ's ?  I wish it were that easy... every device that is used has a seperate IRQ, the rest are disabled in BIOS. ( Yet i still get the evil "spurious interrupt .... IRQ 7". )

I am to the point of wanting to break this thing, but i cant bring myself to do it 

If anyone knows anything about any of the problems i have mentioned... tia

 :Crying or Very sad: 

-d

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## taskara

hmm strange.. changed your ram ?  :Wink: 

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## decker in flux

New hardware, not more then a weak old, 2 burn-ed cl3 ddr400 ( running @ 200~!!!~@!~@$#@!$ )... i would like to think they arent the problem...

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## taskara

sure... well I have an asus a7n8x deluxe with 2X512mb corsair pc3500 ram, ti4200 and I have no problems.

and I built my system 2 days after 1.4_rc3 was released...

using latest gentoo-sources

running my 2400+ cpu at 2700+ (166fsb)

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## decker in flux

!>_<! !>_<! !>_<!

hehe, what version of glibc ? what version of gcc?  I just did a re-installation from scratch, and i am begining to tend to agree w/ you ( no matter how much i dont like it! ).  I was going to run memtest86 last night but ended up passing out after rebuilding the system ( stage3 -> fluxbox in under 2hrs ).  I suspect that it could be the HD as well, so if memtest comes back clean i am going to install on the other HD.  

Many more questions: 

What are your BIOS settings ( can you give me APIC, as well as all the CPU/MEM/AGP settings )?  I had been messing around ( OCing ), and i may have screwed something in there, so i am curious how aggressively people have had success.

Do you have the following things in your kernel?

MTTR 

SMP

APIC/IO-APIC

Preempt

Low Latency

ACPI

APM

What are your glxgears scores?

What have you tested your GL performance in?  I dont notice any problems until i try gaming...  :Sad: 

Thanks for posting, anything you can let me know would be a great help ( if only for my morale ).

-d

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## decker in flux

made a little journal of my experience last night

https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=40563

comments welcome ;p

-d

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## taskara

I'll check tonight when I get home, and let you know! feel free to post any other questions you want an answer to.

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## squareroot

This copy left while editingLast edited by squareroot on Tue Mar 11, 2003 11:09 pm; edited 1 time in total

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## squareroot

Decker-in-Flux 2.4.21-pre4-aa3 fixed many problems for me, but not all.  

There are still more bug fixes for the NForce2 IDE drivers.  Some interact with things that seem unrelated, and cause slowdowns.  I am running 2.4.21-pre5-ac2 and feel it is pretty solid.  

The only thing I can't tell you much about is game performance.  I installed one or two to check some things and found I had no idea how to play.

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## decker in flux

update:

Ran memtest86 for an hour... not a single error, so i overclocked the ram, and still no errors!

squareroot:

I have noticed some very... buggy behaviour w/ respect to the chipset, 

but what i DO know is that i was not having this problem a little while ago ( hence my insistence on battling w/ it ).

I too was using the ac-sources, but problems w/ the swap drive barfing, convince me that they are unless better then the aa-sources w/ respect to their timestamp.

taskara:

where are you... come back  :Sad: 

General:

Two new thoughts regarding the problem:

1) maybe it is the stupid nvnet port...  I would be using the 3c920 but there is a problem with that:  

the 3c59x module loads cleanly, but i CANNOT manage to get it to recieve any packets ( i.e. i can SEND packets... confirmed by 'ifconfig' TX packets, as well as seeing the lights flash on my switch... but the interface does not ever recieve packets... ).

The 3com is enabled in the BIOS, and plugged in ;p

[ throughout this whole trial i have been trying to get that bastard to work too ]

There are a couple of notes regarding this... 

first is that 3c59x does not load mii, which was under the impression was the library it uses...

second is when loading 3c59x w/ debug=7 i get a coupious listing of the vortex_spin_lock ( or some other sort of semaphore-synonym ) failing, and returing e000.!!! ???

Also tried a variety of kernel configs regarding this problem... suggestions very welcome.

2) Maybe i have damaged the video card in some way?  It seems possible... thought damned if i know how i managed it.  Any convenient way to directly test that ( ala memtest86 ) ?

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## taskara

hey.. I'm back.. finally home (10:35pm)

I'll do the tests now and post results

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## taskara

hmmm... since installing from rc3, I've had some issues that I've now noticed.

I can't start X with the nvidia drivers - it freezes and throws gobbledy-gook up on the screen.

that's with xfree 4.3 - and none of the drivers seem to work.

my network seems to be dropping out rarely and randomly. Like all traffic will stop. I'm using nvnet. I do have a driver for the 3com somewhere.

I think I will have to rebuild it.. you may have found some problem somewhere!

try a diff nic - like a realtek 8139 or something simple. and remove the nvnet module.. see if that makes a difference.

anyway I'm going overseas next friday.. not sure if I'll have time to rebuild b4 then..

good luck!

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## decker in flux

oh well... i have concluded pretty much that short of a BIOS problem ( god forbid ... ) it must be software... so i am doing a bootstrap... we will see how it goes...

tomorrow

-d

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## taskara

I agree... my old install (with a jan 20th release) worked perfectly.. 

maybe it's xfree 4.3 ?

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## decker in flux

Its definitly not X4.3.0... well maybe it is , but downgrading to 4.2.1 didnt help... i think it is gcc3.2.2

more later

-d

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## squareroot

Don't rule the BIOS out.  I've been through several flashes.  

Before you take any drastic action go through the settings again.

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## decker in flux

 *decker in flux wrote:*   

> made a little journal of my experience last night
> 
> https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=40563
> 
> 

 

Too late for drastic action   :Laughing: 

But i have a strong suspicion it was gcc, as my problems started after  my system "upgraded" to gcc 2.3.2 ... i brought it back down to 2.3.1 ( did a bootstrap last night ) and hope that when i get back tonight everything will be smooth again.

-d

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## decker in flux

UPDATE:

Rebuilding the system didnt do crap.  Still laggy as a bastard.

Was poking around and found under 'cat /proc/pci' aka lspci -vv that the "Latency" of my gfx card is 248 ( 1250ns, 250ns ).  The 3com network card, and infact everyother device has a lower latency ?!?!?

 :Sad: 

begs

 :Mad: 

-d

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## taskara

hmm I have no idea.

did you get the nvidia driver working with xfree 4.3 ?

have you tried a different nic ?

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## azote

I just fixed mine!!!  :Very Happy: 

try botting with 

```

pci=noacpi
```

that didn't work for me ....

I had to boot with 

```
acpi=off
```

that made my FPS go from ~600 to ~3000

but ... one thing ... 

now I dont have Sound neither wireless internet...

that sucks...

I hope this helps you

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## taskara

someone mentioned that there are game-sources or something, and they have a kernel driver for the nforce2

tho I have always used the gentoo-sources without any issues.

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## azote

yes I just install the gaming-sources Kernel...

and Now I can Play with out having to boot with the acpi=off

but my FPS are ~1500...  is better than ~600 

I can still boot with no acpi and get ~3000  but without sound or internet...

... conclusion!!

this gaming kernel worked for me!!

on my Toshiba 5205-s703 with a Gforce4 Nvidia 460 (64mb)

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## decker in flux

i tried every kernel, and they offered no help... but i did fix the problem... turns out that the voltage on my 5v rail was fluctuating alot and dropping pretty low, i adjusted some of my power settings and everything is ... decent now.

all things aside, i did manage to raise my fps in glxgears overall from ~1700fps to ~3600fps now, which is quite satisfactory for me -- and now i dont get lag spikes in the frame rates.

@taskara -- if you need any help smoothing things out i can send you the important aspects of my cfg files

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## taskara

thanks man.. I decided to re-build me system today, and I can't even emerge system!

it emerges glib 2.2.1, but system wants 1.2.1 - and pam fails..

it's so annoying..

anyway.. when and if I get it all up and running, I'll let you know.

Are you using xfree 4.3 ? and what nvidia drivers? what nvidia net driver?

ta!

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## taskara

I was told that the gaming-sources had an nforce2 driver.

I couldn't find anything in the kernel config, but I assumed it might be in a patch or something.

on boot I get a message saying:

 *Quote:*   

> 
> 
> ...
> 
> NFORCE2: detected chipset, but driver not compiled in!
> ...

 

any thoughts ? how do I compile the driver in!?

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## azote

Just do a emerge nvidia-kernel again

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## decker in flux

taskara:

I have used gaming sources, but they REALLY dont like either ACPI or APIC ( cant remeber which it was ) and overall they underperformed compared to the aa-sources ( i run 2.4.21-pre4-aa3 ).  I have tried nearly every kernel in the portage tree ( just wolk, acpi, and lolo -- of the ones which are actual distinct *versions* ), including the masked ones ... if you feel more comfortable with "stable" ck/gaming was the best, of the "newer" ( 2.4.21 ) kernels pre4-aa3 was the best ( dont touch ac-sources ! ), and i suggest when the ebuild is updated to include the new HT scheduler, to grab 2.5.64bk ( or higher ).

I currently use the 4191 kernel/glx ( ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="~x86" emerge nvidia-glx ..... that will grab it for you in one step )  Also my modules.d looks like:

```
options NVreg_EnableAGPFW=1 NVreg_EnableAGPSBA=1
```

And in my profile:

```
export __GL_FSAA_MODE=0

export __GL_DEFAULT_LOG_ANISO=0
```

which turns off any sort of "prettiness" the ( anisotropic filtering and fullscreen anti aliasing ) gfx card wants to do.

you can check out a post i have detailing some stuff here:

https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=39905#237948

Regarding rebuilding your system: if you can do "ls", and "emerge" .... i would "emerge portage && emerge -e world" ( that implies "emerge -e system" right? )... Not to hasty w/ that one -- i might read some other posts on the topic before a typo of mine vaporizes everything    :Rolling Eyes: 

been busy recently -- but let me know of your progress ( or more importantly, your lacks thereof ).

-d

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## taskara

yeah.. all should be good.. I just had trouble getting X to work with xfree 4.3 - the screen showed showed gobbledy gook, and froze the system.

I think I just missed the "amd and nvidia ide" option under the kernel menu  :Smile: 

hdparm gives a good score with it off anyway.. but I'll re-compile it in  :Smile: 

I usually just use the gentoo-sources (I have been using gentoo since version 1.1a) and have never really looked at other ones.. I might check them out and see which one I like the best!  :Wink: 

ta

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## SnowDeath

I have an Asus A7N8X-DLX, using onboard sound and 3com nic (as I like to rebuild kernels remotely via ssh).

My Specs:

Athlon 1600+

Dual 256 Meg PC2100 sticks

GeForce3 ti200

WD 80 Gig Special Edition EIDE drive (42-44 mb/s with hdparm -t )

gaming-kernel

alsa-driver (intel8x0)

AMD Viper/Nforce2 driver (ATA-66 workaround enabled if it is there)

nvagp (cat /proc/drivers/nvidia/agp/status  after you have X loaded to make sure nvagp is loading - in kernel, make sure agpgart is module)

I get about 3800 fps in glx_gears (I can dbl check tonight).  WolfET, WineX, AA sound is fine no spikes or anything. I've played ET for 45 minutes straight with no issues other than my sound is a little tinny due to the crappy snd-intel8x0 driver.

Couple suggestions I have for ya:

In your kernel, try disabling SMP, APIC, and ACPI - leave APM in.  

Edit your /etc/modules.autoload and comment out your OSS audio driver (i810_audio).

Install alsa driver and autoload snd-intel8x0  in your modules.autoload.

Then reinstall your video driver.  (I use the NVIDIA-Linux...  installer from Nvidia's site).

Once you have all that done, reboot again (heh, yeah I'm an MCSE, why do you ask?)  and then do an lsmod to make sure the OSS sound driver isn't loaded and that the ALSA one is.

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## taskara

hey, thanks for all that.

I've got it all working now  :Smile: 

the only problem is that I've since upgraded to serial ata hdd's and am using the onboard silicon image 3112 controller.

it's not the best.

I will try to get dma working with my drives tonight, and get them running at udma 66... slow I know. but apparently that's the only stable setting..

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## Budro

Hey there,

My numbers are:

zippy X11 # glxgears

12624 frames in 5.0 seconds = 2524.800 FPS

14141 frames in 5.0 seconds = 2828.200 FPS

14019 frames in 5.0 seconds = 2803.800 FPS

# hdparm -Tt /dev/hda

/dev/hda:

 Timing buffer-cache reads:   1784 MB in  2.00 seconds = 892.00 MB/sec

 Timing buffered disk reads:  142 MB in  3.02 seconds =  47.02 MB/sec

Here is my hardware setup:

ASUS|V9280TD GF4 Ti4200 8X 128M

AMD|2500/333 ATHLON XP BARTON R

CORSAIR DDRAM 512MBTWINX512-2700

ASUS A7N8X DELUXE

Maxtor 80GIG 8MB cache

But I am still having this problem posted below:

https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=71254

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