# Stability with Nvidia drivers

## sms

Hello

I need help with a very ugly problem. The configuration of the system is as follows. I would be very glad for any help as I am at my wit's end.

I have an Asus A7V266-E mainboard, a Gainward GeForce3 Ti 200. When I want to use the NVidia driver the system will behave very unstable. It will freeze hard the X window system (no keys work, no escape to a console). It seems to be random and X does not log anything about any error in the system log. Other from that random freezing all seems to work fine.

AGPGART is compiled into the kernel. 

I have tried: 

- the NVidia drivers 4191 and 4349,

- reduce AGP from 4x to 2x, 

- disable Fast Writes and 

- set NVAGP explicitly to 2 (AGPGART) in the XF86Config.

All to no avail...

So for the moment I rolled back to the nv driver, the problem does not seem to exist there. I now only switch to NVidia drivers when I want to play a bit and don't care about crashes (no important work around).

Has anybody with a similar configuration succeeded in a stable system? What would you recommend to do now?

Thanks very much for any input

sms

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## shm

Perhaps you were already using AGPGART. I switch from it to NVAGP and all my stablity problems went away.

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## handsomepete

Does the problem exist with the 3xxx drivers?  I've had loads of trouble with the 4xxx series (I think it's finally stable for me (10 days without problems running full force - gaming 2.4.20-r2 using agpgart on a7v8x)).  Try those for a couple days and see how it works.  If not, check the newest round of drivers that were released recently (4363) when they hit portage.

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## MrF

I have the same motherboard with a gf3, and have exactly the same problem. I get frequent crashes when running quake3, ut2k3, or tribes 2. I was just about to try disabling AGP 4x, but your post makes me think it wont achieve much.

This is from the latest nvidia readme file :

 *Quote:*   

> 
> 
> o AGP drive strength BIOS setting (Via based mainboards)
> 
>     Many Via based mainboards allow adjusting the AGP drive strength in
> ...

 

My agp drive strength was set to "auto". I changed it to "Manual", The default values that appeared in the fields were 0xE, and 0xF. When I tried changing it to 0xE, and 0xC, I still crash in q3. At the moment, I'm trying 0xE, and 0xE. So far I haven't had any problems, but I haven't been playing games much since.

One of the most frustrating problems I had with linux this one. I'm almost ready to go out and by an nforce2 board because of this.

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## sms

Thanks all for your input! I'll try your tips, but have some questions.

shm: So you recommend not including AGPGART in the kernel (or building it as a module) and using NVAGP instead? 

MrF: I have read the nvidia readme file too, but did not understand what to set in the BIOS. In the BIOS I have the option to set drive strength manually too, after setting to manual two new menus appear, each with letters/numerals from 0 to F (nothing about 0xEA or the like). So you have set both menus to E? Does this equal to 0xE and 0xE?

I would really like to try this out, but I want to be sure I understood you correctly.

I haven't tried the 3xxx drivers yet, since I installed Gentoo on this machine only 4 weeks ago and emerged the *newest* sources available  :Smile: 

Thanks, sms

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## MrF

The nvidia docs has the two values listed together like "0xEE". I goggled around for an explanation of why I had two single hexadecimal digit settings, and yet the readme had them listed together. Apparently its normal to put them together like that. I've been running with them both set to E (0xEE)... for a few hours of gaming now, and haven't had any problems. *crosses fingers*

btw, I actually found the older drivers were far worse for crashes. In the last few versions (3123, 4191, 4341) they have progressively been getting more and more stable. I'm running agpart, without fastwrites or sideband addressing.

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## sms

I have now tried a combination of your tips and have achieved a partial solution to the problem. Now the system seems more stable and I am now able to play FPS without it crashing all over me... but it crashed instead the next morning after letting it running all night.

I have compiled gaming-sources without agpgart, with nvagp enabled and set AGP drive strength to 0xEE.

So it's not solved yet, I'll try some other things now, like AGP 2x et al.

And I think I have now other problems with gaming-sources, not yet sure if that's the fault of the new kernel and why... it's too early to say so. The modem now apparently disconnects after playing CounterStrike for about 30-60 minutes. That's only in CS, the modem runs fine overnight, downloading things and stuff.

Well, thanks again!

sms

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## MrF

I'm still getting a few crashes. I've had tribes 2 crash twice in the last day in ways that arent because "tribes 2 crashes alot". I'm going try nvAGP and/or AGP 2x next.

Let me know if you come across anything which improves it for you. thanks.

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## Ethereal

The fact is NVidia make bad drivers, I had several problems with it and from now i will buy only linux-compatible hardware(for example from ATI). I am agree with previous posts :  maybe agpgart, but also such instability is made by using rivafb (framebuffer driver from kernel) and nvidia X drivers.

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## nillekind

Hi,

mine had random freezes with RenderAccel true in XF86Config-4. Look if it's set and try to disable it.

Conner

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