# s3 savage4- piece of crap?

## RangerDude

When I turn on framebuffer in console to get high-res in console with VGA=791 the console scrooling gets very slow. Without VGA=... it's fast as a flash, but I want framebuffer.

With framebuffer it take like 2-3 seconds to scrool a dmesg.

I USE VESA option in kernel config.

In X I use the savage driver, and I only get 16 bits colors. With VESA driver I'm able to get 24bit, but mplayer is hell slow.

So is savage4 just crap when using it with VESA, or can I do something about it?

And why can't I get 24bit in X using savage driver, but only VESA?

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## PowerFactor

Piece of crap? Well, I guess that depens on your definition.  It's certainly not the best graphics chip for use with linux, but there are worse ones.  My savage4 does scroll the fremebuffer much slower than my gf2mx.  But the savage is teamed with a k6-2/366 and the gf2 with an athlon-XP 1700+ so I'm not 100% sure that I can blame all the speed difference on the video cards. :Wink:   I don't think my savage scrolls unacceptably slow though.

The savage xfree driver suposedly has trouble with 24bit+xvideo on some versons of the chips, especially on laptops but I've never heard of 24bit not working in X at all.  Mine handles 24bit X and 24bit+xvideo just fine. I haven't tried mplayer in the framebuffer, but it plays fullscreen just fine in X.

I guess from what I've read I would say the savage boards are kind of inconsistent form one model to the next, especially in laptops.  So it's kind of hard to say whether your particular one is a piece of crap or not.  Mine is nothing special, but it's good enough for day to day use.  Just no 3d with it in linux.  :Crying or Very sad: 

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## RangerDude

Thanks for sharing.   :Very Happy: 

I have an Athlon XP 1600 on my laptop with the savage card.

When I compile kernel in framebuffer it takes 30 seconds longer in framebuffer because of the slow text-scrooling. So framebuffer is eating some sort of performance, not only displaying slowly.   :Evil or Very Mad: 

All I want is just 1024x768 mode in console so all my laptop screen is used. Isn't it possible to get 1024x768 equivalent mode in console without framebuffer? I don't want graphics, just characters. I want the speed of the standart 640x480 console, just in 1024x768 if you know what I mean.

In XF86Config the default colordepth is 24, and it works with VESA driver, just not savage, there I can see on my background image, that it's only 16bit. It ain't that big of a problem- it's just if anyone know a workaround.   :Cool: 

Keep cool.

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## darket

How about dropping the number of colors - go back to 32k or 256. Thats still OK for console.

64k colors was really slow on my old P1-200-Notebook. With 256 colors is was nearly like standard-textmode.

Greets, darket

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## bsolar

Moved from Multimedia.

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## RangerDude

Hey darket,

Jeez, I don't think about that.   :Embarassed: 

I now use VGA = 773. It's a very-little bit faster, but still much slower than non-framebuffer.   :Crying or Very sad: 

What's the deal with framebuffer, why is it so slooooow.   :Rolling Eyes: 

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## pilla

Maybe it is because there is no fb for the specific Savage card and you are using VESA fb.

I am not sure it is the case, but it would be interesting if somebody with a supported card could try both (the specific fb and the VESA fb) just for the sake of the experiment  :Smile: 

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## PowerFactor

Well, I'm using VESA fb on my gf2mx and it's lightning fast.  Never tried the rivafb, don't see any reason to.  It's already faster than my eyes can respond.  But like I said earlier my savage is in a much slower comp and I don't know how much cpu has to do with it. But given RangerDude's is an AthlonXP 1600 I would say it's probably mostly the adapter.

RangerDude: For a high res console without the fb you might want to look into svgatextmode.  I've never tried it but it looks promising.

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## RangerDude

I AM using VESA framebuffer. There are no other options that match a savage card in the kernel. And I know VESA is damn slow when I try it in X. It gives me like 5-10 fps in mplayer.

A damn shame there isn't any savage specific acceleration for framebuffer.

Anyone know where I can get more information about framebuffer? Like how it actually works and why it's so slow, when X can be much faster- I would like to know.

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## mpsii

FYI... the Savage 4 is a POS, gaming or otherwise. I have gotten better performance out of my ATI 8MB AIW card that I ever got in my uncle's 32mb Savage card. And, that's using vesafb on a PII 266 with 96MB RAM.

It didn't matter, Gentoo, RedHat, Debian, FreeBSD, Win98SE, Win2K, WinXP, Suse... That card is crud. Sorry, no info for you on improvement, just my .02 on that dang card...   :Evil or Very Mad: 

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## RangerDude

Thanks for sharing the bad news.   :Rolling Eyes: 

I never though a fast 3d card was important in my notebook- but that was before framebuffer...

Guess there's nothing todo but to hope for the micraculus [ ]Savage in kernelconfig or just buy another notebook (no way- this one is new).   :Wink: 

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## PowerFactor

In the mean time, if all your looking for is more resolution in the console there are higher res text modes than the default 80x25.  If you selected video mode selection when you compiled your kernel you can boot with vga=ask to get a list. Then pick the one you want and use it.  IMO all the text modes look like crap compared to the framebuffer, but they are fast.

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## neurolabs

if somebody wants to try SVGATextMode. I have created an ebuild:

https://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=19485

If you do, I would like feedback...

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