Linux and G450 success story

[villerk]

This is a story of how I finally got my G450 work well enough in Linux.

When I bought my G450 (last Spring) I had only XFree86 4.0.1 installed, as I had RedHat 7.0. I first tried to patch the sources to 4.0.3 and install that, but for some reason the source never compiled OK. Then I asked my friend to download me XFree86 4.0.3 RPM's from ftp.redhat.com (he has ADSL, I have a 56k modem, so...). Unfortunately only the main package worked, so I had to download some packages myself (freetype, XFree86-libs, etc.). When I finally had them installed, I started X and waited for something fabulous. I disappointed. Yes, 2D was working extremely good and all, but where's the card's 3D power?! So, I spent my summer mostly outside watching birds fly by.

Then when I got back to school (where we have T1 or such) I instantly noticed that there's a new X version! 4.1.0!! I downloaded it with extreme rush and got it working yesterday (Sunday). At first nothing seemed to have speeded up, glxgears was showing some 60 fps or so. Then I examined /var/log/X.log (whatever) and found out that dri wasn't enabled... okay so I do "insmod mga; insmod agpgart" and start X again. I expected only about 10-20 fps improvement and what does glxgears do? Run like hell!! Some 400+ fps!! I was so amazed that I installed Quake3 and played that for some time, and I realised that it runs even faster than in Windows!

So all ends well? Not exactly. I've read that someone has had almost 1200+ fps, with a normal G400, so what's the problem with my config? I noticed that "Option "AGPMode2x"" has no effect (at least that's what the logfile told me), MTRR's are enabled and in use and I've tried the original mga_drv.o (4.1.0), 4.0.3 mga_drv.o and 4.0.3 mga_hal_drv.o. What else can I do? Although it is swell that Q3 runs fast in Linux, it would be nice to have it run even faster as there're probably some bottlenecks left.

My system:
AMD K6-2/500
256 MB PC-100
MS-5169 (ALi Aladdin V)
Quantum Fireball EX6.4A (6.4 GB), Maxtor DiamondMAX VL20 (20.4 GB)
SB64PCI
Winbond W89C940 (10MB/s)
Matrox Millenium G450 AGP 32MB DH DDR
HP9110i
RedHat 7.0, Windows 2000, Windows 98, BeOS 5.0 Personal

Nearly everything is enabled in BIOS (concerning speed).

If you need some logfiles, just tell me and I'll put them here (or to my website).

[leech]

I'm kind of surprised Quake 3 runs fast. It sounds to me like you don't even have hardware acceleration loaded. When DRI isn't enabled on my Marvel G400, gears runs at about 300 fps, with DRI enabled it runs at about 950. That's without AGP 2x or 4x set. Xfree86 4.1.0 changed that setting, it now should be 'Option "AGPMode" "2x" I think. I could be wrong on that... What it sounds like to me is that your DRI from your kernel is for the pre-4.1.0, go to www.xfree86.org/~alanh for the source code to the DRI for 4.1.0. Good luck.

Leech

[rugger]

Hmmm

Don't forget the G450 is a fair bit slower than the G400 (because of its 64-bit DDR ram, instead of a 128bit bus). Also, how fast is your compuer.

Anyway, congrats on your accomplishment. Xfree 4.1 is very cool, and it includes an extension called Xvideo, that exposes the overlay capibilites of the video card for games and vides

[kewlcat]

Normal!

Those numbers are normal. I get ~1200 fps with my G400, and ~700-800 with my G450. This is with a processor almost twice your speed and with a much better FPU.

As you said, you are getting better FPS in Linux than in Windows. Sounds like everything is just fine.

Oh, download TuxRacer for a blast!

-Rahul

[villerk]

leech: Yes, that works, I'm now in 2x mode, but I don't see a difference!! But, if I disable DRI (yes, it's enabled) in glxgears I get about 60 fps (pretty lame, huh?). I have kernel 2.4.8, but if that's too old I can download 2.4.9...

You can now view my XFree86.0.log and XF86Config-4. I noticed it says something write-combining error.

BTW I'm using matrox_fb the same time as X. If I have hardware cursor enabled in both, sometimes the X cursor turns into a black or white square. Switching to console and back helps, but I have to use software cursor for matrox_fb (I can't stand flickering cursor!).

[leech]

Allright, I guess I forgot to look at your system's speed. I have a p3-850. Actually I keep having lock up problems in linux now. it's completely random. I think it started ever since I updated my bios on my Asus CUSL2 board from 1007 to 1008, it's now at 1009 and still it will lock up every so often, complete lock up so that I have to hit the reset button. I tried out several kernel versions and several different distros (including a modified Storm Linux, Redhat 7.1 and Mandrake 8 (modified) and JBlinux. I have JBlinux installed right now, I quite like some of the things they've done with it. I would use Mandrake 8.1b1, but they still haven't fixed the problem with AbiWord's Spellchecker. It works in every other Distro I've used, but quite frankly, I like Mandrake because I can set everything else up in it quite easily, whereas my printer doesn't like to be set up in anything else that easily.
Anyhow, sorry if this sounds like babble, it's too early in the morning still, and being sick doesn't help. Laters.

Leech

[rugger]

MTRR

villerk,

Your error occurs because you haven't enabled MTRR in your kernel.

Enable it and recompile your kernel. You will get a small performance boost from it :-)

(MTRR is in the CPU configuration menu)

[villerk]

I don't know exactly why it complained about write-combining but when I recompiled the kernel with agp-gart and mga as modules it stopped saying that nasty bit. And really, the MTRR's have been enabled since I first installed my really first Linux distr. (which was RedHat 6.2). I'm not that lame.

Well, amazing things happen: if I "enable" mga_hal_drv.o and use 16bit colors, glxgears reports the same fps as without hal, but if I use 24bit colors with 32bit DefaultFbBpp (whatever it is) => 32 bit colors, it's faster than the 16bit mode!! 418 fps, while in 16bit it's "only" 380 fps. Weird, totally.

I'm also kind of new to Linux gaming as my previous graphics device was Intel i740 and it lacked support for nearly everything. I started playing UT and noticed that the music restarts after a while of playing and it's quite annoying. Also the keyboard sometimes "locks" up, e.g. when I press strafe left -button it suddenly decides to shoot... (?) any help? Anyway it's almost as fast as in Windows, which is good.

[rugger]

glxgears is a lame benchmark

villerk,

There could be a number of reasons 32-bit scores better, including:

1) You cpu is too slow to max out the fill-rate of the video card, which is very likely
2) Mesa (the opengl library the matrox drivers are based off) drivers perform slightly better in 32-bit colour.
3) glxgears doesn't put much load on the graphics card, rather displaying the performance of the cpu. On my Geforce-DDR, I get about 1000 fps in glxgears (32-bit colour) on my duron 700, less than the G400 on a P3-850.

I still have the i740 as well. It was a fairly decent 3d card, but it had terrible 2d output, but I keep it for when I want to play final fantasy (since it works better on it then either my matrox or nvidia cards). I simply install it when I need to.

Maybe mtrr needed to be enabled before the AGP and MGA drivers were loaded, and when they were compiled in, mtrr wasn't initalized before the agp and mga drivers.

[rugger]

glxgears is a lame benchmark

villerk,

There could be a number of reasons 32-bit scores better, including:

1) You cpu is too slow to max out the fill-rate of the video card, which is very likely
2) Mesa (the opengl library the matrox drivers are based off) drivers perform slightly better in 32-bit colour.
3) glxgears doesn't put much load on the graphics card, rather displaying the performance of the cpu. On my Geforce-DDR, I get about 1000 fps in glxgears (32-bit colour) on my duron 700, less than the G400 on a P3-850.

I still have the i740 as well. It was a fairly decent 3d card, but it had terrible 2d output, but I keep it for when I want to play final fantasy (since it works better on it then either my matrox or nvidia cards). I simply install it when I need to.

Maybe mtrr needed to be enabled before the AGP and MGA drivers were loaded, and when they were compiled in, mtrr wasn't initalized before the agp and mga drivers.

[villerk]

Yes, my CPU is slow. This is how found it out: if there's anything else going on when I run glxgears, there's an extremely noticeable slowdown, about 200 fps (!). That "anything else" means like compiling something on the background, moving the mouse etc. But, I have promised myself not to buy a new computer/mobo+cpu in the next three years' time (don't ask why ) I'll just have to live with it.

Just for a comparison glgears in Windows 2000 reports only 390 fps, so Linux is faster!

[leech]

Where did you find gears for windows? I'd like to see how it runs on mine. Thanks.

Leech

[villerk]

Where's the ****in' glxgears?

Can't remember, but of course you can have it. I'll put it into my homepage into the "murc" folder. Just don't expect it to be there right now. I'll put it there maybe today, maybe next Monday or so.

[villerk]

(I have to remove that signature !! )

[villerk]

OpenGL demos for Windows

Okay, it's there! Help yourselves.