Tuesday, April 29, 2008

gtkperf -c 500 -a on the 3650

gtkperf -c 500 -a
GtkPerf 0.40 - Starting testing: Tue Apr 29 10:56:16 2008

GtkEntry - time: 0.09
GtkComboBox - time: 4.44
GtkComboBoxEntry - time: 3.42
GtkSpinButton - time: 0.86
GtkProgressBar - time: 1.01
GtkToggleButton - time: 1.44
GtkCheckButton - time: 1.21
GtkRadioButton - time: 1.43
GtkTextView - Add text - time: 5.38
GtkTextView - Scroll - time: 3.75
GtkDrawingArea - Lines - time: 1.45
GtkDrawingArea - Circles - time: 318.11
GtkDrawingArea - Text - time: 45.02
GtkDrawingArea - Pixbufs - time: 4.13
---
Total time: 391.73

Other than the Circles and Text results, this is one of the fastest results I've seen on my machine.

Test machine: 2.4 Ghz Q6600, 4GB RAM, Asus P5e-VM motherboard, Asus 3650 Silent Magic, fglrx 8.476, Fedora 8

Video Cards and Fedora 8

So as you know I've been having some issues with the Intel G35 video chip and Linux. So after thinking about it, I figured I should just get a real video card anyway. So I first ordered a Sapphire 2600xt card from NewEgg. Got the fglrx drivers from Livna and things were going well. Card is fast and responds well and the drivers even work ok. One problem however, the fan on the card is super loud. I have a small and quiet machine and the fan on the video card could be heard in the next room. Totally unacceptable for the goal of a quiet PC. So I did something I hardly ever do and I returned the card.

Next, I decided to stick with an ATI chip since I got burned on my last nVidia card (GeForce 3 Ti200). nVidia dropped support for that chip and basically turned a decent video card into junk. So I decided on the Asus 3650 Silent Magic card. Now specwise this card is a little slower, however in my testing with Extreme TuxRacer the card actually gives a better FPS than the 2600xt. SecondLife, the other big 3d app I test with still gives a great picture. The added benefit of the card... 0 noise, sure it takes up a second slot in my machine, but the board I have has just about everything I need on it and there are only 4 slots anyway. The card takes the PCIx16 and PCIx1 slots. I have a PCIx1 and a PCI slot free on the machine. About the only thing I could think of using the slots for would be a video capture card. And I think an external USB one, might be a better choice. My only concern at this point is the extra heat in the card from the video board. I might be able to move around some cables inside to help the airflow. I'm hoping that ATI will enable powerplay in the drivers for the board.

glxgears: ~6600fps
quake3: 90fps (it never goes above or below and I'm running 1280x1024 with triliniar filtering)
etracer: ~150fps
secondlife: recommended settings (bar is on level 3 of 4)

I am disappointed in the Intel video support since the motherboard I picked up, I specifically got for the G35 chip on it. So I could have saved a couple of bucks and got a motherboard with fewer features. I will admit that I am pleased with the Asus product's I've gotten. The motherboard is an Asus P5E-VM HDMI.

So I'll do some more testing with this video card and let you know how it goes.

Thursday, April 17, 2008

Frustrations with the Intel G35 chip

Well, I think I've had about enough with the Intel G35 chip under Linux. I've installed drivers from git and used the prepackaged drivers with Fedora are full of problems as well. So I've ordered a ATI 2600XT card and am gonna try it with the fglrx driver. I'm currently running fglrx on my Thinkpad and the 3d experience is pretty good. So hopefully the free drivers will get there. But after 2 months of problems with video issues, I've had enough and gonna try another chipset.

Monday, April 14, 2008

Intel G35 chipset on Linux

Holy cow I've been having some issues with the Intel G35 on linux. Especially with 3d code and screen corruption and crashing. After a lot of git pulls I finally have a setup that actually works to my expectations.

As of today I did the following

pulled drm from git, compiled and installed and thing compiled and installed the linux-core subdirectory as well

pulled mesa from git master compiled and installed

pulled xserver from git master and compiled and installed with these options
./configure --prefix=/usr --with-mesa-source=/home/kdekorte/cvs/mesa/ --with-dri -driver-path=/usr/lib/dri --enable-builtin-fonts

pulled xf86-drv-intel from the 'origin/intel-batchbuffer' branch and then compiled and installed with these options

./configure --prefix=/usr --with-xserver-source=/home/kdekorte/cvs/xserver

After all that googleearth, etracer and quake3 all work as expected. And reasonably fast. Quake gives me 90fps and for some reason I think it could give more. etracer is in the 20-25 fps range.

Thursday, April 10, 2008

history meme

Not that anyone cares...

$ history|awk '{a[$2]++ } END{for(i in a){print a[i] " " i}}'|sort -rn|head
187 cd
90 src/gnome-mplayer
87 ls
84 sudo
57 make
40 rpm
34 vi
34 exit
27 more
26 git