Re: newbie questions for amd64

[Kyle Rose <krose@krose.org>]

>  I remember they made some fuss about PCI-X parts a few months ago
>  (was it for SIGGRAPH?).  I hope they mean real PCI-X and not this,
>  because if I understand you correctly, this is a plain old PCI
>  device, and that's worse than AGP 1x.  And this card worked fine
>  for DVD playback on a dual Athlon machine?  Let's see... 33 MHz @
>  32 bits is 132 MB/s, which is an order of magnitude above DVD
>  requirements.  Hmm...  maybe, as long as you have DMA...

I think I already mentioned that I had the same two cards working fine
in a dual Athlon machine just before I got the Opteron.  (If I didn't
mention it, then apologies for the confusion.)  33MHz PCI is *way*
more than fast enough for DVD playback.

Besides, I finally achieved most of the result I've been looking for.
Note this message I just posted to the nVidia forum:

     Aha! More information, and some success

     Unfortunately, it's with the open source driver.

     I managed to get DVD playback working on both screens in dual
     head mode with the open source nv driver from XFree86-4.3. It
     takes a bit of massaging: whenever I first boot, I need to
     initialize both cards by bringing up X with the nvidia
     proprietary driver, but then I just quit X and reload with the
     open source driver, and all is well: fast 2D performance on both
     screens.

     I think this pretty much settles it: there's a problem with the
     nVidia driver, not with the hardware or with the kernel.

     Cheers,
     Kyle

>  Actually it's because of the insane upload rates (geometry, textures,
>  whatever) of modern games (and some of us, non-gamers), some of which
>  want _more_ than AGP 4x (1 GB/s).

Understandable, but my gaming needs are much more modest, and trading
off 2D performance for slightly-better 3D performance is simply not
acceptable.

Cheers,
Kyle