Re: nvidia driver ( GeForce FX 5500 gives 10fps)

[Michal Hajek <hajek1@karlov.mff.cuni.cz>]

Hello list,

after some more experiments I have discovered following explanation for
my low fps rate.

With nvidia kernel module and with "nvidia" in driver section of
XF86Config-4 as well with Load "glx" and _without_ Load "dri" and
_without_ Load "GLcore" :
If I run setiathome and glxgears at the same time, I get 10 fps. But if
I kill setiathome and run only glxgears, fps immediately jums on
2500 or even 4000 at times. 

>From /proc/cpuinfo -
..
model name      : AMD Athlon(tm) 64 Processor 3000+
stepping        : 0
cpu MHz         : 1808.838
cache size      : 512 KB
..

Now I thought that it is the hardware on the graphics card which should
take all the load for 3D (ie. glxgears) not the cpu.  So either/both I
was wrong with this concept or something is wrong with my setup. 
Can anyone please help me to clarify this issue? 

So after a moment a came to the idea to test wheather nv driver would
give different results. So I have changed my XF86Config-4 in two
respects. 
First I have replaced "nvidia" with "nv" in driver section and than I
have also uncomented 
Load "GLcore" and
Load "dri"
while at the same time I have removed (read commented out) 
Load "glx" line.

But now I am not able to run glxgears at all, since it complains about 
"Xlib:  extension "GLX" missing on display ":0.0".".

So I have searched in the /var/log/XFree86.0.log and found these lines:
...
(II) LoadModule: "GLcore"
(WW) Warning, couldn't open module GLcore
(II) UnloadModule: "GLcore"
(EE) Failed to load module "GLcore" (module does not exist, 0)
...

Naturaly I have continued my research with the command:
$locate GLcore             
/usr/lib/libGLcore.so.1
/usr/lib/libGLcore.so.1.0.7174
/usr/X11R6/lib/nvidia/libGLcore.a.xlibmesa
$

so now I see there is something strange about this. 
I have:

$ dpkg -l *xlibmesa*
||/ Name           Version        Description
+++-==============-==============-============================================
ii  xlibmesa-dri   4.3.0.dfsg.1-1 Mesa 3D graphics library modules [XFree86]
ii  xlibmesa-gl    4.3.0.dfsg.1-1 Mesa 3D graphics library [XFree86]
ii  xlibmesa-gl-de 4.3.0.dfsg.1-1 Mesa 3D graphics library development files [
ii  xlibmesa-glu   4.3.0.dfsg.1-1 Mesa OpenGL utility library [XFree86]
ii  xlibmesa-glu-d 4.3.0.dfsg.1-1 Mesa OpenGL utility library development file

$ dpkg -l *nvidia*
||/ Name           Version        Description
+++-==============-==============-============================================
ii  nvidia-glx     1.0.7174-3     NVIDIA binary XFree86 4.x driver
ii  nvidia-glx-dev 1.0.7174-3     NVIDIA binary XFree86 4.x driver development
ii  nvidia-kernel- 1.0.7174-3+10. NVIDIA binary kernel module for Linux 2.6.11
ii  nvidia-kernel- 1.0.7174-3+VHS NVIDIA binary kernel module for Linux 2.6.12
ii  nvidia-kernel- 1.0.7174-1     NVIDIA binary kernel module common files
ii  nvidia-kernel- 1.0.7174-3     NVIDIA binary kernel module source
ii  nvidia-setting 1.0+3-1        Tool of configuring the NVIDIA graphics driv

I wonder what is the reason for having files in
/usr/X11R6/lib/nvidia/

ls -la /usr/X11R6/lib/nvidia/ 
drwxr-xr-x  2 root root    4096 2005-06-06 08:15 .
drwxr-xr-x  5 root root    4096 2005-06-30 08:17 ..
-rw-r--r--  1 root root 1110294 2005-06-02 00:21 libGL.a.xlibmesa
-rw-r--r--  1 root root 3050952 2005-06-02 00:21 libGLcore.a.xlibmesa
lrwxrwxrwx  1 root root      12 2005-06-06 08:15 libGL.so.xlibmesa ->
libGL.so.1.2
lrwxrwxrwx  1 root root      12 2005-06-06 08:15 libGL.so.1.xlibmesa ->
libGL.so.1.2
-rw-r--r--  1 root root  633776 2005-06-02 00:21 libGL.so.1.2.xlibmesa
-rw-r--r--  1 root root  750072 2005-06-02 00:21 libglx.a.xlibmesa

Big thanks to everyone who had read through the email so far and even
bigger to those who are still willing to reply with comments or
suggestions... :))

Best regards
Michal