Bug#234388: xserver-xfree86: [tdfx] X server refuses to use DRI at 1280x960 resolution
There was talk in the DRI weekly meating about tdfx. There is definatly
interested non-DRI developers, however motivation is the biggest thing
holding tdfx back. Alan Cox has reportedly been working on the voodoo 1&2
series drivers. If there is consumer intrest then programers might be
more likely to acctualy do the work. I know I get a jolt when sombody
says tuxnes is the best emulator thay could find.
--- "Mike A. Harris" <mharris@www.linux.org.uk> wrote:
> On Mon, 1 Mar 2004, Michel [ISO-8859-1] Dänzer wrote:
>
> >> > It looks to me like the error message you're complaining of was not
> >> > added in 4.3.0.
> >>
> >> I don't see anything that is obviously causing this to be triggered.
> >> However, I am unsure about how this code fits in the wider
> implementation.
> >
> >This is due to the patch
> 035_tdfx_disable_dri_on_16mb_with_highres.diff,
> >which contains the comment:
> >
> > /* Disable DRI if using a 16Mb card with virtual resolution higher
> >than
> > * 1024x768 because DRI does not have enough memory available for
> >textures
> > * at higher resolutions, and will not operate correctly.
> > */
> >
> >See also http://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=38717 .
> >
> >Now, this is an odd explanation; 16 MB should be plenty enough for the
> >DRI at say 1280x1024x16. Mike, do you have a better explanation for
> this
> >limit?
>
> It's been quite a long time now since I created that patch. I
> was receiving bug reports of DRI enabled tdfx configurations
> crashing randomly when running 3D software, usually video games.
> The problem didn't usually occur instantly, but would occur over
> a short period of time, and usually only with rather 3D intensive
> games like Quake III and the like.
>
> When the games were played at a lower resolution, the problems
> went away. Research into the problem, discovered that it was due
> to the majority of the video memory being given to the
> framebuffer, and starving texture memory. I do not remember the
> gory details, but it should be in dri-devel archives from 1.5-2
> years ago.
>
> At the time, people proposed that the problem could be solved by
> modifying the tdfx code to work better in low memory (read as
> high-resolution) situations. I don't believe anyone ever cared
> enough about the problem to do that work though, or if it did get
> done, it certainly has slipped past me unnoticed. ;o)
>
> For our (Red Hat) purposes however, I was more concerned with
> desktop stability than the ability of 3Dfx hardware users to play
> Quake III at high resolution and crash their machine. My
> solution was to patch our driver to disable configurations known
> to cause crashes or other instabilities in certain circumstances,
> and to remove the patch should the real problem ever be fixed in
> upstream sources down the line. The patch remains in my current
> rpm packages for 4.3.0, and I believe many other distributions
> have borrowed the patch also to prevent the instability problems.
>
> Has the tdfx driver been fixed so that memory starvation isn't an
> issue any more? If so, it's probably a good idea to drop this
> patch nowadays. I don't have time to do a runtime test
> personally and bash the driver with some intense 3D. Could
> someone else do that perhaps?
>
>
> --
> Mike A. Harris
>
>
>
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