Re: [gentoo-user] Abysmally slow 2D performance using proprietary Nvidia driver on dual Xeon system (EMT64)
On 11/11/05, Greg Bur [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Well I tried without hyperthreading and without SMP and the results only got worse. Now I am beginning to look at how I compiled things such as glibc and xorg-x11. I already ran the undo process for prelink and now I think I shall recompile glibc without nptl support to see if that makes any difference. I am really treading water here but I have been forced to read up on my hardware a lot more. I really wish I had taken better notes. Apparently I have fixed the problem now. I ended up updating to a newer kernel and used the ~amd64 nvidia drivers and everything is working as it should. I am still unsure what the real problem was assuming there even was a problem. At any rate, I appreciate the advice everyone offered. -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Abysmally slow 2D performance using proprietary Nvidia driver on dual Xeon system (EMT64)
On 11/8/05, A. Khattri [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Mon, 7 Nov 2005, Greg Bur wrote: Dual 3.0Ghz Xeon 2GB RAM 128MB GeForce 6600GT Audigy 2 soundcard free -t -o -m output: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ~ $ free -t -o -m total used free shared buffers cached Mem: 2009 1505 503 0 440 584 Swap: 1953 2 1950 Total: 3962 1508 2454According to the output of free it looks like despite having 2Gb of RAM, your machine is swapping to disk. That will slow down your machine too. It definitely is not an issue with swapping to disk. For some reason X is causing a high CPU load and it acts like its only using one processor. If I switch back to the open source driver the load seems to be balanced across all 4 processors. To make things even more interesting if I open glxgears while using the Nvidia driver the problem can be temporarily alleviated. The CPU load drops back to normal and the system is much more responsive. The open source driver is working fine for now but I sure would like to know what it is that I'm doing to cause the Nvidia driver to perform so poorly.
Re: [gentoo-user] Abysmally slow 2D performance using proprietary Nvidia driver on dual Xeon system (EMT64)
On Thu, 10 Nov 2005, Greg Bur wrote: It definitely is not an issue with swapping to disk. For some reason X is causing a high CPU load and it acts like its only using one processor. If I switch back to the open source driver the load seems to be balanced across all 4 processors. To make things even more interesting if I open glxgears while using the Nvidia driver the problem can be temporarily alleviated. The CPU load drops back to normal and the system is much more responsive. The open source driver is working fine for now but I sure would like to know what it is that I'm doing to cause the Nvidia driver to perform so poorly. Maybe the Nvidia drivers dont play well with threading and/or SMP? -- -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Abysmally slow 2D performance using proprietary Nvidia driver on dual Xeon system (EMT64)
On 11/10/05, A. Khattri [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Thu, 10 Nov 2005, Greg Bur wrote: It definitely is not an issue with swapping to disk. For some reason X is causing a high CPU load and it acts like its only using one processor. If I switch back to the open source driver the load seems to be balanced across all 4 processors. To make things even more interesting if I open glxgears while using the Nvidia driver the problem can be temporarily alleviated. The CPU load drops back to normal and the system is much more responsive. The open source driver is working fine for now but I sure would like to know what it is that I'm doing to cause the Nvidia driver to perform so poorly.Maybe the Nvidia drivers dont play well with threading and/or SMP? That's my guess that this point. If I get the inspiration tonight I'll try disabling hyperthreading in the BIOS and also recompiling the kernel without SMP support. What has me beating my head against the wall so much is not the poor performance but the fact that one out of every 10 or 15 attempts the driver works as expected. I suppose if something positive is to be made of this it is that I will be more reluctant to play any games because I will have to reboot into Windows. gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Abysmally slow 2D performance using proprietary Nvidia driver on dual Xeon system (EMT64)
On 11/10/05, Greg Bur [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Maybe the Nvidia drivers dont play well with threading and/or SMP? That's my guess that this point. If I get the inspiration tonight I'll try disabling hyperthreading in the BIOS and also recompiling the kernel without SMP support. What has me beating my head against the wall so much is not the poor performance but the fact that one out of every 10 or 15 attempts the driver works as expected. I suppose if something positive is to be made of this it is that I will be more reluctant to play any games because I will have to reboot into Windows. Well I tried without hyperthreading and without SMP and the results only got worse. Now I am beginning to look at how I compiled things such as glibc and xorg-x11. I already ran the undo process for prelink and now I think I shall recompile glibc without nptl support to see if that makes any difference. I am really treading water here but I have been forced to read up on my hardware a lot more. I really wish I had taken better notes.
Re: [gentoo-user] Abysmally slow 2D performance using proprietary Nvidia driver on dual Xeon system (EMT64)
On Mon, 7 Nov 2005, Greg Bur wrote: Dual 3.0Ghz Xeon 2GB RAM 128MB GeForce 6600GT Audigy 2 soundcard free -t -o -m output: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ~ $ free -t -o -m total used free shared buffers cached Mem: 2009 1505 503 0 440 584 Swap: 1953 2 1950 Total: 3962 1508 2454 According to the output of free it looks like despite having 2Gb of RAM, your machine is swapping to disk. That will slow down your machine too. -- -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Abysmally slow 2D performance using proprietary Nvidia driver on dual Xeon system (EMT64)
However, after about 10 minutes the system load on one processor sharply increases to 100% when performing a simple task such as clicking on a button in Firefox, launching a new gnome-terminal window or clicking on the Applications menu at the top of the screen. I have not understood if the system load increases to 100% during the action of clicking and only during the action or if it goes up and remains stable. In the second case you should launch top from a shell and see what process chews up your processor. m. -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Abysmally slow 2D performance using proprietary Nvidia driver on dual Xeon system (EMT64)
On 11/7/05, brullo nulla [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: However, after about 10 minutes the system load on one processor sharply increases to 100% when performing a simple task such as clicking on a button in Firefox, launching a new gnome-terminal window or clicking on the Applications menu at the top of the screen.I have not understood if the system load increases to 100% during theaction of clicking and only during the action or if it goes up andremains stable. My apologies for not making this more clear. The system load spike begins with the click and it hovers at or near 100% until the new task (opening a program, displaying a menu, etc) has completed. Even moving a window causes this to happen and the load only jumps on one processor, the other is idle or nearly so. When the nvidia driver is working correctly (assuming the driver is to blame) the load seems to be balanced evenly across both processors. In the second case you should launch top from a shell and see what process chews up your processor.m. top is telling me that X is the guilty party. I can renice X to a lower priority and get some responsiveness back but again, there are times when everything performs as expected. The problem is intermittant although it happens more often than not. --gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Abysmally slow 2D performance using proprietary Nvidia driver on dual Xeon system (EMT64)
On 11/7/05, A. Khattri [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Mon, 7 Nov 2005, Greg Bur wrote: My apologies for not making this more clear. The system load spike begins with the click and it hovers at or near 100% until the new task (opening a program, displaying a menu, etc) has completed. Even moving a window causes this to happen and the load only jumps on one processor, the other is idle or nearly so. When the nvidia driver is working correctly (assuming the driver is to blame) the load seems to be balanced evenly across both processors.What are the specs of the machine? How much RAM when running X? (free -t-o -m in an xterm will tell you). How much free disk space? Dualprocessor machine? If so, SMP is enabled in your kernel? Is X using software rendering? Dual 3.0Ghz Xeon 2GB RAM 128MB GeForce 6600GT Audigy 2 soundcard free -t -o -m output: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ~ $ free -t -o -m total used free shared buffers cached Mem: 2009 1505 503 0 440 584 Swap: 1953 2 1950 Total: 3962 1508 2454 SMP is enabled in the kernel as well as hyperthreading in the BIOS. As for X using software rendering, to be completely honest I'm not sure and my guts are telling me that is what is happening here. I believe I have enabled all of the appropriate options in the kernel as well as /etc/X11/xorg.conf Many variables here. gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
[gentoo-user] Abysmally slow 2D performance using proprietary Nvidia driver on dual Xeon system (EMT64)
Greetings, I have been trying to fix a somewhat puzzling and annoying problem over the last couple of months that has me absolutely stumped. I have been unable to isolate the cause of the problem and it appears to be intermittant at best. The issue rears its ugly head as follows: This is on a dual boot workstation with a Supermicro X6DAL-XTG motherboard, dual 3.0GHz Xeon processors and a GeForce 6600GT video card. The system has worked splendidly since I purchased it back in June with one exception: occasionally when rebooting the system to return to Linux from Windows the 2D performance in Gnome is terrible. The problem does not appear immediately nor does it happen every time. Initially gdmgreeter appears as it should and I enter my login credentials. The Gnome desktop loads quickly and as I start to work applications load normally. However, after about 10 minutes the system load on one processor sharply increases to 100% when performing a simple task such as clicking on a button in Firefox, launching a new gnome-terminal window or clicking on the Applications menu at the top of the screen. The response time between clicking and the menu appearing for instance is anywhere from 2-5 seconds. There does not seem to be any quick fix for this which is what has me puzzled. If I close all of my applications, log out and log back in the problem resets. Rebooting the system proves ineffective as well. I have tried various driver revisions, currently using 1.0.6629-r4, and several different kernels to no avail. I have tried both enabling and disabling the RenderAccel option in /etc/X11/xorg.conf and that does not appear to make any difference. Adjusting the NvAGP option does nothing nor does enabling the Composite option however the system seems more responsive when the Composite option is enabled. Switching to the nv driver resolves the problem and the system remains snappy with no immediate problems. Occasionally I will begin to get artifacts on the display with the nv driver and then the screen goes entirely white but switching to the console using ctrl + alt + F1 usually resolves this problem. I would appreciate any insight anyone could provide as to what I am overlooking. I have walked through the Gentoo Nvidia documentation numerous times and I have consulted the README document included with the nvidia driver. I am completely stumped. Currently I am using 2.6.9-gentoo-r9 for a kernel with the 1.0.6629-r4 version of the nvidia driver. As I said before I have tried several kernel and driver revisions to no avail. As a sidebar, 3D performance seems to be as it should be which puzzles me further. Again, I appreciate any advice anyone may offer. Please see the following links for the last xorg.conf I tried as well as my kernel config and make.conf http://pizon.org/xorg.conf http://pizon.org/kernel-config http://pizon.org/make.conf
