On Mon, 11 Mar 2002, Raymond wrote: > Dear Lionel and Newbie List: > > Enclosed below is my XF86Config-4 file. I am not skilled in reading the > file, but it does imply that there is acceleration is on. I am not > apparently seeing it in action. Is there some simple way to debug or test > the acceleration of the card? Thanks for the questions from this Linux > newbie. [snip] > > > I have RedHat 7.2 and have installed the RPMs for XFree86 4.2.0. My > > system is based on AMD > > > K6/2-400 and runs reasonably well. > > > I am using the savage driver and can use X11 without difficulties > > (now). My questions relate to > > > the "acceleration" aspect of the driver. > > > What does that include? Although this is not a world class video > > accelerator, it is ok for my > > > needs. > > > > > > When I try to use a program that requires acceleration, for example, > > a game called "chromium" > > > included with the RH 7.2 distribution, > > > it crawls, with no evidence of 3D acceleration what-so-ever. [snip]
Hi Raymond, Basically you are out of luck: what will happen with games like Chromium and TuxRacer is that they will run, but very slowly! This is because your CPU is used to do all the OpenGL calculations instead of feeding that work to the GPU on your card. This is because the company that made your GPU (S3) won't release the technical specifications of that GPU to the people that write the Free drivers for XF86. If you type: [raymond@raymachine]$ glxinfo it will return a line (among many others) similar to: direct rendering: No This means that there is no OpenGL support available through the Direct Rendering Infrastructure(which is, essentially XF864). Currently there is NO 3D acceleration of S3's Savage chips available via XF86. I am not sure if XiGraphics' proprietary, closed, non-free drivers provide OpenGL acceleration. _The_ source for all information about S3 chips is the amazing Tim Roberts who writes the savage drivers for XF86 http://www.probo.com/timr/savage40.html , he makes reference to the fact that at one stage there was development going on for OpenGL drivers with the Utah-GLX group. However that appears to be defunct. Perhaps you could send a polite email to S3 requesting that they work on this, or else (preferably) sponsor someone at XF86 and supply them documents to write an accelerated driver. Savage4 and Savage2000 chips would be _VERY_ competitive if they had 3D acceleration available to Linux users. S3 make their own closed, in-house drivers available here: http://www.s3graphics.com/ Cheers, -Oisin _______________________________________________ Newbie mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** To unsubscribe , or change message options, see: http://XFree86.Org/mailman/listinfo/newbie
