Arch Linux

vanja_z

Member

Registered: 2012-04-11

Posts: 43

[SOLVED] Nouveau 3D acceleration lacking

Hello friends, long time arch user, first time poster here.

I have recently started experimenting with the Nouveau driver and am unable to get any 3D acceleration in games (I think). I only really play Quake Live regularly at this stage but obviously good performance in other games is desirable.

I have installed xf86-video-nouveau nouveau-dri and lib32-nouveau-dri with the hope that the latter two packages would provide 3D support in games. I have added 'nouveau' to MODULES in /etc/mkinitcpio.conf and regenerated the image. The driver appears to be functioning fine apart from appealing performance in games. I gave tested Quake Live at 20 fps with all settings as low as possible and Xonotic barely struggles to get 5 fps with everything on minimum.

My system details:
OS: Arch x86_64
CPU: AMD FX 8120
RAM: 8 GB
GPU: Nvidia GTX 275 896 MB

The proprietary Nvidia driver sits at 125 fps with all settings on maximum for Quake Live and would be higher apart from it being capped at 125. With Xonotic, I have the settings set fairly high (but not maximum) so that it maintains 120 fps consistently. To complicate matters, I have previously had proprietary Catalyst drivers installed using a HD6950 but I went back to Nvidia recently in hopes of using the free software driver.

I get the exact same performance regardless of whether nouveau-dri is installed or not leading me to believe that package is doing nothing.

Any help will be much appreciated.

EDIT:
Also just tested OpenArena and getting around 10 fps on low.

EDIT 2:
FIXED, need to add your user to the video group.

Last edited by vanja_z (2012-04-11 15:16:24)

wonder

Developer

From: Bucharest, Romania

Registered: 2006-07-05

Posts: 5,941

Website

Re: [SOLVED] Nouveau 3D acceleration lacking

nouveau doesn't really have proper support for your card.
http://nouveau.freedesktop.org/wiki/FeatureMatrix

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Give what you have. To someone, it may be better than you dare to think.

vanja_z

Member

Registered: 2012-04-11

Posts: 43

Re: [SOLVED] Nouveau 3D acceleration lacking

I don't understand, I had already looked at that table and since my card is in the NV50 family it seems to be the best supported family. Can you please clarify?

Last edited by vanja_z (2012-04-11 13:58:18)

Gusar

Member

Registered: 2009-08-25

Posts: 3,607

Re: [SOLVED] Nouveau 3D acceleration lacking

Post the output of

glxinfo | grep OpenGL

vanja_z

Member

Registered: 2012-04-11

Posts: 43

Re: [SOLVED] Nouveau 3D acceleration lacking

OpenGL vendor string: VMware, Inc.
OpenGL renderer string: Gallium 0.4 on llvmpipe (LLVM 0x300)
OpenGL version string: 2.1 Mesa 8.0.2
OpenGL shading language version string: 1.20
OpenGL extensions:

Gusar

Member

Registered: 2009-08-25

Posts: 3,607

Re: [SOLVED] Nouveau 3D acceleration lacking

Yep, you're using the software renderer.

Are you in the video group? Also, post /var/log/Xorg.0.log and the output of dmesg.

vanja_z

Member

Registered: 2012-04-11

Posts: 43

Re: [SOLVED] Nouveau 3D acceleration lacking

Boy is my face red,
Added myself to the video group and it works as expected now.
Quake Live 125 fps (locked)
OpenArena 125 fps (locked)
Xonotic 100 fps (bad stuttering though)

vanja_z

Member

Registered: 2012-04-11

Posts: 43

Re: [SOLVED] Nouveau 3D acceleration lacking

Thanks Gusar!