Arch Linux

B15HOP

Member

From: Australia

Registered: 2005-02-10

Posts: 138

How do I enable AGP fast write and AGP SBA?

This may have been answered before, but not well enough for it to work for me. I cant seem to get AGP fast writes and SBA enabled! I have the stock 2.6 kernel and nvidia drivers are from pacman as well. Oh and so is xorg...

I have this in my /etc/modprobe.conf

# AGP options for nvidia
options nvidia NVreg_EnableAGPSB=1 NVreg_EnableAGPFW=1

Yet for some reason when I try

cat /proc/driver/nvidia/agp/status
Status:          Enabled
Driver:          AGPGART
AGP Rate:        4x
Fast Writes:     Disabled
SBA:             Disabled

I am running fvwm in arch 0.7
My video card is a GeForce 5200FX, the options are enabled in the BIOS. I am just trying to improve OpenGL 3D performance. Anyone know of any tweaking guides?

Phillip.

---

"The ecological crisis is a moral issue."

phrakture

Arch Overlord

From: behind you

Registered: 2003-10-29

Posts: 7,879

Website

Re: How do I enable AGP fast write and AGP SBA?

can't you do it in the xorg.conf? not really sure

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skoal

Member

From: Frequent Flyer Underworld

Registered: 2004-03-23

Posts: 612

Website

Re: How do I enable AGP fast write and AGP SBA?

You say that your motherboard supports them both?  Does your "host-bridge" file confirm that?

Here's what mine says:

[skoal@morpheus ~]$ cat /proc/driver/nvidia/agp/host-bridge
Host Bridge:     Intel Corp. 82850 850 (Tehama) Chipset Host Bridge (MCH)
Fast Writes:     Supported
SBA:             Supported
AGP Rates:       4x 2x 1x
Registers:       0x1f000217:0x00000104

* Even if your host bridge and card support them, the driver can still turn them off.

B15HOP

Member

From: Australia

Registered: 2005-02-10

Posts: 138

Re: How do I enable AGP fast write and AGP SBA?

Yeah motherboard supports both:

Host Bridge:     VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8366/A/7 [Apollo KT266/A/333]
Fast Writes:     Supported
SBA:             Supported
AGP Rates:       4x 2x 1x 
Registers:       0x1f000217:0x00000104

Why would the driver turn them off though?

---

"The ecological crisis is a moral issue."

skoal

Member

From: Frequent Flyer Underworld

Registered: 2004-03-23

Posts: 612

Website

Re: How do I enable AGP fast write and AGP SBA?

[...]Why would the driver turn them off though?

For stability.  I had a motherboard a while back that had all the support, including my card, but I could only get sideband to work.  That may not be the issue in your case.

I'm trying to find an old post or resource, where I discussed those 2 issues you are concerned with.  When I find them, I will reply back with that info.  I remember getting these 2 options working not even less than 5 months ago.

phrakture

Arch Overlord

From: behind you

Registered: 2003-10-29

Posts: 7,879

Website

Re: How do I enable AGP fast write and AGP SBA?

I'm trying to find an old post or resource, where I discussed those 2 issues you are concerned with.  When I find them, I will reply back with that info.  I remember getting these 2 options working not even less than 5 months ago.

drinking must be clouding your brain....

---

http://phraktured.net

aCoder

Member

From: Medina, OH

Registered: 2004-03-07

Posts: 359

Website

Re: How do I enable AGP fast write and AGP SBA?

My video card is a GeForce 5200FX

I don't know about SBA, but your card may not support fastwrites.  I get this:

$ cat /proc/driver/nvidia/agp/card
Fast Writes:     Not Supported
SBA:             Supported
AGP Rates:       8x 4x
Registers:       0x1f000e0b:0x1f004302

For this:

$ cat /proc/driver/nvidia/cards/0
Model:           GeForce FX 5200
IRQ:             19
Video BIOS:      04.34.20.42.d1
Card Type:       AGP

---

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MillTek

Member

Registered: 2005-01-30

Posts: 442

Re: How do I enable AGP fast write and AGP SBA?

Interesting.  My card is also a 5200Fx from PNY and fast writes are supposted, although not enabled.  I'd love to see a fix for this.

Jim

skoal

Member

From: Frequent Flyer Underworld

Registered: 2004-03-23

Posts: 612

Website

Re: How do I enable AGP fast write and AGP SBA?

[...]drinking must be clouding your brain....

You know, the sad thing is I went back through all my 400+ posts looking for that particular thread.  I could not find it.  I know I did, since Mr. Green thought it was good enough to put in a Wiki.

Hell, I looked all over the place and couldn't find it.  Maybe some moderators have been cleaning up some of my trash laying around here...

miqorz

Member

Registered: 2004-12-31

Posts: 475

Re: How do I enable AGP fast write and AGP SBA?

miqorz@tobias ~ $ cat /proc/driver/nvidia/agp/status 
Status:          Enabled
Driver:          AGPGART
AGP Rate:        4x
Fast Writes:     Disabled
SBA:             Disabled
miqorz@tobias ~ $ cat /proc/driver/nvidia/agp/card 
Fast Writes:     Supported
SBA:             Supported
AGP Rates:       4x 2x 1x 
Registers:       0x1f000217:0x1f000104

Interesting.

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skoal

Member

From: Frequent Flyer Underworld

Registered: 2004-03-23

Posts: 612

Website

Re: How do I enable AGP fast write and AGP SBA?

Well, this much I do remember:

Basically, first check both:

[skoal@morpheus ~]$ cat /proc/driver/nvidia/agp/host-bridge
Host Bridge:     Intel Corp. 82850 850 (Tehama) Chipset Host Bridge (MCH)
Fast Writes:     Supported
SBA:             Supported
AGP Rates:       4x 2x 1x
Registers:       0x1f000217:0x00000104
[skoal@morpheus ~]$ cat /proc/driver/nvidia/agp/card       
Fast Writes:     Supported
SBA:             Supported
AGP Rates:       4x 2x 1x
Registers:       0x1f000217:0x1f000104

If both your host-bridge and card support them, you should be able to enable them both in "modprobe.conf"

However, while looking back at your "host-bridge" post B15HOP, I noticed that you have a VIA "northbridge".  It was common knowledge for some time that VIA chipsets had problems enabling "sideband addressing", regardless of whether or not they supported it.  That may not be the problem here, but either way you really won't benefit from enabling them anyway.

I think when I did, all I got was an extra 0.5% improvement in glxgears, which translated to "jack squat" on everything else openGL.  And as a consequence, simultaneously enabling the NVIDA "render" extension became very unstable when I had these in effect.  In theory, "sideband addressing" uses an additional 8 address lines, and "fast writes" just skips the transition from cpu to memory to video card.  In practice, they don't live up to their "promise".  "sideband addressing" was more beneficial at one time before 4x transfer speeds.  It basically is a legacy option at this point.  With faster memory bandwidth these days as well, "fast writes" belongs in the history books as well.

If you ever get to use them, I think you'll verify the same, especially after having to manually kill a few X sessions in the process..

B15HOP

Member

From: Australia

Registered: 2005-02-10

Posts: 138

Re: How do I enable AGP fast write and AGP SBA?

So I guess the only thing to improve performance now is to upgrade my video card, especially since it's not upto standard.

Thankyou for going through the trouble just to help me.

cat /proc/driver/nvidia/agp/host-bridge 
Host Bridge:     VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8366/A/7 [Apollo KT266/A/333]
Fast Writes:     Supported
SBA:             Supported
AGP Rates:       4x 2x 1x 
Registers:       0x1f000217:0x00000104

cat /proc/driver/nvidia/agp/card        
Fast Writes:     Supported
SBA:             Supported
AGP Rates:       4x 2x 1x 
Registers:       0x1f000217:0x1f000104
[b15hop@XGamer ~]$ cat /proc/driver/nvidia/agp/            
card         host-bridge  status       

cat /proc/driver/nvidia/agp/status 
Status:          Enabled
Driver:          AGPGART
AGP Rate:        4x
Fast Writes:     Disabled
SBA:             Disabled

---

"The ecological crisis is a moral issue."

skoal

Member

From: Frequent Flyer Underworld

Registered: 2004-03-23

Posts: 612

Website

Re: How do I enable AGP fast write and AGP SBA?

Oops.  You can get it to work B15HOP.  Never fear, Skoal is here...although you may have gotten the solution a lot earlier from someone else.

Check your "modprobe.conf" settings again.  You have a typo. You have a missing "A".   I've had mine turned off for so long, I had to go back and re-enable them just for kicks.  It should read:

options nvidia NVreg_EnableAGPSBA=1 NVreg_EnableAGPFW=1

I know one of my buddies with an older AMD chipset couldn't do it, but he had an older motherboard and older NVIDIA driver.  I bet you'll get it to work now.

Anyway, here's my performance "gain" @1024/32BPP:

with SBA/FW enabled:
[skoal@morpheus ~]$ glxgears
22498 frames in 5.0 seconds = 4499.600 FPS
22733 frames in 5.0 seconds = 4546.600 FPS
22660 frames in 5.0 seconds = 4532.000 FPS
22719 frames in 5.0 seconds = 4543.800 FPS
22719 frames in 5.0 seconds = 4543.800 FPS

without:
[skoal@morpheus ~]$ glxgears
21446 frames in 5.0 seconds = 4289.200 FPS
22279 frames in 5.0 seconds = 4455.800 FPS
22353 frames in 5.0 seconds = 4470.600 FPS
22322 frames in 5.0 seconds = 4464.400 FPS
22330 frames in 5.0 seconds = 4466.000 FPS

That's about ~1.02% improvement.

MillTek

Member

Registered: 2005-01-30

Posts: 442

Re: How do I enable AGP fast write and AGP SBA?

Hmmm, I am curious.  My fast writes weren't enabled and I followed the instructions above and they work now.  My glxgears score went from about 1800FPX to about 1920FPS, so that's great.

What I am curious about is that I have an Abit NF7-M motherboard, dual channel memory (1 Gb) and an AMD Athlon2500 (barton). My video card is a PNY GForce FX5200 AGP (nvidia chiopset) with 128Mb memoey. Shouldn't I be getting a better score than this??

Any opinions?

Jim

iBertus

Member

From: Greenville, NC

Registered: 2004-11-04

Posts: 2,228

Re: How do I enable AGP fast write and AGP SBA?

Hmmm, I am curious.  My fast writes weren't enabled and I followed the instructions above and they work now.  My glxgears score went from about 1800FPX to about 1920FPS, so that's great.

What I am curious about is that I have an Abit NF7-M motherboard, dual channel memory (1 Gb) and an AMD Athlon2500 (barton). My video card is a PNY GForce FX5200 AGP (nvidia chiopset) with 128Mb memoey. Shouldn't I be getting a better score than this??

Any opinions?

Jim

~2000 is about right for a GeForce FX 5200. They only have 4 pixel pipelines compared to 8 in the older GeForce4 Ti cards, which amounts to lower fill-rates. So, most GL apps will be faster on the older Ti cards. All you gain with the FX series is added rendering "features" that are really slow and mostly geared towards DX9. The 5200 is also clocked at 250Mhz core while my old Radeon 8500 was clocked at 275Mhz core. You get the picture. I figured this out the hard way by buying one of those cards and getting about 15-20 fps lower while playing Enemy Territory.

It's like this:
   alias  gfx5200  gf4mx

MillTek

Member

Registered: 2005-01-30

Posts: 442

Re: How do I enable AGP fast write and AGP SBA?

Much suckage!!!

Jim

B15HOP

Member

From: Australia

Registered: 2005-02-10

Posts: 138

Re: How do I enable AGP fast write and AGP SBA?

Oops.  You can get it to work B15HOP.  Never fear, Skoal is here...although you may have gotten the solution a lot earlier from someone else.

Check your "modprobe.conf" settings again.  You have a typo. You have a missing "A".   I've had mine turned off for so long, I had to go back and re-enable them just for kicks.  It should read:

options nvidia NVreg_EnableAGPSBA=1 NVreg_EnableAGPFW=1

I know one of my buddies with an older AMD chipset couldn't do it, but he had an older motherboard and older NVIDIA driver.  I bet you'll get it to work now.

Anyway, here's my performance "gain" @1024/32BPP:

with SBA/FW enabled:
[skoal@morpheus ~]$ glxgears
22498 frames in 5.0 seconds = 4499.600 FPS
22733 frames in 5.0 seconds = 4546.600 FPS
22660 frames in 5.0 seconds = 4532.000 FPS
22719 frames in 5.0 seconds = 4543.800 FPS
22719 frames in 5.0 seconds = 4543.800 FPS

without:
[skoal@morpheus ~]$ glxgears
21446 frames in 5.0 seconds = 4289.200 FPS
22279 frames in 5.0 seconds = 4455.800 FPS
22353 frames in 5.0 seconds = 4470.600 FPS
22322 frames in 5.0 seconds = 4464.400 FPS
22330 frames in 5.0 seconds = 4466.000 FPS

That's about ~1.02% improvement.

I was getting around 950 - 1000 just before it was enabled, but here are the scores now:

[b15hop@XGamer ~]$ cat /proc/driver/nvidia/agp/status 
Status:          Enabled
Driver:          AGPGART
AGP Rate:        4x
Fast Writes:     Enabled
SBA:             Enabled
[b15hop@XGamer ~]$ glxgears
5135 frames in 5.0 seconds = 1027.000 FPS
5239 frames in 5.0 seconds = 1047.800 FPS
5249 frames in 5.0 seconds = 1049.800 FPS
5220 frames in 5.0 seconds = 1044.000 FPS
5248 frames in 5.0 seconds = 1049.600 FPS
5245 frames in 5.0 seconds = 1049.000 FPS
5248 frames in 5.0 seconds = 1049.600 FPS

Cheers for all the hassle.[/b]

---

"The ecological crisis is a moral issue."

mercy

Member

Registered: 2004-04-24

Posts: 62

Re: How do I enable AGP fast write and AGP SBA?

The Info:

HARDWARE DETECT ver 4.1.2
Starting... (expert mode)
Detecting pci, usb, and pcmcia devices.

PCI DEVICE
VendID  DevID   Module          Description
0001    8139    10ec    8139    "8139too"       "|Realtek 8139"
10de    0343    "unknown"       "nVidia Corporation|NV36 [GeForce FX 5700LE]"
10ec    8139    "8139too"       "Realtek|RTL-8139"
8086    244e    "hw_random"     "Intel Corp.|82820 815e (Camino 2) Chipset PCI"
8086    24d0    "i810-tco"      "Intel Corp.|82801EB ISA Bridge (LPC)"
8086    24d1    "ata_piix"      "Intel Corp.|82801EB ICH5 IDE (SATA)"
8086    24d2    "usb-uhci"      "Intel Corp.|USB Controller"
8086    24d3    "i2c-i801"      "Intel Corp.|82801EB SMBus"
8086    24d4    "usb-uhci"      "Intel Corp.|USB Controller"
8086    24d5    "snd-intel8x0"  "Intel Corp.|82801EB AC'97 Audio"
8086    24d7    "usb-uhci"      "Intel Corp.|USB Controller"
8086    24db    "ata_piix"      "Intel Corp.|82801EB ICH5 IDE"
8086    24dd    "ehci-hcd"      "Intel Corp.|USB Enhanced Controller"
8086    24de    "unknown"       "Intel Corp.|82801EB USB EHCI Controller #2"
8086    2570    "intel-agp"     "Intel Corp.|82865G [Springdale-G] Chipset Host Bridge"
8086    2571    "unknown"       "Intel Corp.|82865G/PE/P Processor to AGP Controller"

PCMCIA DEVICE
no pcmcia driver in /proc/devices
VendID  DevID   Module          Description

USB DEVICE
VendID  DevID  Module  Description
045e    003c    "unknown"       "Microsoft Corp.|SideWinder Joystick"
046d    c00e    "unknown"       "Logitech Inc.|Optical Mouse"

Press any key to continue...

HD PARITIONS
/dev/hda  /dev/hda1  /dev/hda2  /dev/hda3  /dev/hdc
/dev/sda  /dev/sdb  /dev/sdc  /dev/sdd

MODULES
snd_intel8x0  snd_ac97_codec  snd_pcm_oss  tsdev  usb_storage  joydev  evdev  usbhid  snd_pcm  snd_timer  snd_page_alloc  snd_mixer_oss  snd  soundcore  uhci_hcd  usbcore  nvidia  8139too  mii

INFORMATION
hwd -s  - generates howto and sample X configure.

[root@Archmage ~]#

agp/card
Fast Writes:     Supported
SBA:             Supported
AGP Rates:       8x 4x
Registers:       0x1f000e1b:0x1f004302
agp/host-bridge
Host Bridge:     Intel Corp. 82865G/PE/P DRAM Controller/Host-Hub Interface
Fast Writes:     Supported
SBA:             Supported
AGP Rates:       8x 4x
Registers:       0x1f004a1b:0x00000b02
agp/status
agp/status
Status:          Enabled
Driver:          AGPGART
AGP Rate:        8x
Fast Writes:     Disabled
SBA:             Enabled
cards/0
Model:           GeForce FX 5700LE
IRQ:             16
Video BIOS:      04.36.20.41.00
Card Type:       AGP
version
NVRM version: NVIDIA Linux x86 NVIDIA Kernel Module  1.0-6629  Wed Nov  3 13:12:51 PST 2004
GCC version:  gcc version 3.4.3

modprobe.conf
#
# /etc/modprobe.conf (for v2.6 kernels)
#

alias /dev/nvidia*   nvidia

# OSS Compatibility
install snd-pcm modprobe -i snd-pcm ; modprobe snd-pcm-oss ; true
install snd-seq modprobe -i snd-seq ; modprobe snd-seq-oss ; true

xorg.conf
Section "Module"
        Load  "extmod"
        Load  "glx"
        Load  "dbe"
        Load  "record"
        Load  "xtrap"
        Load  "type1"
        Load  "freetype"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
    Identifier  "My Monitor"
EndSection

Section "Device"
    Identifier  "My Video Card"
        Driver      "nvidia"
        VendorName  "nVidia Corporation"
        BoardName   "GeForce FX 5700LE"
        Option      "TwinView"
        Option      "TwinViewOrientation"       "RightOff"
        Option      "MetaModes" "1280x1024,1280x1024; 1024x768,1024x768; 800x600,800x600"
        Option      "ConnectedMonitor"          "crt,crt"
#       BusID       "PCI:1:0:0"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
    Identifier  "Screen 1"
    Device      "My Video Card"
    Monitor     "My Monitor"
    DefaultDepth 24

    Subsection "Display"
        Depth       8
        Modes       "1280x1024" "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
        ViewPort    0 0
    EndSubsection
    Subsection "Display"
        Depth       16
        Modes       "1280x1024" "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
        ViewPort    0 0
    EndSubsection
    Subsection "Display"
        Depth       24
        Modes       "1280x1024" "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
        ViewPort    0 0
    EndSubsection
EndSection
- snip -

im using:
udev 054-1
Linux version 2.6.10-ARCH (root@earth) (gcc version 3.4.3) #1 SMP
xorg 11R6.8.2-2

The problem:

If i activate Fast Writes ... start glxgears .. and move it tho the second screen the whole box simply hooks up...

maybe its cuz of my splitted screen.. (one screen on two monitors) .. maybe its a bug in nvidia's driver...

any ideas?

B15HOP

Member

From: Australia

Registered: 2005-02-10

Posts: 138

Re: How do I enable AGP fast write and AGP SBA?

No idea, but funny thing is that i took my card out, put the tnt2 in for a brief while to try glxgears with that. Much slower, about 100 to 200fps, after re configuring xorg / modprobe to get it working with OpenGL. Yet when I put the GF5200 back in, reconfigured xorg.conf / modprobe etc... now I get 950fps in glxgears... weird?

---

"The ecological crisis is a moral issue."