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#1 2006-08-20 22:36:29

grizzeledtop
Member
From: Zurich, Switzerland
Registered: 2006-03-08
Posts: 30

Poor graphical performance with neomagic card

I have been given an almost 7 year old IBM TP600E and have managed to get Archlinux-0.7.1 installed and subsequently updatedt via pacman -Syu to 0.7.2. I have come to like this setup a lot but there is one thing that bugs me. The video performance of the arch system is jerky and unsatisfactory, I know the hardware is capable of more since with Knoppix-4.0 it's performance is a lot more snappy and smooth. Funny enough the fps-values ("frame per seconds") of glxgears is identical on Knoppix and Arch but the wheels churn smoothly in Knoppix and extermely irregurarly and jerky in Arch. I have found instructions on the web recommending the replacement of the actual "buggy" xorg driver for the neomagic video card with an older xf86 version. I have manged to find binaries for two previous versions but not the sources. I have renamed and inserted the older drivers but with no success. I get scores of "unresolved symbols" messages. I would compile and install via ABS pacman if it wasn't for the lacking sources.

How would I have to handle the the alternate binary drivers to get them to work and where or how would I find/extract  the respective sources, or am I to resort to an older distro that still employs xf86? I will try hard to avoid that.


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#2 2006-08-21 18:29:36

test1000
Member
Registered: 2005-04-03
Posts: 834

Re: Poor graphical performance with neomagic card

This is a shot in the dark but maybe startx -- -ignoreABI works? i'm not 100% that's the syntax but if it isn't you could always put it in /usr/bin/startx under 'defaultserverargs'

about source: is this it?
http://riksun.riken.go.jp/pub/pub/Linux … /neomagic/

found here: http://www.google.com/linux?hl=en&lr=&s … tnG=Search


KISS = "It can scarcely be denied that the supreme goal of all theory is to make the irreducible basic elements as simple and as few as possible without having to surrender the adequate representation of a single datum of experience." - Albert Einstein

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#3 2006-08-21 21:24:43

grizzeledtop
Member
From: Zurich, Switzerland
Registered: 2006-03-08
Posts: 30

Re: Poor graphical performance with neomagic card

startx -- -ignoreABI is the right syntax but didn't work, thanks a lot for the link to the sources, everything there I was looking for.
I'll try to "makepkg" this week


You scratch my back, I'll ride on yours

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#4 2006-12-09 20:31:40

sw8511
Member
Registered: 2005-06-09
Posts: 11

Re: Poor graphical performance with neomagic card

Hi, I had the same problem with Neomagic MagicGraph 256AV.

Performance with vesa driver was better than with neomagic driver. THen I tried changing my xorg settings in /etc/X11/xorg.conf - in the screen section, I changed DefaultDepth from 24 to 16 and the same again in the Display subsection. Now neomagic is no longer jerky.

I suspect that's the reason Knoppix appeared to give better performance with neomagic drivers... because the default depth was lower.

I was happy with vesa at depth 24 until I found the following problem: when switching from X to virtual console and back, the brightness was reduced for no apparent reason. With the neomagic drivers that doesn't happen... see this topic:
http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?p=213650#213650:

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