slow X performance with 3 monitors

Menokh · 2007-12-17 05:37:47

I had been running two monitors with Xinerama to span the desktop between them.
Tonight I installed an old GeForce2 I had lying around so I could have a third monitor. As such I had to use the NV driver for that card as I am using the newest NVIDIA driver for the card powering my other two monitors. I ran into a serious glitch with Beryl and minor annoyances with Xinerama and disabled both, so now I am running with a separate desktop on each monitor. All seems to be going well overall, except for some slow performance issues.

If I am playing a video and I get an IM(really anything that causes abrupt sound) the video skips, it never did this before. Also such events will sometimes cause the mouse cursor to stop responding for a second even if I am just running an IM program and a web browser, which never happened before. It seems like the incoming sound causes anything else I am doing to slow down, despite the fact that everything works fine by itself.

My computer's specs are this:
AMD Sempron running at 1.72 Ghz
1.5 gigabytes of ram
primary video card is an AGP NVIDIA GeForce 6600 with 256 megabytes of ram running 2 LCD panels using the newest NVIDIA module
the card I installed tonight to run a third monitor is an NVIDIA GeForce2 MX200 using the NV module

Here is the contents of my xorg.conf file

Section "ServerLayout"
    Identifier     "X.org Configured"
    Screen         "Screen0" 0 0
    Screen         "Screen1" RightOf "Screen0"
    Screen         "Screen2" LeftOf "Screen0"
    InputDevice    "Mouse0" "CorePointer"
    InputDevice    "Keyboard0" "CoreKeyboard"
EndSection

Section "Files"
    RgbPath         "/usr/share/X11/rgb"
    ModulePath      "/usr/lib/xorg/modules"
    FontPath        "/usr/share/fonts/misc"
    FontPath        "/usr/share/fonts/100dpi:unscaled"
    FontPath        "/usr/share/fonts/75dpi:unscaled"
    FontPath        "/usr/share/fonts/TTF"
    FontPath        "/usr/share/fonts/Type1"
EndSection

Section "Module"
#comment out dri for nvidia driver
    #Load       "dri"
    Load           "dbe"
    Load           "extmod"
    Load           "glx"
    Load           "record"
    Load           "xtrap"
    Load           "freetype"
    Load           "type1"
EndSection

#xinerama allows desktop spanning
#Section "ServerFlags"
#    Option         "Xinerama" "0"
#EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
    Identifier     "Keyboard0"
    Driver         "kbd"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
    Identifier     "Mouse0"
    Driver         "mouse"
    Option         "Protocol" "auto"
    Option         "Device" "/dev/input/mice"
    Option         "ZAxisMapping" "4 5 6 7"
EndSection

#Main monitor
Section "Monitor"
    Identifier     "Monitor0"
    VendorName     "Acer"
    ModelName      "Acer AL1706"
    HorizSync       30.0 - 83.0
    VertRefresh     56.0 - 75.0
EndSection

#second monitor, Westinghouse 19inch LCD TV
Section "Monitor"
    Identifier     "Monitor1"
    VendorName     "Westinghouse"
    ModelName      "WDE LTV-19w6"
    HorizSync       30.0 - 82.0
    VertRefresh     56.0 - 76.0
EndSection

#third monitor, Dell 17inch CRT
Section "Monitor"
    Identifier     "Monitor2"
    VendorName     "Dell"
    ModelName      "M782p"
    HorizSync       30.0 - 85.0
    VertRefresh     50.0 - 160.0
EndSection

#two device entries, one video card
Section "Device"
    Identifier     "Videocard0"
    Driver         "nvidia"
    VendorName     "NVIDIA Corporation"
    BoardName      "GeForce 6600"
    Option       "RenderAccel" "True"
    Option       "AllowGLXWithComposite" "True"
EndSection

Section "Device"
    Identifier     "Videocard1"
    Driver         "nvidia"
    VendorName     "NVIDIA Corporation"
    BoardName      "GeForce 6600"
    BusID          "PCI:1:0:0"
    Screen          1
    Option       "RenderAccel" "True"
    Option       "AllowGLXWithComposite" "True"
EndSection

#third videocard entry for second card powering Dell M782p
Section "Device"
    Identifier    "Videocard2"
#use "nv" driver for legacy card not supported by proprietary driver
    Driver        "nv"
    VendorName    "NVIDIA Corporation"
    BoardName     "GeForce2 MX200"
    BusID         "PCI:0:8:0"
EndSection
    
#three screen entries, one per monitor
Section "Screen"

# Removed Option "metamodes" "CRT: 1280x1024 +0+0"
    Identifier     "Screen0"
    Device         "Videocard0"
    Monitor        "Monitor0"
    DefaultDepth    24
#    Option         "TwinView" "1"
#    Option         "metamodes" "CRT: 1280x1024 +0+0, DFP: 1440x900 +1280+0"
    Option       "AddARGBGLXVisuals" "True"
    SubSection     "Display"
        Depth       24
        Modes      "1600x1200" "1280x1024" "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
    EndSubSection
EndSection

Section "Screen"
    Identifier     "Screen1"
    Device         "Videocard1"
    Monitor        "Monitor1"
    DefaultDepth    24
#    Option         "TwinView" "0"
#    Option         "metamodes" "DFP: 1440x900 +0+0"
    Option       "AddARGBGLXVisuals" "True"
    SubSection     "Display"
        Depth       24
        Modes      "1440x900"
   EndSubSection
EndSection

Section "Screen"
    Identifier     "Screen2"
    Device         "Videocard2"
    Monitor        "Monitor2"
    DefaultDepth    24
    SubSection     "Display"
        Depth       24
        Modes      "1024x768"
    EndSubSection
EndSection

Section "Extensions"
    Option "Composite" "Enable"
EndSection
    
#Section "DRI"
#    Mode 0666
#EndSection

Any ideas? If you need anything else to help me diagnose this, feel free to ask for it.

freakcode · 2007-12-17 20:35:31

Xinerama is deprecated. Try configuring the other monitors via XRandr, or the nvidia-settings included in the oficial nvidia module. Configuring multiple monitors with nvidia-settings is a breeze.

Menokh · 2007-12-19 04:19:19

As I said I disabled xinerama and am not using desktop spanning at the moment. Also I can not use the Nvidia-settings application because the older nvidia card has to use the open source NV driver since the proprietary NVIDIA module does not support it anymore and the legacy module that does support it will not work with my N6600 main card for some reason, thus it does not show up in the nvidia-settings tool.
I tried a few tweaks to my xorg.conf file but still have not had any improved performance. X will still pause for no reason usually when a sudden sound event happens, but it will do it at other times as well like upon opening an application.

My current guess is it has something to do with the video card I put in. It is rather old, but I can't see how that would effect the behavior of X on the newer card. I'm not familiar enough with the workings of X to know how it does the independent desktop screens.

Leigh · 2007-12-19 05:05:32

You might try switching to the nvidia legacy driver so you can run the nvidia modual on all three monitors. The 96xx legacy drivers works well with my Geforce7900, Geforce6800 and old Gforce4. I'm not sure if Geforce2 falls under legacy 96xx or legacy 71xx.

steve_v · 2008-01-10 12:32:34

I take it this problem appeared when you added the second card?
May I also assume it is a PCI card?
Hit me if I am wrong, but the mention of sound screams IRQ conflict to me.
Try moving the card to annother PCI slot and/or check /proc/interrupts and see if anything else is sharing the same IRQ as the video adaptor - video cards really don't like IRQ sharing.

You could also have a poke around in the BIOS - check that 'assign IRQ to pci VGA' is enabled and try assigning IRQs manually.

Cheers,

Steve.

Arch Linux

#1 2007-12-17 05:37:47

slow X performance with 3 monitors

#2 2007-12-17 20:35:31

Re: slow X performance with 3 monitors

#3 2007-12-19 04:19:19

Re: slow X performance with 3 monitors

#4 2007-12-19 05:05:32

Re: slow X performance with 3 monitors

#5 2008-01-10 12:32:34

Re: slow X performance with 3 monitors

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