Nvidia card giving me same trouble as Ati card

The Orange Peanut · 2008-04-08 20:10:01

Okay, originally I was using a Radeon 9500 Pro video card. The problem was that anything OGL accelerated completely froze my system; I couldn't run glxgears without it freezing. I tried and tried and tried to find a solution to the problem, using the open source drivers v. proprietary ones, minimal xorg.conf files, whatever. Nothing worked. Same symptoms on Ubuntu and Arch. Since I was dual booting with Windows, I tried the card on Windows; it worked fine with any 3d application (I even tried Planet Penguin Racer so I could use the same game on each OS. Windows could handle it, Linux froze as soon as the game booted up everytime.)

So I ordered an Nvidia 6200 to hopefully remedy the problem because I assumed it was a video driver problem. I installed the card, pacman'd the nvidia drivers, generated a xorg.conf and rebooted. I made it to the desktop and typed glxinfo into the console. I had direct rendering and everything seemed to be okay. I ran glxgears. 1600fps, 1600fps, 1600fps... boom, my computer went back to KDM. Uh oh. I logged back in and ran glxgears again, except this time it hard froze JUST LIKE my Ati card. Big uh oh. I powered down and powered back on (because alt-ctrl-backspace couldn't kill X) and logged in again. I tried to watch a video file, and it rebooted my machine. At least my Ati card let me do that safely. I tried again just to double check myself, and sure enough my computer FROZE again, it didn't just reboot. Now here I am, out of options.

Obviously there is something wrong with my machine somewhere, whether it be buried deep within Linux or my motherboard or god knows where else. What I want to know is how I can diagnose this problem? I'm not going back to Windows, there are too many reasons for me to stay in Linux (most are for development reasons as I'm a CS major, but the media applications are way better in Linux too.)

In summary, is there anything I can do to remedy or diagnose my problem? This is very frustrating... I can't afford a new computer to 'start over' and buy hardware that I KNOW is compatible.

Edit/Update: I reinstalled my Ati card because I'm going to RMA the Nvidia one. I've got a working xorg.conf file (at least, it can connect to the Xserver). However, it always freezes when I load KDE, before it even makes it past that loading bar and to the desktop. I don't know what causes it, but I do know that I can run TWM without it crashing AND I have direct rendering. Any ideas how I can remedy this?

Here is the xorg.conf, btw. Just in case.

Section "ServerLayout"
    Identifier     "X.org Configured"
    Screen      0  "aticonfig-Screen[0]" 0 0
    InputDevice    "Mouse0" "CorePointer"
    InputDevice    "Keyboard0" "CoreKeyboard"
EndSection

Section "Files"
    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"
    Load "glx"
    Load "dri"
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

Section "Monitor"
    Identifier   "aticonfig-Monitor[0]"
    Option        "VendorName" "ATI Proprietary Driver"
    Option        "ModelName" "Generic Autodetecting Monitor"
    Option        "DPMS" "true"
EndSection

Section "Device"
    Identifier  "aticonfig-Device[0]"
    Driver      "fglrx"
    VendorName  "ATI Technologies Inc"
    BoardName   "Radeon 9500 Pro"
    BusID       "PCI:1:0:0"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
    Identifier "aticonfig-Screen[0]"
    Device     "aticonfig-Device[0]"
    Monitor    "aticonfig-Monitor[0]"
    DefaultDepth     24
    SubSection "Display"
        Viewport   0 0
        Depth     24
        Modes    "1280x1024"    "1024x768"    "800x600"
    EndSubSection
EndSection

Section "DRI"
    Mode 0666
EndSection

Last edited by The Orange Peanut (2008-04-08 21:51:43)

brebs · 2008-04-08 20:33:31

Remove that RgbPath line ("man xorg.conf"). Won't magically fix the crashes though.

wyvern · 2008-04-08 21:59:23

I had this on my desktop - I had switched from ATI to NVIDIA and as a result, all my 3d/videos kept freezing or crashing - turns out it was a conflict with the libGL libraries. I had some wrongly-linked files left over.

You could try removing mesa (which shouldn't be on your system), and reinstalling the nvidia driver, and checking the system for any stray libGL.so.* libraries.

The Orange Peanut · 2008-04-08 22:31:24

Well, I decided to just keep my Ati card and take the (very bad) performance hit. However, you do make me wonder: would getting rid of Mesa help with my Ati driver problems perhaps?

wyvern · 2008-04-08 22:42:17

Gah - I meant to be more specific; it's the 'libgl-dri' package from mesa, not mesa itself, that needs to be removed. Sorry about that

The Orange Peanut · 2008-04-08 23:07:58

Looks like I don't have that package installed.

Any other ideas? Remember, I'm back to using the Ati driver...

Thanks.

mrunion · 2008-04-09 12:57:33

It's too late if you've already sent the card back, but for testing the hardware aspect of things I suppose you could boot a live CD and try again. If it's hardware it'll mess up again. If it's something out your system, things would be fine on a live CD I would think.

The Orange Peanut · 2008-04-09 13:51:01

That's a good idea. The card is already boxed, but it's probably worth it to check that out. I have an exam in an hour and a half, so I'll check it when I get out of that. I wish I had have thought of that earlier

Arch Linux

#1 2008-04-08 20:10:01

Nvidia card giving me same trouble as Ati card

#2 2008-04-08 20:33:31

Re: Nvidia card giving me same trouble as Ati card

#3 2008-04-08 21:59:23

Re: Nvidia card giving me same trouble as Ati card

#4 2008-04-08 22:31:24

Re: Nvidia card giving me same trouble as Ati card

#5 2008-04-08 22:42:17

Re: Nvidia card giving me same trouble as Ati card

#6 2008-04-08 23:07:58

Re: Nvidia card giving me same trouble as Ati card

#7 2008-04-09 12:57:33

Re: Nvidia card giving me same trouble as Ati card

#8 2008-04-09 13:51:01

Re: Nvidia card giving me same trouble as Ati card

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