gnome-shell with nouveau - how is the performance

graysky · 2011-08-03 23:35:40

I have an old 8400GS and find gnome-shell's performance under nouveau pretty bad. Is it my card or the driver? If you have a more powerful card, how is the performance? I'm no gamer but is there a more powerful (none fan cooled) nvidia card that's better?

anonymous_user · 2011-08-04 04:40:30

I do not know about nouveau performance but to answer your second question, there are passive versions of the GeForce GT 430 and GeForce GT 520. Both are better than the 8400GS.

wonder · 2011-08-04 06:14:17

i have 8600M GT and gnome-shell works better with nouveau than with nvidia.

do you use other kernel?

graysky · 2011-08-04 06:51:55

@anon_user - thanks for the suggestion! I found a passively cooled GTS 450 (GF106 based) that I'm leaning towards... seems like more bang than a GT 430/520.
@wonder - Either with linux or linux-ck - no difference.

EDIT: perhaps this card is a bad choice given how new the processor is with respect to the nouveau dev cycle...

http://nouveau.freedesktop.org/wiki/InstallDRM#Firmware
http://nouveau.freedesktop.org/wiki/FeatureMatrix

NVC0: firmware support varies between specific chips (announcement):
NVC3, NVC8: uses free firmware if forced, untested

Last edited by graysky (2011-08-04 08:00:08)

graysky · 2011-08-04 07:38:31

@wonder - are you using the standard mesa pacakges or the mesa-git packages?

wonder · 2011-08-04 07:45:37

graysky wrote:

@wonder - are you using the standard mesa pacakges or the mesa-git packages?

mesa 7.11. here is my Xorg.0.log http://paste.xinu.at/hKF/. the most important is drm messages and page flipping enabled( kernel >= 2.6.39 >=mesa 7.11, nv50 or nv0 cards)

Last edited by wonder (2011-08-04 07:48:29)

graysky · 2011-08-04 08:00:53

How does one enable drm messages and page flipping or at the least verify that they are enabled?

karol · 2011-08-04 08:01:49

graysky wrote:

How does one enable drm messages and page flipping or at the least verify that they are enabled?

Try

dmesg | grep drm

wonder · 2011-08-04 08:09:57

or Xorg.0.log

graysky · 2011-08-04 19:57:41

Looks okay.... guess my 8400GS is just underpowered for this driver. I ordered the 450 GTS so we'll see

$ grep flip /var/log/Xorg.0.log
[ 23641.419] (==) NOUVEAU(0): Page flipping enabled

$ grep drm /var/log/Xorg.0.log
[ 23641.418] drmOpenDevice: node name is /dev/dri/card0
[ 23641.418] drmOpenDevice: open result is 7, (OK)
[ 23641.418] drmOpenByBusid: Searching for BusID pci:0000:01:00.0
[ 23641.418] drmOpenDevice: node name is /dev/dri/card0
[ 23641.418] drmOpenDevice: open result is 7, (OK)
[ 23641.419] drmOpenByBusid: drmOpenMinor returns 7
[ 23641.419] drmOpenByBusid: drmGetBusid reports pci:0000:01:00.0
[ 23641.419] (II) [drm] nouveau interface version: 0.0.16
[ 23641.419] drmOpenDevice: node name is /dev/dri/card0
[ 23641.419] drmOpenDevice: open result is 8, (OK)
[ 23641.419] drmOpenDevice: node name is /dev/dri/card0
[ 23641.419] drmOpenDevice: open result is 8, (OK)
[ 23641.419] drmOpenByBusid: Searching for BusID pci:0000:01:00.0
[ 23641.419] drmOpenDevice: node name is /dev/dri/card0
[ 23641.419] drmOpenDevice: open result is 8, (OK)
[ 23641.419] drmOpenByBusid: drmOpenMinor returns 8
[ 23641.419] drmOpenByBusid: drmGetBusid reports pci:0000:01:00.0
[ 23641.419] (II) [drm] DRM interface version 1.4
[ 23641.419] (II) [drm] DRM open master succeeded.

$ dmesg | grep drm
[    0.651085] [drm] Initialized drm 1.1.0 20060810
[    0.661177] [drm] nouveau 0000:01:00.0: Detected an NV50 generation card (0x298200a2)
[    0.664916] [drm] nouveau 0000:01:00.0: Attempting to load BIOS image from PRAMIN
[    0.710278] [drm] nouveau 0000:01:00.0: ... appears to be valid
[    0.710280] [drm] nouveau 0000:01:00.0: BIT BIOS found
[    0.710281] [drm] nouveau 0000:01:00.0: Bios version 62.98.47.00
[    0.710283] [drm] nouveau 0000:01:00.0: TMDS table version 2.0
[    0.710284] [drm] nouveau 0000:01:00.0: Found Display Configuration Block version 4.0
[    0.710286] [drm] nouveau 0000:01:00.0: Raw DCB entry 0: 02000300 00000028
[    0.710287] [drm] nouveau 0000:01:00.0: Raw DCB entry 1: 01000302 00020030
[    0.710289] [drm] nouveau 0000:01:00.0: Raw DCB entry 2: 04011310 00000028
[    0.710290] [drm] nouveau 0000:01:00.0: Raw DCB entry 3: 010223f1 00c0c080
[    0.710292] [drm] nouveau 0000:01:00.0: DCB connector table: VHER 0x40 5 16 4
[    0.710294] [drm] nouveau 0000:01:00.0:   0: 0x00001030: type 0x30 idx 0 tag 0x07
[    0.710296] [drm] nouveau 0000:01:00.0:   1: 0x00000200: type 0x00 idx 1 tag 0xff
[    0.710297] [drm] nouveau 0000:01:00.0:   2: 0x00000110: type 0x10 idx 2 tag 0xff
[    0.710299] [drm] nouveau 0000:01:00.0:   3: 0x00000111: type 0x11 idx 3 tag 0xff
[    0.710300] [drm] nouveau 0000:01:00.0:   4: 0x00000113: type 0x13 idx 4 tag 0xff
[    0.710303] [drm] nouveau 0000:01:00.0: Parsing VBIOS init table 0 at offset 0xD710
[    0.735573] [drm] nouveau 0000:01:00.0: Parsing VBIOS init table 1 at offset 0xDAB5
[    0.741906] [drm] nouveau 0000:01:00.0: Parsing VBIOS init table 2 at offset 0xE364
[    0.741911] [drm] nouveau 0000:01:00.0: Parsing VBIOS init table 3 at offset 0xE456
[    0.742976] [drm] nouveau 0000:01:00.0: Parsing VBIOS init table 4 at offset 0xE655
[    0.742977] [drm] nouveau 0000:01:00.0: Parsing VBIOS init table at offset 0xE6BA
[    0.762981] [drm] nouveau 0000:01:00.0: 0xE6BA: Condition still not met after 20ms, skipping following opcodes
[    0.762989] [drm] nouveau 0000:01:00.0: timingset 255 does not exist
[    1.160045] [drm] nouveau 0000:01:00.0: 1 available performance level(s)
[    1.160047] [drm] nouveau 0000:01:00.0: 3: memory 400MHz core 567MHz shader 1400MHz fanspeed 100%
[    1.160055] [drm] nouveau 0000:01:00.0: Register 0x00004030 not found in PLL limits table
[    1.160090] [drm] nouveau 0000:01:00.0: c: memory 399MHz core 566MHz shader 1400MHz
[    1.160209] [drm] nouveau 0000:01:00.0: Detected 512MiB VRAM
[    1.161277] [drm] nouveau 0000:01:00.0: 512 MiB GART (aperture)
[    1.173455] [drm] nouveau 0000:01:00.0: DCB encoder 1 unknown
[    1.173457] [drm] nouveau 0000:01:00.0: TV-1 has no encoders, removing
[    1.174154] [drm] Supports vblank timestamp caching Rev 1 (10.10.2010).
[    1.174155] [drm] No driver support for vblank timestamp query.
[    1.428713] [drm] nouveau 0000:01:00.0: allocated 1920x1080 fb: 0x40000000, bo ffff880221feec00
[    1.483825] drm: registered panic notifier
[    1.483828] [drm] Initialized nouveau 0.0.16 20090420 for 0000:01:00.0 on minor 0

wonder · 2011-08-04 20:02:24

ah, you have 1920x1080 resolution, i have 1280x800. maybe from here the poor performance

graysky · 2011-08-05 21:35:13

Even with the new 450 GTS, the laggy feel is still present. What's worse is that I can't even use nouveau w/ gnome-shell + this card! Fallback mode and anytime I try to open a shell or firefox, etc. gnome crashes!

Arch Linux

#1 2011-08-03 23:35:40

gnome-shell with nouveau - how is the performance

#2 2011-08-04 04:40:30

Re: gnome-shell with nouveau - how is the performance

#3 2011-08-04 06:14:17

Re: gnome-shell with nouveau - how is the performance

#4 2011-08-04 06:51:55

Re: gnome-shell with nouveau - how is the performance

#5 2011-08-04 07:38:31

Re: gnome-shell with nouveau - how is the performance

#6 2011-08-04 07:45:37

Re: gnome-shell with nouveau - how is the performance

#7 2011-08-04 08:00:53

Re: gnome-shell with nouveau - how is the performance

#8 2011-08-04 08:01:49

Re: gnome-shell with nouveau - how is the performance

#9 2011-08-04 08:09:57

Re: gnome-shell with nouveau - how is the performance

#10 2011-08-04 19:57:41

Re: gnome-shell with nouveau - how is the performance

#11 2011-08-04 20:02:24

Re: gnome-shell with nouveau - how is the performance

#12 2011-08-05 21:35:13

Re: gnome-shell with nouveau - how is the performance

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