[wplug] Nvidia vs. ????

[Robert E. Coutch]

Well,

I installed FC2 tonight and gave it a try.

Everything worked great until I switched to the proprietary Nvidia driver.
Then the same desktop freezing occurs just like with SuSE 9.1.

If I had to make a guess, I'd say it's some issue with motherboard + video 
card + nvidia drivers.

I'm considering trying Mandrake 10 but guessing I'll get the same results.

It could be that the video card is drawing too much power from the M.B. but 
that will require some volt metering while running some 3D app.

It could be the power supply or an on board voltage regulator.

I don't know if I should tear it all apart or just go out and get an ATI 9200 
and see what happens.

-Bob

On Tuesday 21 September 2004 09:27 am, Macklin Stanley wrote:
> On Tue, 21 Sep 2004 00:58:10 -0400, Carl Benedict
>
> <cbenedic at pittsburghtechs.com> wrote:
> > I had a similar problem with FC1 using the proprietary NVIDIA drivers.
> > Upon first starting the X server, the display would garble with ASCII
> > characters.  You would have to switch to another terminal (alt + fN) or
> > ssh in and kill the xinit process.  This only happened with the
> > proprietary drivers and only needed to be done once per boot.
> >
> > Is the motherboard the only new item in the equation since this problem
> > started occurring?  If so, and you haven't already checked, perhaps look
> > at dmesg for some info about the AGP chipset and drivers.  I'm currently
> > running FC2, and I had to build a custom kernel to change a few default
> > options so that I could use the proprietary NVIDIA driver.  One of them
> > was changing the new 4KSTACKS kernel option - I believe it was
> > CONFIG_4KSTACKS.  I think you also had to either enable or disable
> > CONFIG_REGPARM.  Don't quote me on those, but they may aide in further
> > goog'ling. :)
> >
> > The only other thing I can think of would be to possibly try out X.org
> > for your X server.  Depending on availability of packages/compiling/etc,
> > it might be easier just to try a different distro.
> >
> > HTH
> >
> > --
> > Carl Benedict
> > Pittsburgh Techs
> > Main:  724-741-0233
> > http://www.pittsburghtechs.com
> > cbenedic at pittsburghtechs.com
> >
> > On Mon, 2004-09-20 at 21:40, Robert E. Coutch wrote:
> > > The problem is the desktop freezing at random times.
> > > I can still ssh into the machine and restart X.
> > >
> > > I've been to several Linux forums as well as Nvidia's and Giga-byte's
> > > websites. Not to mention googling.
> > >
> > > I've messed with BIOS settings, kernel boot options, kernel modules and
> > > XF86Config for several weeks now.
> > >
> > > I didn't want to bore you all with my story.
> > >
> > > I'm running SuSE 9.1 with kernel 2.6.5-7.108-default.
> > > The motherboard is a Giga-byte 7VT600-RZ with 4/8x AGP slot.
> > > The video card is a PNY GeForce 4 MX 420 AGP (Nvidia).
> > >
> > > I'm down to my last 3 options now.
> > >
> > > 1 - Reinstalling the latest Nvidia driver one last time ( I just did
> > > this tonight).
> > >
> > > 2 - See what happens with another Distro (Fedora Core 2, Mandrake 10,
> > > etc)
> > >
> > > 3 - Purchase an ATI 9200 card and use the open source 2D/3D drivers and
> > > hope for the best.
> > >
> > > On Monday 20 September 2004 04:53 pm, Carl Benedict wrote:
> > > > What exactly is the problem?  What kernel version are you running?
> > > >
> > > > I use the proprietary NVIDIA drivers.  Although I don't like to do
> > > > that, it seems to be the best option in some cases for getting full
> > > > functionality out of your hardware.  It's hard to play ET/UT2K4/Doom3
> > > > without these drivers.  I am running a GeForce FX 5200, which I
> > > > believe is newer than your card, so your MX420 should be supported.
> > > >
> > > > <OPINION!>
> > > > The X drivers will ALWAYS be behind the proprietary drivers unless
> > > > (1) hardware vendors embrace open-source and release their
> > > > source/specs to the OSS community. or (2) some really talented folks
> > > > gobble up new hardware for the sole purpose of creating OSS drivers
> > > > and do so very well.
> > > >
> > > > The 2d support in the X "nv" driver seems very solid.  If I did not
> > > > want to use hardware acceleration and other hardware-specific
> > > > features for my card, I would simply use that driver.  My experience
> > > > has been that the OSS drivers that claim to have hardware
> > > > acceleration and other functionality are still behind the proprietary
> > > > drivers, which would only make sense.  I don't think an OSS driver
> > > > would meet my requirements for speed for 3d-related things (at least
> > > > not yet).
> > > >
> > > > YMMV
> > > > </OPINION!>
> > >
> > > _______________________________________________
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> > > wplug at wplug.org
> > > http://www.wplug.org/mailman/listinfo/wplug
> >
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> > http://www.wplug.org/mailman/listinfo/wplug
>
> You should not see a difference between Xorg and XFree86.  Xorg is
> just a fork off the same code base.  If I had to guess, it might be
> something enabled/disabled in the SuSE kernel.  I've been running FC2
> with the lastest nVidia drivers (6111) without a problem. If you try
> FC2, you can find RPMS for the nVidia here -> http://rpm.livna.org/
> They work like a charm.  Good luck.