E7505 nvagp

[colins]

I'm running a Quadro4 750 XGL on a 3.06Ghz Xeon based HP XW6000 workstation. The chipset is Intel's E7505, and I'm running RedHat 7.2.

The 4349 driver readme doesn't mention nvagp support for the E7505. But 'cat /proc/driver/nvidia/agp/status reveals that nvagp is being used and I'm running in 4X mode with SBA and Fast Writes disabled.

I have not patched my kernel, so the E7505 works but is basically not detected as an E7505. I'm not surprised SBA and Fast Writes are off by default. But what about the nvagp support? Is there native support for the E7205/E7505 and it's just not documented or maybe I missed it?

My performance seems decent and the stability is solid. I'm running Twinview, with a combined 2560x1024 display @ 32bit and glxgears gives around 4000 fps at the default window size without any performance options turned on in XF86Config (like page/window flipping or any other tweaks).

Can anyone clear up the E7505 issue for me? Would I get better performance if I tried the E7205/E7505 patch (I believe it only works with 2.4.20-pre9 at the moment?) and compiled agpgart? Or am I already seeing the full performance of this combination (it feels very fast compared to our Sun Blade 2000s with Expert3D cards).

Thanks,
colins

[Andy Mecham]

The README's supported AGP chipset list is pretty stale. If NVAGP initializes, then there's native support for your chipset. I'll see about updating the documentation.

Thanks!

--andy

[colins]

Thanks Andy. Is there a generally accepted way to benchmark the drivers to confirm things are working reasonably well on a given machine?

Also, should I even attempt forcing on SBA and Fast Writes on an E7505 based machine running a stock RedHat 7.2 kernel?

Our company is seriously evaluating a HP+Nvidia+Linux combination to replace our Sun Blade 2000 workstations (oil & gas related applications). Nvidia's driver work on Linux is instrumental in making this a possibility. Keep up the good work. I'm looking forward to getting an FX 2000 to play with.


Thanks,
colins

[Andy Mecham]

Thanks Andy. Is there a generally accepted way to benchmark the drivers to confirm things are working reasonably well on a given machine?Sure - Viewperf 7.0 is an industry standard benchmark, available from spec.org. It's a bit of work to get the linux version to run, but most workstation comparisons reference these numbers. A more enjoyable solution would probably be Quake3. :D
Also, should I even attempt forcing on SBA and Fast Writes on an E7505 based machine running a stock RedHat 7.2 kernel?On some machines, these options can introduce stability problems. It's certainly worth a look on your setup if you feel you would see a gain from enabling them. You'd probably gain from fast writes without sacrificing too much in the way of stability.
I'm looking forward to getting an FX 2000 to play with.They're so VERY nice... ;)

--andy

[Jarrod]

I would love to know how you got NvAgp to work on an E7505 chipset. I'm having no luck here with a Dell Precision 650 (E7505 chipset) and the 4349 driver. I'm stuck with no AGP support at the moment.

Our sysadmins are looking into the 2.4.20 kernel patch that enables AGP 3.0 in the gart driver - in the meantime, I'm puzzled by the result I got compared to Colins.

Jarrod

[Andy Mecham]

You shouldn't have any problems enabling AGP - what's in /proc/driver/nvidia/agp/host-bridge && status while X is running?

--andy