AGP and nForce

[etr]

I am having a hard time getting AGP going with the nForce. I've done all I can think of based on some reading of NVIDIA's documentation, but to no avail.

To put it quickly, I'm getting rotten gaming performance. After some research, I found evidence that AGP was disabled. I have set NvAGP to 1 (nVidia AGP) and made AGPGART a module to prevent its interference with the nVidia implementation. (From what I've seen in reading some older posts here, AGPGART does not support the nForce, and the kernel configuration options I've seen support this. However, nVidia's documentation indicates that nVidia's AGP code shoul handle the nForce.) AGPGART is not loaded--and does not load.

I've pasted as much as I can think of that might be relevant. I apologize for the amount of text, but any advice would be greatly appreciated!


System:
Motherboard: Abit NV-133R
Leadtek GeForce 4 Ti4400
Athalon XP 1800+ (1.53 GHz)
512 MB PC2100 (CAS 2.5)
Linux Distro: RedHat 7.3
Kernel: 2.4.19 (home-built)
nVidia Driver Version: 3123


XFree86 Configuration (driver):
Section "Device"
Identifier "GeForce4 Ti4400"
Driver "nvidia"
#VideoRam 131072
Option "NvAGP" "1"
Option "NoLogo" "true"
Option "DigitalVibrance" "0"
# Insert Clocks lines here if appropriate
EndSection


AGP Configuration Options Used to Build Kernel:
CONFIG_AGP=m
CONFIG_AGP_INTEL=y
CONFIG_AGP_I810=y
CONFIG_AGP_VIA=y
CONFIG_AGP_AMD=y
CONFIG_AGP_SIS=y
CONFIG_AGP_ALI=y
# CONFIG_AGP_SWORKS is not set
CONFIG_DRM=y
# CONFIG_DRM_OLD is not set
CONFIG_DRM_NEW=y
# CONFIG_DRM_TDFX is not set
# CONFIG_DRM_R128 is not set
# CONFIG_DRM_RADEON is not set
# CONFIG_DRM_I810 is not set
# CONFIG_DRM_MGA is not set
# CONFIG_DRM_SIS is not set
# CONFIG_MWAVE is not set


cat /proc/driver/nvidia/version:
NVRM version: NVIDIA Linux x86 NVdriver Kernel Module 1.0-3123 Tue Aug 27 15:5
6:48 PDT 2002
GCC version: gcc version 2.96 20000731 (Red Hat Linux 7.3 2.96-110)

cat /proc/driver/nvidia/cards/0:
Model: GeForce4 Ti 4400
IRQ: 7
Video BIOS: 04.25.00.27.00
Card Type: AGP


cat /proc/driver/nvidia/agp/card:
Fast Writes: Supported
SBA: Supported
AGP Rates: 4x 2x 1x
Registers: 0x1f000217:0x00000000


cat /proc/drivers/nvidia/agp/host-bridge:
Host Bridge: nVidia nForce
Fast Writes: Supported
SBA: Supported
AGP Rates: 4x 2x 1x
Registers: 0x1f000217:0x0000000


cat /proc/drivers/nvidia/agp/status:
Status: Disabled


lsmod:
Module Size Used by Tainted: P
NVdriver 1148672 10
sr_mod 13656 0 (autoclean)
i810_audio 21056 0 (unused)
emu10k1 65216 0
ac97_codec 11648 0 [i810_audio emu10k1]
nvnet 28288 2
af_packet 9736 0 (autoclean)
ide-scsi 9216 0
scsi_mod 95260 2 [sr_mod ide-scsi]
ide-cd 30016 0
cdrom 31808 0 [sr_mod ide-cd]
vfat 11708 1 (autoclean)
fat 35832 0 (autoclean) [vfat]
rtc 7484 0 (autoclean)


From /var/log/XFree86.0.log:
(WW) NVIDIA(0): Failed to verify AGP usage

[bwkaz]

One thing to try would be to turn off the CONFIG_DRM kernel stuff, maybe...

I see the 2.5 kernels have some kind of nForce support, but they're development kernels, so basically the thinking is don't expect anything to work. Probably not a great solution. ;)

That's about all I can think of -- turn off CONFIG_DRM.

[etr]

Well, I disabled DRM, but it did not get rid of the problem. It was worth a shot though, so thanks for the advice! At this point, I'll probably play a waiting game for awhile. If that doesn't pan out, I'll probably try to file a bug report with nVidia. In the meantime, I may try disabling the AGP stuff in the kernel (as it won't be helping me). As a last resort, I may try pulling the AGPGART code from a 2.5 kernel (it might works, but I'll need to make a backup image, just in case), but I'd REALLY like to stay on the stable release kernels across the board. Thanks again!

Given the change, I will now include my updated kernel configuration:
CONFIG_AGP=m
CONFIG_AGP_INTEL=y
CONFIG_AGP_I810=y
CONFIG_AGP_VIA=y
CONFIG_AGP_AMD=y
CONFIG_AGP_SIS=y
CONFIG_AGP_ALI=y
# CONFIG_AGP_SWORKS is not set
# CONFIG_DRM is not set
# CONFIG_MWAVE is not set

[sanat]

Given the change, I will now include my updated kernel configuration:
CONFIG_AGP=m
CONFIG_AGP_INTEL=y
CONFIG_AGP_I810=y
CONFIG_AGP_VIA=y
CONFIG_AGP_AMD=y
CONFIG_AGP_SIS=y
CONFIG_AGP_ALI=y

Try turning off the agpgart support for the unneded chips, which may be forcing the kernel's agpgart module to load. Nvidia's agp driver won't work if the kernel's agpgart is already loaded.

CONFIG_AGP=m
CONFIG_AGP_INTEL=n
CONFIG_AGP_I810=n
CONFIG_AGP_VIA=n
CONFIG_AGP_AMD=n
CONFIG_AGP_SIS=n
CONFIG_AGP_ALI=n

[etr]

Yeah, I head read that AGPGART would prevent nVidia's implmentation from working. That's why I included lsmod output in my original post. In any case, I have since gone one better and outright disabled AGPGART altogether. In any case, I am pretty sure that AGPGART was not loading--I had tried to manually load AGPGART before posting my original message. Here is the error message I received:

NVRM: AGPGART: unable to retrieve symbol table


In any case, I believe that the following will show that I have AGPGART out of the picture:

ls /lib/modules/2.4.19/kernel/drivers/char
lp.o rtc.o


At this point, it may pay to pull down the latest 2.5 kernel and run some diffs on its AGPGART and that of 2.4.19.


Having modified my kernel again, here is an updated section of my .config file:
# CONFIG_AGP is not set
# CONFIG_DRM is not set

[etr]

The one thing I can think of I haven't documented here are BIOS settings. I've used this setup without trouble under Windows, so I assumed that those were fine. However, in the interest of completeness, I have checked them anyway. I found two settings:

AGP Aperture Size: 64MB
AGP Fast-Write: Enabled

Nothing earth-shattering here, but I thought I would list them.


I have also grabbed what appears to be the latest dev kernel--2.5.47. I poked around a little in the AGP modules there, but I didn't find any evidence of work toward nForce support. Case-insensitive searches for "nvidia" and "nforce" turned up nothing. I would have at least expeced some variant of "nvidia" to show up in vendor strings, if support were present. I also did a (case-sensitive) search for all "CONFIG_AGP" strings, but did not find any apparnet configuration options for nVidia. At this point, it looks like I get AGP working with the nVidia drivers or not at all.


I'll play the waiting game for awhile, but I may end up sending a bug report to nVidia on this one. In the meantime, I should probably consider trying other versions of the drivers. (I can switch pretty quickly, so I will be plenty game to try any additional ideas.)

[Chalnoth]

AGP is working just fine on my nForce 415-D with GeForce4 Ti 4200 (From the XFree86 log):

(II) NVIDIA(0): AGP 4X successfully initialized

I'm running RedHat 7.3 with the default kernel.

[etr]

Originally posted by Chalnoth
AGP is working just fine on my nForce 415-D with GeForce4 Ti

Thank you! Knowing whether someone has it working helps immensely in figuring out how to proceed. It sounds like your setup is also very similar to mine. I'll definitely bang on it some more before harassing nVidia for assistance.

If you have a chance, would you do a "more /proc/driver/nvidia/agp/status" and a more on the version file (/proc/driver/nvidia/version, I think)? It might be helpful for me to compare my settings to yours. My next move will probably to look at BIOS settings/updates.

Once again, thanks for the response!

[Chalnoth]

more /proc/driver/nvidia/agp/status:

Status: Enabled
Driver: NVIDIA
AGP Rate: 4x
Fast Writes: Disabled
SBA: Disabled

more /proc/driver/nvidia/version

NVRM version: NVIDIA Linux x86 NVdriver Kernel Module 1.0-3123 Tue Aug 27 15:56:48 PDT 2002
GCC version: gcc version 2.96 20000731 (Red Hat Linux 7.3 2.96-110)

Btw, I installed these drivers using the source RPM's in single-user mode, with the rpmbuild command for rebuilding them.