9629 causing grainy display in VMWare
 

I'm running VMWare server on Slackware 11.0. It worked great with the 8776 driver. After upgrading to the 9629 driver I noticed that all the virtual machines in VMWare have a very grainy look as if the refresh rate were set to low. The OpenGL performance seems much improved and everything else works fine. But, I almost can't read the screens in VMWare. Any suggestions?

Re: 9629 causing grainy display in VMWare
 

Since I never got any response the first time around I started playing with settings I found in other posts like disabling EDID and Option "ModeValidation" "NoDFPNativeResolutionCheck". None of these things resolved the problem. The problem also occurs with the 9631 driver. I did however notice that with the 9xxx drivers I get the following lines in xorg.0.log when I switch in and out of a virtual machine in vmware:

(II) NVIDIA(0): Setting mode "1024x768_87i" #vmware loaded
(II) NVIDIA(0): Setting mode "1024x768" #back to normal x-windows
(II) NVIDIA(0): Setting mode "1024x768_87i" #vmware loaded
(II) NVIDIA(0): Setting mode "1024x768" #back to normal x-windows

When I load the 8776 driver and do the exact same thing I get no refresh rate changes like this.

Re: 9629 causing grainy display in VMWare
 

Are you running VMWare fullscreen when this behavior is present?

Re: 9629 causing grainy display in VMWare
 

Yes

Re: 9629 causing grainy display in VMWare
 

If that's the case, then VMware is changing the mode to a non-native mode which is apparently not suitable for your display. Does adding the following to xorg.conf (and restarting X) help?
Option "DynamicTwinView" "False"

If not, please start X with the following command:
startx -- -logverbose 6

and generate a new bug report after reproducing the problem again.

I'd also be curious to see a bug report generated against 1.0-8776 when the problem didn't reproduce.

Thanks,
Lonni

Re: 9629 causing grainy display in VMWare
 

Thanks for your quick response. Adding the Option "DynamicTwinView" "False"
to xorg.conf made no difference at all. I did what you asked and generated bug reports with X started with the "logverbose 6" server option against the 9631 and 8776 drivers. I removed the DynamicTwinView option from xorg.conf before starting X with the 8776 driver. Unfortunately the log files created exceeded the forums limit on file size so I compressed them. Hope this helps.

Re: 9629 causing grainy display in VMWare
 

Thanks. Please try adding the following option to xorg.conf:
Option "ModeValidation" "NoVesaModes, NoXServerModes"

Re: 9629 causing grainy display in VMWare
 

Excellent job! That did indeed resolve the problem. It still switches refresh rates when starting virtual machines but it now never uses that ugly interlaced 87 hz refresh rate. Thanks.

Re: 9629 causing grainy display in VMWare
 

Just curious if you have time - Why does the 8776 driver not switch refresh rates?

Re: 9629 causing grainy display in VMWare
 

I'm honestly not sure why this doesn't happen with 1.0-8776, as the same 1024x768_87i mode is exposed there as well. Its technically VMWare/Windows that is requesting the mode change, and I don't have any simple way of determining how its deciding which mode(s) to request.