100.14.19 - 9750GT Performance Degradation

[slowburn69]

I've been experiencing severe performance degradation on my AGP based 7950GT when using any of the 100.x drivers. The performance issues go away when I use the 9xxx series, up until 100.14.19 I've been using the 9755. I decided to try these with the new xorg 7.3, the performance decrease remains.

my nvidia-bug-report

the drivers load fine and do produce a picture but rendering performance is dramatically reduced.

inaccurate benchmarks:
glxgears, 100.14.19:

user host ~ $ glxgears 
22640 frames in 5.0 seconds = 4527.958 FPS
23237 frames in 5.0 seconds = 4647.259 FPS
25193 frames in 5.0 seconds = 5038.506 FPS

ut2004:
100.14.19 - today
9755 - 8/25/2007

[netllama]

In your bug report, AGP initialization failed, so you're running at PCI bus speeds. That coupled with using the Composite extension is going to produce a very noticeable performance loss.

I'd like to see a bug report against 1.0-9755 when the problem is not present.

[slowburn69]

Originally Posted by netllama

In your bug report, AGP initialization failed, so you're running at PCI bus speeds. That coupled with using the Composite extension is going to produce a very noticeable performance loss.

I'd like to see a bug report against 1.0-9755 when the problem is not present.

I have downgraded to xorg-7.2 with xorg-server-1.3.0.

Full rmmod then compile, with dmesg|tail verification.

nvidia-bug-report.log for 100.14.19
nvidia-bug-report.log 9755

ut2004 benchmark w/ 9755

[netllama]

I'm not clear why you downgraded the X server?

[piotrq__]

I think he meant 7950. Could you please post your /proc/config.gz somewhere?
I'm asking for that, 'cause your system was complaining about:

Feb 6 06:23:09 blue NVRM: not using NVAGP, kernel was compiled with GART_IOMMU support!!

Have you fixed that? I just want to make sure you have all the proper agp support modules loaded.
And your kernel seems to be misconfigured to me, /proc/modules displays two modules only, there should be more of them I think... unless you really have compiled everything statically.

[slowburn69]

first: 7950GT, I apologize in my haste I identified the card wrong. it is a 7950GT AGP w/ 512MB (XFX) amd64 3700+ Gentoo64.

Originally Posted by piotrq__

Feb 6 06:23:09 blue NVRM: not using NVAGP, kernel was compiled with GART_IOMMU support!!

Have you fixed that? I just want to make sure you have all the proper agp support modules loaded.
And your kernel seems to be misconfigured to me, /proc/modules displays two modules only, there should be more of them I think... unless you really have compiled everything statically.

Yes, I do literally compile everything into the kernel statically. except nvidia and right now I have skge (network card) compiled as a module.

I don't have IOMMU nor the kernel's AGPGART compiled into my kernel. If I do all nvidia-drivers hang on startx.

[edit] I just re-reviewed the error that was pointed out about AGPGART and IOMMU being in the kernel. that error line is from several years ago, loading a much older driver version: "NVRM: loading NVIDIA Linux x86_64 NVIDIA Kernel Module 1.0-8178" proceeds the error.[/edit]


/proc/config.gz

I had to downgrade xorg-server from 1.4 to 1.3 because of the ABI differences. 9755 dosen't load on xorg-server-1.4, the problem persists regardless. I could use -ignoreABI but I figured this was a more stable environment.

[netllama]

Based on the information you've provided, this is a kernel/AGP driver issue, and not an nvidia driver bug. I'd suggest rebuilding your kernel with AGP support, as the configuration that you're currently using is not working with your hardware.

[piotrq__]

I didn't notice, that the IOMMU error was that old. Anyway I'd do what netllama suggested, review the config and recompile the kernel. You shouldn't have so many things thrown-in statically it can cause some really nasty problems.

[slowburn69]

Originally Posted by netllama

Based on the information you've provided, this is a kernel/AGP driver issue, and not an nvidia driver bug. I'd suggest rebuilding your kernel with AGP support, as the configuration that you're currently using is not working with your hardware.

Thank you for pointing of the AGP issue in the bug report.

After modifying my kernel to compile in AGPGART but not IOMMU, nvidia-drivers-100.14.19 seem to work properly. I'm not sure why I've always equated the two. IOMMU depends on AGPGART and if I compile IOMMU in, all nvidia-drivers hang (even 100.14.19), so that may be why.

ut2004 benchmark

I appreciate the time from everyone who responded.

[slowburn69]

final, additional information in case anyone hits this issue.

I now have IOMMU and AGPGART compiled into my 2.6.23 kernel. The IOMMU support was seq faulting with the nvidia-drivers because my BIOS was incorrectly setup to only allocate 32bit to the AGPGART, upping this to 64MB stopped IOMMU and nvidia-drivers from seq faulting.

This BIOS option was originally concealed on my motherboard and I need to enable advanced options to see it.

thank you to nvidia employees and all those that responded! very happy 7950GT customer using 2.6.23 and 100.14.19!