AGP, Option "NvAgp" "0"

I posted on the old forum b4 it went down, here goes again.

to get the nvidia drivers to work i have to set the line in XFree86config-4 to "Option "NvAgp" "0""

if set to 1,2,3 it will lockup my machine, requiring a hard reset.

i have a feeling that the performance (low FPS) in quake3 and return to castle wolfenstien should be better, and assume this is probably why.

I am using mandrake 8.2 with a budget motherboard that has onboard sis sound, sis nic, a chaintech geforce4 MX 440, and a Duron 1.2Ghz
XFree86 4.2, nvidia driver 2960

any thoughts on why i cannot use nvagp ?
will this affect the performance ?

thx.

[Thunderbird]

Where does it lockup at the starting of X or in games?

Not using AGP limits the performance a bit. (about 10% I guess or a little more but in this direction) If you really want to use AGP you can try to set AGP to 1x or 2x in your bios. Then try to set NvAGP to 1, 2 or 3.

The GeForce FAQ has LOTS of good info for configuring the base system

http://www.tweak3d.net/faq/faq.html

Have you tried turning off anti-aliasing? That's all I can think of. I'm not even sure if your card supports it... I had a problem of stuff getting out of focus in FSV and Blender until I turned off anti-aliasing, but I'm using linux too...

Crap... Disregard that.. I thought that I was in a differant thread. Actually, I was...

[Stratman]

Could you post the output of "lsmod"? What I'm looking for is agpgart. In most cases it doesn't play well with the nvidia agp driver. If it's not listed it could still be compiled into the kernel. Also is your SiS chipset one of the following:
o SiS 630
o SiS 633
o SiS 635
o SiS 645
o SiS 730
o SiS 733
o SiS 735
o SiS 745

It's taken from
Nvidia's page.

i'll attach the lsmod output

i'm not to sure what my motherboard is, i think it is one of these:
pcchips m810lmr (teach me for buying a cheap one)

here is info from /proc/pci
see next post

PCI devices found:

Bus 0, device 0, function 0:
Host bridge: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] 730 Host (rev 2).
Master Capable. Latency=32.
Non-prefetchable 32 bit memory at 0xd0000000 [0xd3ffffff].

Bus 0, device 0, function 1:
IDE interface: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] 5513 [IDE] (rev 208).
Master Capable. Latency=16.
I/O at 0xff00 [0xff0f].

Bus 0, device 1, function 0:
ISA bridge: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] 85C503/5513 (rev 0).

Bus 0, device 1, function 1:
Ethernet controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] SiS900 10/100 Ethernet (rev 130).
IRQ 3.
Master Capable. Latency=64. Min Gnt=52.Max Lat=11.
I/O at 0xd400 [0xd4ff].
Non-prefetchable 32 bit memory at 0xcfffb000 [0xcfffbfff].

Bus 0, device 1, function 3:
USB Controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] 7001 (#2) (rev 7).
IRQ 12.
Master Capable. Latency=64. Max Lat=80.
Non-prefetchable 32 bit memory at 0xcfffd000 [0xcfffdfff].

Bus 0, device 1, function 2:
USB Controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] 7001 (rev 7).
IRQ 12.
Master Capable. Latency=64. Max Lat=80.
Non-prefetchable 32 bit memory at 0xcfffc000 [0xcfffcfff].

Bus 0, device 1, function 4:
Multimedia audio controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] SiS PCI Audio Accelerator (rev 2).
IRQ 11.
Master Capable. Latency=64. Min Gnt=2.Max Lat=24.
I/O at 0xd800 [0xd8ff].
Non-prefetchable 32 bit memory at 0xcfffe000 [0xcfffefff].

Bus 0, device 2, function 0:
PCI bridge: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] 5591/5592 AGP (rev 0).
Master Capable. No bursts. Min Gnt=14.

Bus 1, device 0, function 0:
VGA compatible controller: PCI device 10de:0171 (nVidia Corporation) (rev 163).
IRQ 5.
Master Capable. Latency=248. Min Gnt=5.Max Lat=1.
Non-prefetchable 32 bit memory at 0xce000000 [0xceffffff].
Prefetchable 32 bit memory at 0xc0000000 [0xc7ffffff].
Prefetchable 32 bit memory at 0xcdc80000 [0xcdcfffff].

/proc/driver/nvidia/agp/host-bridge

host bridge: SiS 730
Fast Writes: not supported
AGP Rates: 2x 1x
registers:0x1f000203:0x00000000


/proc.(as above).../status

status: Disabled


/proc...(above)../card

fast writes: supported
agp rates: 4x 2x 1x
registers: 0x1f000017:0x00000000

ok from this i gather my hostbridge supports 2x AGP not fastwrites, and my card (geforce4 MX440) supprots fastwrites and 4x 2x 1x AGP.

from nvidia drivers README

AGP Fast writes
to disable in modprode /etc/modules.conf
add these lines:
alias char-major-195 NVdriver
options NVdriver NVreg_EnableAGPFW=0

and similar for AGP rate...
i did try this and diddn't seem to work, then had to reinstall nvidia rpms
any thoughts?

[Thunderbird]

You don't have to play with that fast writes option at all. It is disabled by default. It is never used when AGP is off.

[Thunderbird]

There's one other thing that can cause your problems but that might be fixed in your kernel version. (but I don't know)

There is/was a bug related to AGP on AMD systems in the linux kernel. I won't explain what it really was but it caused a lot of instability. As a workaround to that bug you can add the following line to lilo.conf: "mem=nopentium"

(after it run lilo ofcourse)

That might fix the problem else it is very likely something in the kernel.

And your mobo really supports 4x AGP, but because you set it to 2x in the bios 4x doesn't show up.