Mailinglist Archive: opensuse-amd64 (299 mails)

[mark.langsdorf@xxxxxxx]

The 2P Opteron based Tyan 2885 K8W has some problems
with AGP/openGL graphics performance when using
nVidia graphics cards under Linux.  AMD, Tyan, and
nVidia  have been working together to develop fixes
for the problems.  Four problems have been resolved 
for the Tyan 2885 design.

The first issue was the inabilty of the Linux kernel
to find the AMD-8151 AGP Tunnel.  The AMD-8151 AGP 
controller is not at the normal PCI address, and the 
Linux kernel had to be modified to account for the 
change.  SUSE Linux kernels starting with 
k_smp-2.4.21-139 include the change.  The two 
attached patches (tyan_agp.generic.patch and 
tyan_agp.RHEL3.patch) fix the problem for most kernels 
and for the Red Hat 2.4.21-4EL kernels, respectively.

The second issue was a misallocation of MTRRs in the
Tyan BIOS that prevented the nVidia driver from 
correctly caching the AGP aperture.  Tyan fixed this
with the 2885101i.ROM (1.01i) BIOS, available at 
ftp://ftp.tyan.com/bios_beta/2885101i.zip.

The third issue involved the nVidia 10-4499 graphics
driver.  nVidia has corrected the problems exposed 
by the updated AGP and BIOS code and released the
10-5332 driver to their website on January 20th.

The final issue involved the Linux kernel MTRR code.
A patch that fixes the problem is attached to this
message (mtrr.patch).  It has not been included in
any production kernels at this time.

These four updates, taken together, allow the 2885
to provide excellent 3D performance under Linux.

AMD would like to thank all those who contributed to
defining, debugging, and verifying this problem.

Mark Langsdorf
Team Lead, Linux Device Drivers
Advanced Micro Devices       
mark.langsdorf@xxxxxxx