* On Fri, Sep 23, 2005 at 10:55 AM (-0700), Pierre Patino wrote:
Pierre Patino wrote:
sean-lynch@sean-lynch.com wrote:
Pierre,
If you have an LCD monitor, try lowering the refresh rate. You may have to lower the resolution, or just adjust the screen size within the same resolution.
I have a set of LCD monitors that are very sensitive to their refresh rate and show these symptoms.
Sean
On Tue, 30 Aug 2005 18:36:50 -0700 Pierre Patino <pierre@cruzio.com> wrote:
Greetings
I've been experiencing an annoyance since I built this box. Every once in a while, a few times per day, the video goes blank for a couple of seconds and then comes back as if nothing happened. I'm using the nvidia-supplied drivers and the digital video output. Any clues? TIA&Cheers
<snip>
Th refresh is at 60Hz and the monitor is running at its native resolution of 1600x1200. Since I'm using the DVI, I have no screen size control. Hmmm... perhaps it is the monitor. Too bad I don't have a spare one to test.
Well, I updated to the 2.6.13.1 kernel which also forced me to download the latest nvidia driver. The problem has disappeared thus I can no longer blame the monitor.
I noticed quite a similar problem after installing SuSE Linux 9.3 on a Dual Opteron system (mainboard: Tyan Thunder K8SE 2892G3NR) a few weeks ago: The console screen blanked irregularly after not having pressed any key for about few seconds, the system time ran quite fast (minutes ran almost as fast as seconds), the KDE screen saver appeared just a few seconds after an idle mouse or keyboard). I suppose, the first and the last observation were consequences of the second one. My assumption is that the much too fast system clock was caused by the CPU's and kernel's "powernow" feature that changed the CPU clock rate depending on the system load as it happend especially under heavy load (e.g. during decompressing archived files like RPMs), i.e. when the CPUs were switched from 1 GHz to 2 GHz. Unfortunately, I haven't tested further how the system reacts when setting the CPU clock rate to a fixed value (for example, "maximum performance" or "energy saving"). At that time I didn't know that this can be easily done from user space (or even by a SuSE tool that can be found in the task bar). Both, the SuSE kernel that came with SuSE 9.3 (linux-2.6.11.4-20a) and the one which was available via YOU at that time (linux-2.6.11.4-21.9), have shown the problem. After upgrading to a self-compiled vanilla kernel (linux-2.6.13.2) the problem just disappeared. Of course, the linux-2.6.13.2 is still making use of "powernow", that means: I've compiled this feature into the kernel and the CPUs' frequencies are still actually managed by SuSE's tools depending on load of the system. So perhaps that _might_ have been also the reason for the lanking that you recognized with your screen. Bye, Steffen