Re: [suse-amd64] Help - Suse 9.2 installation on HP xw9300 / PCI-Express QuadroFX
Andrew Halliwell wrote:
And verily, didst Ken Siersma announce to the hordes:
I've tried using Ext3 for my root partition as well, but I get other problems - a InstTarget: E_RpmDB_not_open error on the first package it tries to install.
I hope someone can help...
One thing I'll suggest... Forget ext3 and reiserfs... and try formatting the partitions with jfs. I had problems with ext2 and reiser on an x86-64 machine just the other week, in which it'd format the partition but then the thing would fall flat on its face when trying to write to disk.
JFS worked fine however... Once you've got it installed, do an immediate online update to the latest kernel. That SHOULD fix your problems.
Thanks Andrew for your helpful suggestion. I have Suse 9.2 running now on this machine, and everything works great except for one thing - the QuadroFX 3400 card. X does work - I had to pass the 'noapic' option to Grub, but it does indeed work with direct rendering enabled. Unfortunately, my OpenGL application is quite flaky on this machine. Frequently, it will stop drawing the scene. It appears to me that the buffers are not getting swapped. If I resize the window, the OpenGL app will return to normal, for a while. Then it will stop drawing again. Also, the app will hesitate intermittenly. This app works flawlessly on other cards, using the same Nvidia driver. The main difference I see is that this QuadroFX card is a PCI-Express card. I know historically AGP is preferred over PCI, but what about this PCI-Express? Are their any known tweaks for a PCI-Express nvidia card? I am getting what I think is good FPS with glxgears -> in the 39500s. Seems really good, actually. But my app is not so great... Any ideas? Thanks, Ken -- Ken Siersma, Software Engineer EKK, Inc. phone: (248) 624-9957 fax: (248) 624-7158 http://www.ekkinc.com -- "Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter." -MLK Jr.
Ken Siersma wrote:
Andrew Halliwell wrote:
And verily, didst Ken Siersma announce to the hordes:
I've tried using Ext3 for my root partition as well, but I get other problems - a InstTarget: E_RpmDB_not_open error on the first package it tries to install.
I hope someone can help...
One thing I'll suggest... Forget ext3 and reiserfs... and try formatting the partitions with jfs. I had problems with ext2 and reiser on an x86-64 machine just the other week, in which it'd format the partition but then the thing would fall flat on its face when trying to write to disk.
JFS worked fine however... Once you've got it installed, do an immediate online update to the latest kernel. That SHOULD fix your problems.
Thanks Andrew for your helpful suggestion.
I have Suse 9.2 running now on this machine, and everything works great except for one thing - the QuadroFX 3400 card. X does work - I had to pass the 'noapic' option to Grub, but it does indeed work with direct rendering enabled. Unfortunately, my OpenGL application is quite flaky on this machine. Frequently, it will stop drawing the scene. It appears to me that the buffers are not getting swapped. If I resize the window, the OpenGL app will return to normal, for a while. Then it will stop drawing again. Also, the app will hesitate intermittenly. This app works flawlessly on other cards, using the same Nvidia driver.
The main difference I see is that this QuadroFX card is a PCI-Express card. I know historically AGP is preferred over PCI, but what about this PCI-Express? Are their any known tweaks for a PCI-Express nvidia card? I am getting what I think is good FPS with glxgears -> in the 39500s. Seems really good, actually. But my app is not so great...
Any ideas?
Thanks, Ken
Let me restate that. I'm actually getting around 15000 FPS in glxgears. Still pretty good though...
Make sure you have the latest Nvidia driver (currently 1.0.7174). The 7167
driver specifically states that it fixes stablility problems on the
PCI-Express interface.
PCI-Express (x16) is replacing AGP as the graphics interface - 4 GB/sec
full duplex communication
http://graphics.tomshardware.com/graphic/20041122/index.html
Can help improve things like using the graphics card as a coprocessor
(GPGPU)...
http://www.gpgpu.org/
Kevin Gassiot
Advanced Systems Group
Visualization Systems Support
Veritas DGC
10300 Town Park Dr.
Houston, Texas 77072
832-351-8978
kevin_gassiot@veritasdgc.com
Ken Siersma
And verily, didst Ken Siersma announce to the hordes:
I've tried using Ext3 for my root partition as well, but I get other problems - a InstTarget: E_RpmDB_not_open error on the first package it tries to install.
I hope someone can help...
One thing I'll suggest... Forget ext3 and reiserfs... and try formatting the partitions with jfs. I had problems with ext2 and reiser on an x86-64 machine just the other week, in which it'd format the partition but then the thing would fall flat on its face when trying to write to disk.
JFS worked fine however... Once you've got it installed, do an immediate online update to the latest kernel. That SHOULD fix your problems.
Thanks Andrew for your helpful suggestion. I have Suse 9.2 running now on this machine, and everything works great except for one thing - the QuadroFX 3400 card. X does work - I had to pass the 'noapic' option to Grub, but it does indeed work with direct rendering enabled. Unfortunately, my OpenGL application is quite flaky on this machine. Frequently, it will stop drawing the scene. It appears to me that the buffers are not getting swapped. If I resize the window, the OpenGL app will return to normal, for a while. Then it will stop drawing again. Also, the app will hesitate intermittenly. This app works flawlessly on other cards, using the same Nvidia driver. The main difference I see is that this QuadroFX card is a PCI-Express card. I know historically AGP is preferred over PCI, but what about this PCI-Express? Are their any known tweaks for a PCI-Express nvidia card? I am getting what I think is good FPS with glxgears -> in the 39500s. Seems really good, actually. But my app is not so great... Any ideas? Thanks, Ken -- Ken Siersma, Software Engineer EKK, Inc. phone: (248) 624-9957 fax: (248) 624-7158 http://www.ekkinc.com -- "Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter." -MLK Jr. -- Check the List-Unsubscribe header to unsubscribe For additional commands, email: suse-amd64-help@suse.com
Kevin_Gassiot@veritasdgc.com wrote:
Make sure you have the latest Nvidia driver (currently 1.0.7174). The 7167 driver specifically states that it fixes stablility problems on the PCI-Express interface.
PCI-Express (x16) is replacing AGP as the graphics interface - 4 GB/sec full duplex communication
http://graphics.tomshardware.com/graphic/20041122/index.html
Can help improve things like using the graphics card as a coprocessor (GPGPU)...
Kevin Gassiot Advanced Systems Group Visualization Systems Support
Veritas DGC 10300 Town Park Dr. Houston, Texas 77072 832-351-8978 kevin_gassiot@veritasdgc.com
Thanks Kevin. I do have the 7174 version of the nvidia driver installed. I'm considering trying the 7167, only out of desperation. Still trying all sorts of other things - options to the kernel, options to the nvidia driver, etc... So AGP will become less significant? -Ken -- Ken Siersma, Software Engineer EKK, Inc. phone: (248) 624-9957 fax: (248) 624-7158 http://www.ekkinc.com -- "Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter." -MLK Jr.
I have a machine under my desk right now with the Tyan S2895 PCI-Express
motherboard and an Nvidia 6800 Ultra PCIE graphics card, running the 7174
driver. I had to use the "noapic pci=noacpi" options to get things to
work. I ran my own OpenGL benchmark, and things seemed fine, and then I
ran the Viewperf OpenGL benchmarks continuously for 24 hours with no
hiccups... We have some of the HPs on order, but they are not in yet...
The only machine I have had that used an FX3400 was one of the new Dell
workstations with the Intel EM64T cpus. I wasn't able to get Suse and the
Nvidia drivers to run properly on it, and Dell had some pre-packaged RPMs
that you had to use with RedHat to make the graphics work properly. But,
that machine is so new, I didn't expect everything to work out of the box
:)
AGP will probably be phased out over time. Most of the OEMs are selling
PCI-e systems now, and the AGP systems have gone away (in the workstation
part of the market). The high-end laptops we were buying (Dell M60) was
replaced with a new M70 model with PCI-e graphics. Look at all of HP's
and Dell's workstations, and they all are PCI-e based. The lower end
machines have integrated graphics, or a few still have AGP. In the lower
end, and consumer space, where you are more concerned with backwards
compatibility for the upgrade market, the AGP based boards will probably be
around for quite awhile. You don't want to force somebody to have to
replace ALL of their accessory cards when they are trying to do a piecemeal
upgrade :)
And by the way, the Tyan board in this machine has 2 x16 PCI-e slots, so
you can drive 2 graphics cards at full speed (hook them together under
Windows for certain games...)
The ASUS SLI board with Athlon 64 cpu and dual 6800GTs is the gamers wet
dream now :)
http://graphics.tomshardware.com/graphic/20041123/index.html
Kevin
Kevin Gassiot
Advanced Systems Group
Visualization Systems Support
Veritas DGC
10300 Town Park Dr.
Houston, Texas 77072
832-351-8978
kevin_gassiot@veritasdgc.com
Ken Siersma
Make sure you have the latest Nvidia driver (currently 1.0.7174). The 7167 driver specifically states that it fixes stablility problems on the PCI-Express interface.
PCI-Express (x16) is replacing AGP as the graphics interface - 4 GB/sec full duplex communication
http://graphics.tomshardware.com/graphic/20041122/index.html
Can help improve things like using the graphics card as a coprocessor (GPGPU)...
Kevin Gassiot Advanced Systems Group Visualization Systems Support
Veritas DGC 10300 Town Park Dr. Houston, Texas 77072 832-351-8978 kevin_gassiot@veritasdgc.com
Thanks Kevin. I do have the 7174 version of the nvidia driver installed. I'm considering trying the 7167, only out of desperation. Still trying all sorts of other things - options to the kernel, options to the nvidia driver, etc... So AGP will become less significant? -Ken -- Ken Siersma, Software Engineer EKK, Inc. phone: (248) 624-9957 fax: (248) 624-7158 http://www.ekkinc.com -- "Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter." -MLK Jr.
Kevin_Gassiot@veritasdgc.com wrote:
I have a machine under my desk right now with the Tyan S2895 PCI-Express motherboard and an Nvidia 6800 Ultra PCIE graphics card, running the 7174 driver. I had to use the "noapic pci=noacpi" options to get things to work. I ran my own OpenGL benchmark, and things seemed fine, and then I ran the Viewperf OpenGL benchmarks continuously for 24 hours with no hiccups... We have some of the HPs on order, but they are not in yet...
The only machine I have had that used an FX3400 was one of the new Dell workstations with the Intel EM64T cpus. I wasn't able to get Suse and the Nvidia drivers to run properly on it, and Dell had some pre-packaged RPMs that you had to use with RedHat to make the graphics work properly. But, that machine is so new, I didn't expect everything to work out of the box :)
AGP will probably be phased out over time. Most of the OEMs are selling PCI-e systems now, and the AGP systems have gone away (in the workstation part of the market). The high-end laptops we were buying (Dell M60) was replaced with a new M70 model with PCI-e graphics. Look at all of HP's and Dell's workstations, and they all are PCI-e based. The lower end machines have integrated graphics, or a few still have AGP. In the lower end, and consumer space, where you are more concerned with backwards compatibility for the upgrade market, the AGP based boards will probably be around for quite awhile. You don't want to force somebody to have to replace ALL of their accessory cards when they are trying to do a piecemeal upgrade :)
And by the way, the Tyan board in this machine has 2 x16 PCI-e slots, so you can drive 2 graphics cards at full speed (hook them together under Windows for certain games...) The ASUS SLI board with Athlon 64 cpu and dual 6800GTs is the gamers wet dream now :)
http://graphics.tomshardware.com/graphic/20041123/index.html
Kevin
Kevin Gassiot Advanced Systems Group Visualization Systems Support
Veritas DGC 10300 Town Park Dr. Houston, Texas 77072 832-351-8978 kevin_gassiot@veritasdgc.com
Thanks again for your thorough comments Kevin. I was only using the "noapic" boot option before. Adding the "pci=noacpi" option doesn't make a difference for me. Do you happen to see any 'Xid' errors in your syslog on your machine? There's a *lot* of activity on the nvidia linux forum (http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/forumdisplay.php?s=&forumid=14) about GeForce FX 6*** cards with the most recent nvidia driver causing all sorts of trouble with Xid errors, and if you aren't having trouble I think they'd love to hear from you over there. Of course, most of them are using AGP cards, and tend to do a lot of OpenGL intensive / Gaming. Ken -- Ken Siersma, Software Engineer EKK, Inc. phone: (248) 624-9957 fax: (248) 624-7158 http://www.ekkinc.com -- "Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter." -MLK Jr.
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Kevin_Gassiot＠veritasdgc.com