3D Acceleration OK on some boots, slow on others

[Quaxo76]

Hello all,
I've installed Feisty Fawn a few weeks ago. I keep the system always updated. I installed the nVidia drivers with the Envy script. I have a 6600 video card.
The problem is this. Sometimes the 3D acceleration is perfect. Sometimes instead, it is VERY slow. To check, I usually launch the game Chromium. If everything is OK, I get about 50fps. Sometimes instead (about 30% of the times) I get only 11 fps. This is just after boot, without changing anything. If it is slow and I reboot, again I have 70% chances that it will be good, and 30% that it will not.
Any ideas on what might be happening?
Restarting X doesn't help. Only a reboot. And when the 3D acceleration is bad, also the sound on 3D games is bad - sort of "choppy", as if it plays a small bit of sound then a small bit of silence and so on.

Another thing: I can usually say if it's going to run OK or not, at boot time - if it's going to be OK the nVidia logo only comes up for a small fraction of a second; if it's going to be broken the logo stays up for at least a whole second.
How can it be that there's a different behavior at boot without changing anything?

Thanks
Cristian

[Quaxo76]

Re: 3D Acceleration OK on some boots, slow on others

UP - So, no one has a little hint on what might be going on? It's really annoying having to reboot several times to get the system running OK...
By the way: when the system loads "not OK", even the "zoom" effect you get on icons when you open them is choppy and slow, and even the "balloon" tips when you hover the mouse over the panel icons. So it's not just 3D games, but pretty much everything...

Cristian

[klerfayt]

Re: 3D Acceleration OK on some boots, slow on others

sudo nvidia-bug-report.sh

[Quaxo76]

Re: 3D Acceleration OK on some boots, slow on others

This is the log file generated by the above command. It was generated on a session where it didn't load OK. Should I generate another with a session loaded OK?
I tried to have a look at it, but I'm a beginner with Linux and I have no idea that that log is all about...

Thanks
Cristian

[dibl]

Re: 3D Acceleration OK on some boots, slow on others

And when the 3D acceleration is bad, also the sound on 3D games is bad - sort of "choppy"

This is an important clue -- the Nvidia driver has nothing to do with sound. Perhaps the culprit is in another area of your system.

CPU frequency scaling? powernowd? acpi-stuff?

Being the amateur, I'd make a list of all the processes running immediately after boot when it is working correctly, then re-boot until I get the slow-poke session, and look again at the processes in that session. I'll bet there's something different ....

[Quaxo76]

Re: 3D Acceleration OK on some boots, slow on others

I should point out that only the sound on 3D games (i.e. Chromium) gets choppy; MP3 playback and videos and such are OK.
In those 3D games, also the mouse starts to move at a very slow refresh rate.

That said: how do I get a list of running services?

Thanks
Cristian

[Quaxo76]

Re: 3D Acceleration OK on some boots, slow on others

Update: I rebooted until I got a "good" session, and recreated the nvidia debug log. there are several differences between the two, but one caught my attention. In the "good" session there is this section in the log:

Scanning kernel log files for NVRM messages:

 /var/log/messages:
Jul 16 12:26:19 A26 kernel: [  15.829136] NVRM: loading NVIDIA UNIX x86 Kernel Module 100.14.09 Sat May 26 00:47:07 PDT 2007

while in the "bad" session, that section is different:

Scanning kernel log files for NVRM messages:

 /var/log/messages:

It's empty. Looks like the module didn't get loaded?

Cristian

[dibl]

Re: 3D Acceleration OK on some boots, slow on others

KMenu>System>KSysguard, then click on the "Processes" tab. To make life easier, stretch the Ksysguard window up and down the screen, and take a screenshot with the little screenshot utility in your "graphics" menu. You might have to take a couple of screenshots to get all the processes in the list. Save your screenshots as a series, with distinguishing file names, then when you're done you can paste them into a document for viewing side by side, or if you want a hardcopy you can print it.

[dibl]

Re: 3D Acceleration OK on some boots, slow on others

Hmmmm -- that's interesting. Well, you can list your running modules with

lsmod

and compare the running modules when it's "fast" and the ones when it's "slow".

However, I must confess I have no clue why it would not load a module, or how to fix that. :P

[dibl]

Re: 3D Acceleration OK on some boots, slow on others

[quote=Quaxo76 ]
 NVRM: loading NVIDIA UNIX x86 Kernel Module 100.14.09 Sat May 26 00:47:07 PDT 2007

Here's a notion -- the latest and greatest Nvidia driver is 100.14.11

I wonder if you've found the bug in 100.14.09?

[Quaxo76]

Re: 3D Acceleration OK on some boots, slow on others

I didn't think about the driver version... I installed it with the "envy" automated script. I'll see if I can install the updated version... And I'll compare the running modules between bad and good session. Thanks for now!

Cristian

[dibl]

Re: 3D Acceleration OK on some boots, slow on others

Download and run the new Envy -- since 22 June it has installed driver ver. 100.14.11.

[SheeEttin]

Re: 3D Acceleration OK on some boots, slow on others

KMenu>System>KSysguard, then click on the "Processes" tab. To make life easier, stretch the Ksysguard window up and down the screen, and take a screenshot with the little screenshot utility in your "graphics" menu. You might have to take a couple of screenshots to get all the processes in the list. Save your screenshots as a series, with distinguishing file names, then when you're done you can paste them into a document for viewing side by side, or if you want a hardcopy you can print it.

"ps -ejH > processes"?

[klerfayt]

Re: 3D Acceleration OK on some boots, slow on others

This is the log file generated by the above command. It was generated on a session where it didn't load OK. Should I generate another with a session loaded OK?
I tried to have a look at it, but I'm a beginner with Linux and I have no idea that that log is all about...

Thanks
Cristian

You are supposed to send the generated bug report to linux-bugs@nvidia.com

[Quaxo76]

Re: 3D Acceleration OK on some boots, slow on others

You are supposed to send the generated bug report to linux-bugs@nvidia.com

This means it actually is a bug in the nVidia driver? I thought we were trying to figure out where the problem actually lies...

Cristian