3D Acceleration OK on some boots, slow on others

[SheeEttin]

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

No, I think he's just a little overexcited.

Anyway, tried getting the new driver version?

[klerfayt]

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

No, I think he's just a little overexcited.

No. The best thing you can do is send a bug report to linux-bugs@nvidia.com, I doubt we have nvidia driver experts lurking around here, besides the thing is closed source...

[dibl]

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

I doubt we have nvidia driver experts lurking around here, besides the thing is closed source...

Quite true on both points. However, Nvidia shows, on their driver site here that all models of the GeF 6600 are supported by the 100.14.11 version driver. The OP is running 100.14.09, which is not even listed on their site -- probably it was an interim release. So, given a choice between (a) filing a bug report on an un-listed driver version and awaiting some result, or (b) installing the one that Nvidia says will run the card, I would respectfully advise choice (b).

[SheeEttin]

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

No. The best thing you can do is send a bug report to linux-bugs@nvidia.com, I doubt we have nvidia driver experts lurking around here, besides the thing is closed source...

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

[Quaxo76]

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

Hello,
After a short "break" because I had to work, I downloaded and installed the new (July 13) version of Envy. It downloaded the 100.14.11 driver (even though during install, a lot of the messages being displayed on screen referred to 100.14.20!).
Anyway, this is the first reboot, and it loaded OK. I'll see in the next reboot and let you know!
About the sound: I remember having some problems to set up my Audigy drivers. In case the culprit is the audio system, is there a quick and safe way do disable completely the sound system, to chack if it created problems, and then re-enable it?

Thanks
Cristian

[SheeEttin]

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

K Menu > System Settings > Enable the sound system. (You may also want to check the settings while you're there.)

[Quaxo76]

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

No luck with the .11 drivers. The first two reboots were OK, but on the third I got a bad session again. Now I'll try disabling the sound...

[dibl]

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

The first two reboots were OK, but on the third I got a bad session again.

Now that is downright weird -- what could have changed between boot #2 and boot #3? Is there a hamster loose in that machine or something? :P

Seriously, I'm wondering about RAM timing, bus conflicts, or something goofy like that -- a working video system should not just crap out with no intervention ....

[SheeEttin]

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

I think IRQs are the main source of trouble, but we'll see what no sound does.

[Quaxo76]

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

After disabling the sound system, nothing has changed (by the way, the KMix icon still stays in the tray... Shouldn't it go away?)
I remember reading some time ago, about a different problems, that sometimes the order in which some modules or programs or whatever are loaded can be important, and the user had to add a "delay line" somewhere during boot, to make sure the modules were all loaded in the correct order. Might that be something like that?
I'm skeptical about hardware problems because 1) this system has always been very stable, even under Windows, and that says a lot ; 2) when I get a good session, until I reboot, it will stay good, whatever the uptime is.

Cristian

[Quaxo76]

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

I uninstalled ALSA completely. I also uninstalled Compiz and Beryl, which though disabled, were present. No luck.
So, what do I have to do... a complete format and reinstall might be the only solution? Or even that wouldn't work?

Cristian

[dibl]

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

I would be suspicious of the hardware -- perhaps an IRQ conflict as SheeEttin suggests, or possibly a problem with RAM stability. You can let that mem86 test run for an hour and see if the RAM is stable over that period of time. Does the system get hot -- do you have sensors that can tell you if it's overheating?

Have you run Windows or any other OS on this hardware -- was it stable? It would be interesting to do some experiments with other OS's, to see if the problem is related to the OS or not.

[Quaxo76]

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

Hi Dibl,
As I said some posts above, the system is perfectly stable under Windows XP, and by the way, once I get a good session, it doesn't "degenerate" - if the session starts good, it stays good until I reboot. It has to be some problem at boot time...
The ramtest passes OK, and the system, though rather warm now that it's so hot outside, is within limits. CPU at 40 degrees C, GPU at 45, chipset at 45, ram unknown but cooler than chipset at touch.
Another thing I just noticed, in Chromium. When I have a good session, the game runs very fluid, and fast-paced. When the session is bad, not only the fps is much lower, and the action "jerky": but the game itself is slow. The missiles move very slowly, and take forever to reach the bottom of the screen, and so on.
Even the icon effect you get when you open an icon on the desktop... When I have a good session, it takes a fraction of a second for the animation to complete. When the session is bad it takes about a whole second...

Cristian

[dibl]

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

I agree it's a boot-time problem. I'm not the engineer to know exactly how the system "builds itself" during bootup, by reading the BIOS and then the various bits of hardware, but it is that kind of a process. I guess it could be an issue that only manifests itself in Linux, versus Windows, since they are very different OSs. You could experiment with some of the power management related switches, "acpi=off", etc., that can be set at boot. I don't know if that would make any difference -- the fact that it is an intermittent problem makes it very difficult to know when you've fixed it .... :P

[Snowhog]

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

I've read through this thread, and I think (IMHO) that the approach to solving the problem lies with what you noticed above. Namely, that when you end up with a 'bad session' the NVIDIA module is not getting loaded. If you can determine why that is occurring, and how to ensure that it is loaded each and every boot, your problem should be solved.