New memory, but still low FPS

[Thargoid]

Hmm, the next stage in getting my Ubuntu installation to work properly, and the next problem.

It's a fresh install of Ubuntu 8.10, but the machine only had (256 + 128) MB of memory, so I've just upgraded it and swapped the 128MB DDR out for a 1GB one. Unfortunately my old frame rate of 5fps is now still 5fps

Graphics-card wise it's again a fairly old one (it's an old PC generally), but it's still an NVIDIA with 128MB of memory on it. The game seems to be running without errors, except it's slow and jerky, with as mentioned 5FPS reported rate. Processor is a 1.8GHz Athlon. The only thing I can see that's a bit tight is disc space. There is only 450MB free, although there is a second disk in there and mounted with 7GB left on it.

Any recommendations of things to check or tweak to try and improve matters? The memory reports as working (at least it shows up in the system monitor) and other apps seem to be running a bit better now.

[_ds_]

Which video driver? I'll bet that it's nv, which has no 3D support; you could try nouveau (in Debian, this is only in experimental), but your best bet if you plan to stick with that card is probably not to pass Go, not to collect £200, and to go directly to nvidia.

Personally, I'd look for something ATI, but not (yet) one of the HDxxxx cards. I get a decent frame rate out of my X300 with the open-source drivers, typically 60fps (I set it, via driconf, not to exceed the display frame rate); no shaders, though.

Processor-wise, I see no problem. Memory speed's probably fine too, though you'd do well to use a pair of 512MB sticks (or even 1GB sticks) if the board supports pairing for higher available bandwidth, even if each stick is being run at reduced speed.

A separate /home partition is a good idea.

[Kaks]

I'd also try the proprietary drivers if they're available. They're not pure linux, but in my case they did the trick.

Hope this helps.

[Thargoid]

Yup, the proprietaries seem to have helped a lot (now 30-40FPS at least).

I had avoided that as when I tried it with the previous graphics (the on-board NVIDIA chipset on the motherboard) it just gave me all sorts of interesting screen corruption. But the "new" card seems to cope with them much better

Although it's a little odd that the Ubuntu driver update finds driver 96.43.09, when the latest one seemingly on the NVIDIA website is 96.43.07! Most odd, but then it is support for an old legacy card. But it'll do for me for just this play-around PC.

Thanks guys.

[_ds_]

I'd also try the proprietary drivers if they're available.

We seem to have an echo in here… here…

[Kaks]

I'd also try the proprietary drivers if they're available.

We seem to have an echo in here… here…

Ok, ok, ambiguous wording:
All I meant to say was I agreed with you!

[Thargoid]

But we seem to have a trade-off, as now I've got no shader support again (the 4FPS did have them) . Will look into this nouveau thing mentioned.

I'm just doomed not to have shaders on a well-running machine, aren't I?

Plus the Nouveau page seems to list the GeForce 4 MX 4000 shaders as N/A And trying to build it seems to be giving errors too when following the instructions on the page

And I seem to have some issues with GNUStep too

Code: Select all

OOLogging internal - Inited: ERROR: OOLoggingInit() has not been called.
[log.header]: Opening log for Oolite version 1.72.2 (x86-32 test release) under Linux at 2009-03-01 10:19:48 +0000.
1 processor detected.
Note that the contents of the log file can be adjusted by editing logcontrol.plist.

[joystickHandler.init]: Number of joysticks detected: 0
[display.mode.list.native]: X11 native resolution detected: 1024 x 768
[rendering.opengl.version]: OpenGL renderer version: 1.5.8 ("1.5.8 NVIDIA 96.43.09")
Vendor: NVIDIA Corporation
Renderer: GeForce4 MX 4000/AGP/SSE/3DNOW!
[rendering.opengl.extensions]: OpenGL extensions (75):
GL_ARB_imaging GL_ARB_multitexture GL_ARB_pixel_buffer_object GL_ARB_point_parameters GL_ARB_point_sprite GL_ARB_shader_objects GL_ARB_shading_language_100 GL_ARB_texture_compression GL_ARB_texture_cube_map GL_ARB_texture_env_add GL_ARB_texture_env_combine GL_ARB_texture_env_dot3 GL_ARB_texture_mirrored_repeat GL_ARB_texture_rectangle GL_ARB_transpose_matrix GL_ARB_vertex_buffer_object GL_ARB_vertex_program GL_ARB_vertex_shader GL_ARB_window_pos GL_S3_s3tc GL_EXT_texture_env_add GL_EXT_abgr GL_EXT_bgra GL_EXT_blend_color GL_EXT_blend_minmax GL_EXT_blend_subtract GL_EXT_clip_volume_hint GL_EXT_compiled_vertex_array GL_EXT_Cg_shader GL_EXT_draw_range_elements GL_EXT_fog_coord GL_EXT_gpu_program_parameters GL_EXT_multi_draw_arrays GL_EXT_packed_pixels GL_EXT_paletted_texture GL_EXT_pixel_buffer_object GL_EXT_point_parameters GL_EXT_rescale_normal GL_EXT_secondary_color GL_EXT_separate_specular_color GL_EXT_shared_texture_palette GL_EXT_stencil_wrap GL_EXT_texture_compression_s3tc GL_EXT_texture_cube_map GL_EXT_texture_edge_clamp GL_EXT_texture_env_combine GL_EXT_texture_env_dot3 GL_EXT_texture_filter_anisotropic GL_EXT_texture_lod GL_EXT_texture_lod_bias GL_EXT_texture_object GL_EXT_vertex_array GL_IBM_rasterpos_clip GL_IBM_texture_mirrored_repeat GL_KTX_buffer_region GL_NV_blend_square GL_NV_fence GL_NV_fog_distance GL_NV_light_max_exponent GL_NV_packed_depth_stencil GL_NV_pixel_data_range GL_NV_point_sprite GL_NV_register_combiners GL_NV_texgen_reflection GL_NV_texture_env_combine4 GL_NV_texture_rectangle GL_NV_vertex_array_range GL_NV_vertex_array_range2 GL_NV_vertex_program GL_NV_vertex_program1_1 GL_SGIS_generate_mipmap GL_SGIS_multitexture GL_SGIS_texture_lod GL_SUN_slice_accum 
[rendering.opengl.shader.support]: Shaders will not be used (OpenGL extension GL_ARB_fragment_shader is not available).
[gnustep]: 2009-03-01 10:19:49.708 oolite[5687] unable to find GNUstep DTD - 'plist-0_9' for '-//GNUstep//DTD plist 0.9//EN'

[gnustep]: 2009-03-01 10:19:49.835 oolite[5687] don't know how to load entity 'http://www.gnustep.org/plist-0_9.xml' id '-//GNUstep//DTD plist 0.9//EN'

[searchPaths.dumpAll]: ---> OXP search paths:
("/usr/lib/Oolite/oolite.app/Resources", AddOns, "/home/thargoid/.Oolite/AddOns", "/home/thargoid/.Oolite/AddOns/WIP - Lave Academy.oxp")
[dataCache.rebuild.explicitFlush]: Cache explicitly flushed with shift key. Rebuilding from scratch.
[shipData.load.begin]: Loading ship data...
  [gnustep]: 2009-03-01 10:19:50.111 oolite[5687] unable to find GNUstep DTD - 'plist-0_9' for '-//GNUstep//DTD plist 0.9//EN'

  [gnustep]: 2009-03-01 10:19:50.158 oolite[5687] don't know how to load entity 'http://www.gnustep.org/plist-0_9.xml' id '-//GNUstep//DTD plist 0.9//EN'

[gnustep]: 2009-03-01 10:19:50.228 oolite[5687] unable to find GNUstep DTD - 'plist-0_9' for '-//GNUstep//DTD plist 0.9//EN'

[gnustep]: 2009-03-01 10:19:50.275 oolite[5687] don't know how to load entity 'http://www.gnustep.org/plist-0_9.xml' id '-//GNUstep//DTD plist 0.9//EN'

[gnustep]: 2009-03-01 10:19:50.295 oolite[5687] unable to find GNUstep DTD - 'plist-0_9' for '-//GNUstep//DTD plist 0.9//EN'

[gnustep]: 2009-03-01 10:19:50.344 oolite[5687] don't know how to load entity 'http://www.gnustep.org/plist-0_9.xml' id '-//GNUstep//DTD plist 0.9//EN'

[gnustep]: 2009-03-01 10:19:50.925 oolite[5687] unable to find GNUstep DTD - 'plist-0_9' for '-//GNUstep//DTD plist 0.9//EN'

[gnustep]: 2009-03-01 10:19:50.974 oolite[5687] don't know how to load entity 'http://www.gnustep.org/plist-0_9.xml' id '-//GNUstep//DTD plist 0.9//EN'

[gnustep]: 2009-03-01 10:19:51.173 oolite[5687] unable to find GNUstep DTD - 'plist-0_9' for '-//GNUstep//DTD plist 0.9//EN'

[gnustep]: 2009-03-01 10:19:51.220 oolite[5687] don't know how to load entity 'http://www.gnustep.org/plist-0_9.xml' id '-//GNUstep//DTD plist 0.9//EN'

[script.load.world.listAll]: Loaded 6 world scripts: "Academy_SystemScript" 0.1, "oolite-cloaking-device" 1.72.2, "oolite-constrictor-hunt" 1.72.2, "oolite-nova" 1.72.2, "oolite-thargoid-plans" 1.72.2, "oolite-trumbles" 1.72.2
[dataCache.willWrite]: About to write data cache.
[dataCache.write.success]: Wrote data cache.
[gnustep]: 2009-03-01 10:20:43.675 oolite[5687] unable to find GNUstep DTD - 'plist-0_9' for '-//GNUstep//DTD plist 0.9//EN'

[gnustep]: 2009-03-01 10:20:43.769 oolite[5687] don't know how to load entity 'http://www.gnustep.org/plist-0_9.xml' id '-//GNUstep//DTD plist 0.9//EN'

[gnustep]: 2009-03-01 10:20:44.941 oolite[5687] unable to find GNUstep DTD - 'plist-0_9' for '-//GNUstep//DTD plist 0.9//EN'

[gnustep]: 2009-03-01 10:20:44.990 oolite[5687] don't know how to load entity 'http://www.gnustep.org/plist-0_9.xml' id '-//GNUstep//DTD plist 0.9//EN'

[/color]

[Thargoid]

OK that now fixed by re-installing gnustep.

But still no shaders Ah well, I guess 1 outta 5 PCs will have to do...

[_ds_]

But we seem to have a trade-off, as now I've got no shader support again (the 4FPS did have them) .

That'd be down to using the Mesa software renderer, which implements OpenGL 2.1.

Will look into this nouveau thing mentioned.

xserver-xorg-video-nouveau. Debian has a newer version in experimental than Ubuntu has in jaunty. (You may need to rebuild it, although there's a good chance that it'll Just Work with X in jaunty.)

You will also need newer kernel DRM modules. module-assistant will be needed, along with source from somewhere: drm-modules-source from Debian experimental seems like a reasonable choice if you want something packaged. (To compile: as root, run "m-a a-i drm-modules".)

I'm just doomed not to have shaders on a well-running machine, aren't I?

<AOL> (for now; R300 is listed as "shaders done, GLSL not done").

Plus the Nouveau page seems to list the GeForce 4 MX 4000 shaders as N/A And trying to build it seems to be giving errors too when following the instructions on the page

I smell hardware replacement in the offing… and you could just install the package

(Hmm, that page says "textures: TODO". Might be too early as yet, but you're evidently going to find out for yourself…)