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[gentoo-user] KDE 4.1...
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Alan McKinnon
Guest
PostPosted: Fri Aug 29, 2008 7:07 am    Post subject: Re: [gentoo-user] KDE 4.1... Reply with quote
On Thursday 28 August 2008 23:25:20 Volker Armin Hemmann wrote:
Quote:
On Donnerstag, 28. August 2008, Alan McKinnon wrote:
On Thursday 28 August 2008 21:03:28 Volker Armin Hemmann wrote:

[snip]

Quote:
well, it was mostly fixed with their latest beta drivers.

You mean 177.68 right?

[snip]

Quote:
they released 177.70 today Wink

I wonder what happened at nVidia recently, did their Head of Technical
Research, Planning and Release Schedules die and get replaced with a bot
running OSS? :-)

That's three betas in less than 10 days...

'scuse me, I'm off to emerge --sync

--
alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com
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Alan McKinnon
Guest
PostPosted: Fri Aug 29, 2008 7:07 am    Post subject: Re: [gentoo-user] Re: KDE 4.1... Reply with quote
On Thursday 28 August 2008 23:30:54 James wrote:
Quote:
Alan McKinnon <alan.mckinnon <at> gmail.com> writes:
It's far from fixed here. Admittedly better than 173.*, but the vast
majority of work remains to be done:

What ever happened to all of those folks that said Nvidia is the
superior video vendor?

That used to be true, and nVidia historically did have the better performance
and support. But two things have changed:

The newer GPUs (starting with 8xxx and 9xxx series) do not have 2D
acceleration in hardware anymore, it's all done in the driver. Some Linux apps
and especially KDE4 use X technologies in ways that nVidia's driver is not
especially good at. Remember that the Linux driver is essentially a port of
the logic in the Windows driver together with the guts of OpenGL ripped out of
X and replaced with nVidia's stuff, this leads to a bit of an oops. nVidia is
actively working on the problem with reasonably frequent beta driver releases,
but it certainly appears to be way more deep rooted and trickier to handle
than it might appear.

If they could just open source the drivers, then an entire army of coders
would step in and help devise good code that runs well. But they don't, so
nVidia is stuck with the 2 maybe 3 people they have on the Linux port.

And there's also the fiasco with the construction of apparently their entire
line of recent GPUs. They don't react well to thermal stress and are failing
in alarmingly large numbers

Quote:
I took quite a beating (on this list) for backing/promoting ATI,
because I believe that AMD would do the right thing for the Linux
community.

It appears you were more right than those others were wrong :-)

Thumbs up to AMD for taking the first steps and releasing some decent docs


--
alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com
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Dale
Guest
PostPosted: Fri Aug 29, 2008 2:50 pm    Post subject: Re: [gentoo-user] Re: KDE 4.1... Reply with quote
Alan McKinnon wrote:
Quote:
On Thursday 28 August 2008 23:30:54 James wrote:

Alan McKinnon <alan.mckinnon <at> gmail.com> writes:

It's far from fixed here. Admittedly better than 173.*, but the vast
majority of work remains to be done:

What ever happened to all of those folks that said Nvidia is the
superior video vendor?


That used to be true, and nVidia historically did have the better performance
and support. But two things have changed:

The newer GPUs (starting with 8xxx and 9xxx series) do not have 2D
acceleration in hardware anymore, it's all done in the driver. Some Linux apps
and especially KDE4 use X technologies in ways that nVidia's driver is not
especially good at. Remember that the Linux driver is essentially a port of
the logic in the Windows driver together with the guts of OpenGL ripped out of
X and replaced with nVidia's stuff, this leads to a bit of an oops. nVidia is
actively working on the problem with reasonably frequent beta driver releases,
but it certainly appears to be way more deep rooted and trickier to handle
than it might appear.

If they could just open source the drivers, then an entire army of coders
would step in and help devise good code that runs well. But they don't, so
nVidia is stuck with the 2 maybe 3 people they have on the Linux port.

And there's also the fiasco with the construction of apparently their entire
line of recent GPUs. They don't react well to thermal stress and are failing
in alarmingly large numbers


I took quite a beating (on this list) for backing/promoting ATI,
because I believe that AMD would do the right thing for the Linux
community.


It appears you were more right than those others were wrong :-)

Thumbs up to AMD for taking the first steps and releasing some decent docs




I have not been keeping up with this news about the new Nvidia cards so
let me see if I get this right. I have a old FX-5200 card right now but
if I wanted to get a nice new video card, say a new puter build, then I
should get a ATI card instead?

Also, what is the latest card that has 2D in hardware? Sounds like
things went south not long after I got my 5200.

Dale

:-) Smile
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Dave Oxley
Guest
PostPosted: Fri Aug 29, 2008 3:10 pm    Post subject: Re: [gentoo-user] KDE 4.1... Reply with quote
Thomas Kahle wrote:
Quote:
Hi,
as your post turned into the usual kde 4 is good/bad flamewar I will
just try to answer the question:

The people working on the overlay plan to bringt kde 4.1.1(not 4.1.0)
into the tree. This will be released on next week and enter the tree
hopefully shortly after that.

Also this page
http://skrypuch.com/kde4/
and bug http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=234773
might give you an idea of the progress

have fun
Tom
Thanks for the update. Slightly OT and planning ahead slightly, any

ideas how easy it will be to upgrade from the kdesvn-portage overlay to
the official ebuilds?

Cheers,
Dave.
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Alan McKinnon
Guest
PostPosted: Fri Aug 29, 2008 3:40 pm    Post subject: Re: [gentoo-user] Re: KDE 4.1... Reply with quote
On Friday 29 August 2008 11:46:55 Dale wrote:
Quote:
I have not been keeping up with this news about the new Nvidia cards so
let me see if I get this right.  I have a old FX-5200 card right now but
if I wanted to get a nice new video card, say a new puter build, then I
should get a ATI card instead?

Yes. Even if nVidia get the drivers right for their new stuff, there's not
much they can do about the faulty silicon that has already been shipped and is
failing in worrying numbers.

--
alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com
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Dale
Guest
PostPosted: Fri Aug 29, 2008 3:50 pm    Post subject: Re: [gentoo-user] Re: KDE 4.1... Reply with quote
Alan McKinnon wrote:
Quote:
On Friday 29 August 2008 11:46:55 Dale wrote:

I have not been keeping up with this news about the new Nvidia cards so
let me see if I get this right. I have a old FX-5200 card right now but
if I wanted to get a nice new video card, say a new puter build, then I
should get a ATI card instead?


Yes. Even if nVidia get the drivers right for their new stuff, there's not
much they can do about the faulty silicon that has already been shipped and is
failing in worrying numbers.



< Dale goes to have a good cry > I always liked Nvidia. I have a
couple old cards here. :'(

Dale

:-) Smile
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Alan McKinnon
Guest
PostPosted: Fri Aug 29, 2008 4:00 pm    Post subject: Re: [gentoo-user] Re: KDE 4.1... Reply with quote
On Friday 29 August 2008 12:45:56 Dale wrote:
Quote:
Dale goes to have a good cry >  I always liked Nvidia.  I have a
couple old cards here.  :'(

Old cards still work just fine with the legacy driver.

Old cards currently perform better than new cards too :-)

--
alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com
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Dale
Guest
PostPosted: Fri Aug 29, 2008 4:10 pm    Post subject: Re: [gentoo-user] Re: KDE 4.1... Reply with quote
Alan McKinnon wrote:
Quote:
On Friday 29 August 2008 12:45:56 Dale wrote:

Dale goes to have a good cry > I always liked Nvidia. I have a
couple old cards here. :'(


Old cards still work just fine with the legacy driver.

Old cards currently perform better than new cards too :-)



Yea, I was just thinking of building a new rig and getting a nice shiny
new Nvidia video card. My hopes have been squashed with golf shoes.

Dale

:-) Smile
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Thomas Kahle
Guest
PostPosted: Sat Aug 30, 2008 8:10 pm    Post subject: Re: [gentoo-user] KDE 4.1... Reply with quote
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1


|> have fun
|> Tom
| Thanks for the update. Slightly OT and planning ahead slightly, any
| ideas how easy it will be to upgrade from the kdesvn-portage overlay to
| the official ebuilds?

If everything goes as planned, as easy as emerge -u :)

|
| Cheers,
| Dave.

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Roy Wright
Guest
PostPosted: Tue Sep 02, 2008 10:40 am    Post subject: Re: [gentoo-user] KDE 4.1... Reply with quote
Roy Wright wrote:
Quote:
On the negative side, the nvidia binary drivers still have major
performance issues with KDE4. This is a show stopper for me.

I'd just thought I'd let everyone know there has been good progress
here. Using the latest beta drivers (177.70) and with the settings from:

http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-p-5191733.html#5191733

KDE 4.1 performance (including eye candy) on my 8600 GTS is now acceptable.

Have fun,
Roy
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Paul Hartman
Guest
PostPosted: Tue Sep 02, 2008 8:40 pm    Post subject: Re: [gentoo-user] KDE 4.1... Reply with quote
On Tue, Sep 2, 2008 at 12:35 AM, Roy Wright <roy@wright.org> wrote:
Quote:
Roy Wright wrote:
On the negative side, the nvidia binary drivers still have major
performance issues with KDE4. This is a show stopper for me.

I'd just thought I'd let everyone know there has been good progress
here. Using the latest beta drivers (177.70) and with the settings from:

http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-p-5191733.html#5191733

KDE 4.1 performance (including eye candy) on my 8600 GTS is now acceptable.

Thanks for the tip Roy, I will give it a another shot. :)

Paul
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Alan McKinnon
Guest
PostPosted: Wed Sep 03, 2008 1:00 am    Post subject: Re: [gentoo-user] KDE 4.1... Reply with quote
On Tuesday 02 September 2008 17:38:01 Paul Hartman wrote:
Quote:
On Tue, Sep 2, 2008 at 12:35 AM, Roy Wright <roy@wright.org> wrote:
Roy Wright wrote:
On the negative side, the nvidia binary drivers still have major
performance issues with KDE4. This is a show stopper for me.

I'd just thought I'd let everyone know there has been good progress
here. Using the latest beta drivers (177.70) and with the settings from:

http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-p-5191733.html#5191733

KDE 4.1 performance (including eye candy) on my 8600 GTS is now
acceptable.

Thanks for the tip Roy, I will give it a another shot. Smile

I'm using 177.70 on a 8600m GT here, and still running into stability issues
(random crashes, X stops responding for 10 seconds and sometimes for ever).
However, performance is a lot better - far from perfect, but useable. The one
settings that is absolutely required is

nvidia-settings -a InitialPixmapPlacement=2

Without it, scrolling any screen in Konqueror that's wide enough to need a
horizontal scrollbar is interminably slow. With it, it's almost as fast as
normal. Akregator with lots of articles in a feed is still deathly slow no
matter what settings i fiddle with.

--
alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com
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Roy Wright
Guest
PostPosted: Wed Sep 03, 2008 4:10 am    Post subject: Re: [gentoo-user] KDE 4.1... Reply with quote
Alan McKinnon wrote:
Quote:
On Tuesday 02 September 2008 17:38:01 Paul Hartman wrote:

I'm using 177.70 on a 8600m GT here, and still running into stability issues
(random crashes, X stops responding for 10 seconds and sometimes for ever).
However, performance is a lot better - far from perfect, but useable.

Right after I posted that, I started to experience the occasional 10s
freezes. Then I found

http://techbase.kde.org/User:Lemma/GPU-Performance

and changed OpenGL mode to Shared Memory, disabled Vsync, and added the
BackingStore option. I haven't experienced the 10s pause yet after
about 8 hours of usage.
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