So the configuration is the same:

• Nividia 173.14.12 kernel 2.6.24 and a Q6600

First, I need to say that in the default setting the new driver doesn’t work really nicely. It’s look even slower than previous in the default configuration. So for the first time on this bench serie, I tweaked the InitialPixmapPlacement and set it to 2. In my previous bench batch, doing this tweak products bad result so I disabled this option, but this time the drivers is so slow that without this tweak the benchmark would be useless.

Ok, let’s go for the results:

First, we can see clearly the new version is really better on some points : PictOpClear is the best result. We can see the nvidia team has really work on this, and the result even outperform the ATI driver. On the other side the PicOpt[Con|Dis]jointClear is still very hight.

For the rest of the test :

To things, on quite all the result the new driver is slower than the previous on (perhaps this is a InitialPixmap side effect), but the difference isn’t really big 0.5 sec on a test which is far from 0.5 at the end.. And the ATI still outperforms clearly the Nvidia here. In fact Nvidia driver’s team claim this primitives are never used (or should be). From what I know right now, some software use this primitive. It’s look like KDE (via QT) do. Apparently Nvidia team asked the KDE dev to change their code to achieve better result on Nvidia cards … Anyways this is perhaps not the best way, but we need to wait for KDE dev answer before going foward.

The second important thing is that PictOpConjointXor has now a 0 result.

As you can see on this benchmark, the new Nvidia driver seems to perform better than the previous one. On the user perspective, it’s look like the fixes applied for PictOpClear (and perhaps PictOpConjointXor) produce some great results. Right now Firefox perform nicely, and the whole desktop is fine. I’m quite sure their is still room for improvements (look at the open source Intel driver results for PictOpOver PictOpIn…, you will see binary drivers are far from the OSS results), but this release is the first for the 8xxxx serie which perform at a decent speed, and this is a good new.

Thanks again to my friends who send me their own results to compare, and to people on various forum that helped me on this stuff.

After a couple of month, I decided it was enough, I was sick of this dirty stripes on screen. I tested every ATI driver one after one … (ATI opensource drivers have too bad performances to be used on a every days desktop, could you live without google-earth ? ) .. so I decided to go to other side, and bought a Nvidia 8600GT from ASUS. This card perform quite as the ATI in 3D, and have a affordable price. So I switched from ATI to Nvidia.

ATI offers better opensource support, but Nvidia binary driver is really nice to use and have better support today from stuffs like Compiz and Co.. and NO MORE STRIPES !! :)

A couple of weeks ago, I upgraded my Ubuntu Gusty to Hardy. Everything was Ok, since I played with firefox. Some heavy loaded pages (like Amazon, or Gmail) was damn sloowwwww ! Playing with scroll was a source …… grrrrrr ….Firefox on Hardy is 3.0b5. This version has a major “feature” the use a Xrender for the page display. And this looks like Xrender is dawn slow on Nvidia cards .. In fact, Nvidia has already work on this kind of issue before. Without looking forward I decided to run a little benchmark, with the help of friends with Xrenderbenchmark. So here the results.

Benchmarks

Benchmarks was done by me and 2 firends, on Q6600 or E6600 Intel CPU running at 2.4Gh, with kernel 2.6.24.1. The graphs only show the Plain results (not Plains + Alpha, or Transformation) but the results are quite the same anyways.

Legend:

• 8600GT/nv : Nividia 8600GT / Xorg 1.4.1git 32 bits / Nvidia GPL driver
• 8600GT/nvidia : Nividia 8600GT / Xorg 1.4.1git 32 bits / Nvidia binary driver ver: 169.12
• 8600GT/nividia-64 : Nvidia 8600GT / Xorg 1.4.1git 64 bits / Nvidia binary driver ver: 169.12
• Intel GMA X300 : Intel GMA 3000 / Xorg 1.4.0.9 64 bits / Intel GPL driver
• ATI HD2600PRO : ATI HD 2600 Pro / Xorg 1.4.1git 64 bits / ATI GPL driver

I split the results into two graphs for convenience.

As you can see on this first part, numbers are really small, the Nvidia GPL driver is the worst : 5 times slower than any other one. Not a good news, and the binary one have some bad results on 2 tests. ATI HD and Nvidia drivers offer quite the same results, but remenber this is the GPL ATI driver ! … The Intel doesn’t have a lot of linearity on this part.

But the next graph give us absolutely different picture !

For every graph, Nvidia drivers (GPL, or binary, 32 or 64 bits) are at least 6 time slower. Intel perform very well, no surprise, this card are damn cool, perfect driver for linux.. but to slow in 3D to really rock. And ATI GPL driver is the clear winner of this benchmarks tests.

As my issue is the Nvidia one, I can comment the results, the GPL driver performs better than the binary one. This is not a big surprise cause, I can see it in Firefox, even it’s slow. There is difference between 64 bits and 32, but I guess this is more kernel related than the driver itself.

I’m not a video guru and only do that figure out what’s going on my computer. I publish in the hope it might help somebody else, and to find help.

Update : The numbers can be found here

Thanks to Ludo and Christian for their help !

Important update : Check the new driver results !!

My new box description:

• CPU: Intel Q6600 Quad Core at 2.4Ghz (G0 => it’s running at 1.6Ghz on idle)
• Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-P35C-DS3R (Intel P35 Express)
• A massive big CPU cooler Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro
• Case: Cooler Master Centurion 534
• Hard-drive: Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 SATA – 320 Go 7200 RPM 16 Mo SATA II
• 2Go of generic DDR2-SDRAM DDR800 PC6400
• Power Supply: Seasonic S12II-430
• A passive Radeon HD2600
• A nice (and big) Samsung Syncmaster 223BW
• A Asus DVD player: DRW-1814BLT

Here a little photo:

So let’s take a look closer.. I bought the Q6600 because it has a good price right now.

For the motherboard I wanted to buy a serious brand (I had some bad issues with ASRock ..). And Asus build some good ones, but doesn’t have a PS2 keyboard plug. I choose the Gigabytes because the bridge cooler is on the right, so I can use a big fan in the case back (no cpu-fan) without the bridge fan issue.

For the harddrive, I already have this type of Seagate on another box (in ATA, not SATA), and it’s damn cool ! Low noise and great performances .. a substain 58Mo/sec (a little bit more than my previous LVDS-SCSI config at 10 000 rpm !)

The perfect box should have two 120mn fans. So this CoolMaster is fine.
I only use the front fan right now, but this may change in future. The case is quite big (too much for my needs), easy to mount, and serious quality. The hard-drive combo stuff, isn’t really easy to use but it does it’s job.

For the power-supply, after reading a lot of website, I bought the Seasonic. This stuff cost a little money, but it’s a really silent one, and seems to be robust.

As I bought a silent power supply, I needed a silent cpu cooler two. Everybody knows that default Intel fan are awfully noisy, so I decided to test this Freezer. And that was a good choice. On idle, the fan runs at 450 rpm, (hey that’s low!!) and CPU is at 31°. At full load, the fan runs at 1000 rpm (still really low!!) and the CPU is at 46°. My initial plan was to remove the fan on the cooler and to place a big 120 mn on the case back, but haven’t done this yet.

For the video card, I was looking for something with good bench on Linux, so ATI was a good challenger (beside it only works with the latest ATI binary shit). And finding a passive HD2600 is a bit hard.

For the DVD, I didn’t have any ideas. Most DVD players I used are noisy, have unstable speed. My previous Samsung was a real bullshit. I went to me local computer store, and bought the cheaper they have on stock. And this is a really good surprise. This DVD burner is really cool. So, if someone ask, give it a try :)

So, as you can imagine, this little stuff is quite silent and powerfull :)

I will upload some pictures soon …

Update: I took some photos

Enjoy cores

I have been looking at eBay for a while, I bought a pair of matched CPUs. Today, I received them. After a bios upgrade, I put the CPU “as is” on the motherboard. In fact, my motherboard haven’t the x 6 jumper settings.. but despite the jumpers settings are totally wrong, the CPUs work at 600Mhz.

Yes, I get 1200 BogoMips for 42 Euros :)

Thanks eBay ! and this faq !

I decided to change it by myself. But finding the right fan is really hard, because it’s 80mn x 80mn x 1.5mn fan. After a long search i decided to go to a tunning shop. (They have a bunch of various CPU fan).. The guy said to me: Ok, No problem. We have a video card fan that can feet .. Oh really a video fan ?

He give me a Zalman ZM-OP1

Despite this fan doesn’t have the exact same caracteristics as the default one, it perform quite the same. And it does even less noise. So i’m really happy :)

Many thanks to the shop: Tuning Informatique (http://www.tuninginformatique.com/)

update: fix the Zalman URL

I have tested several way to fix this issue. The only that’s working fine right now, is to use swsup. So to make it work:

• install the latest 2.6.9 kernel (the 2.6.8 has a issue w/ agpart and drm)
• in kernel select ‘ACPI -> sleep state’
• and ‘ACPI -> swsup’
• build the kernel
• create a swap partition if you don’t have one (i resized a ntfs w/ qparted)
• mkswap /dev/hda4 (for example)
• add ‘resume=/dev/hda4′ in your boot prompt (in grub for example)

Now your system is ready. Reboot :) ..To put the the system in standby and dump the current state in the swap: echo 4 > /proc/acpi/sleep.

Next step simply bind the power button on this action. This is done w/ the acpid.

#!/bin/sh
# /etc/acpi/powerbtn.sh

# put the box in swsup mode
echo 4 > /proc/acpi/sleep

Beside the S2/S3 ACPI doesn’t work right now, swsup permit to have suspend to disk without too much trouble.

/dev/hda1  Win (I don't install this but leave a blank fat32 .. if)
/dev/hda2  Linux (my current debian)
/dev/hda3  BSD (NetBSD I think)
/dev/hda4  Data (10Go for what you wants)

After I finish my cp -a /dev/hda2 /dev/hdc2, I just chroot to this and run grub-install. Ok .. that’s fine (no error message), it’s time to reboot.

Ouch! My new system doesn’t want to boot, I get a ‘SYSTEM BOOT FAILURE, INSERT BOOT DISK …’ hum .. that’s sucks! Ok .. boot from a rescue CD (which I really love after a day of issue on this HD), just chroot to my new drive install Lilo instead of grub .. => Crash .. oh god .. I tried it a several times and have random crash. After 2 hours, I discover that the HD have some issues with the Prefetch Read/Write, so I disable it.. Ok, no more random crash. Now I need to fix the boot error issue. I tested several things, and took me a lot of time and i discover something. In my bios (I even made a new bios install), the default option is ‘auto detect’ from the kind of HD: Large / LBA / CHS.. And this fucking HD is detected as a CHS, so I forced it to LBA, and now it works. In fact the OS doesn’t bios so it can read/write on the HD, but Lilo or Grub use the bios directly.

To resume Maxtor DiamonStar:

• Doesn’t support Read / Write prefetch
• Do some bad thing w/ bios detection (I never seen this before ooo)
• Are really quiet
• Perform quite well: 56Mbs/sec in hdparm -t (far from my 110Mbs/ SCSI HD but..)
• Are damn hot (really really hot !!)

I destroy 2 Maxtor HD in a previous life, I hope this one will work a bit longer. Anyway, this is really the last time I buy this shit.

This notebook run really smoothly, it has great CPU, and video card. Playing RTC, is really fun!

It has been a long time since i played w/ XP. I now i’m remember why i don’t like it. I spend most of the time to ask me: my name, my company and my serial number. And yes, this is too intrusive for me… and I’m wasting my time! Every vendor, want to know everything .. my sex lenght? nobody ? :))

Anyway, despite I found this notebook really kool, I think the design is really bad:

• Most of users are right hand mouse user? But Sony put the USB pub on left !!
• Sony put the power supply connector on the right .. so the cable is under the DVD tray …
• The battery capot sound cheap .. it make noise in fact :(
• The PCMCIA seems to be cheap too, inserted card aren’t well lock ..

I’m currently writting a Knoppix DVD edition on this stuff to test :)

Hardware

The Shuttle STK62K is a small XPC that use:

• ATI IGP9100 video board
• ATI IXP150 AC’97 Audio Controller
• OHCI based USB 2
• Realtek network card

As i run into different issue with that box, i decided to write a little howto. Look here for more infos

0000:00:00.0 Host bridge: ATI Technologies Inc: Unknown device 5833 (rev 02)
0000:00:01.0 PCI bridge: ATI Technologies Inc: Unknown device 5838
0000:00:13.0 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc: Unknown device 4347 (rev 01)
0000:00:13.1 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc: Unknown device 4348 (rev 01)
0000:00:13.2 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc: Unknown device 4345 (rev 01)
0000:00:14.0 SMBus: ATI Technologies Inc ATI SMBus (rev 17)
0000:00:14.1 IDE interface: ATI Technologies Inc: Unknown device 4349
0000:00:14.3 ISA bridge: ATI Technologies Inc: Unknown device 434c
0000:00:14.4 PCI bridge: ATI Technologies Inc: Unknown device 4342
0000:00:14.5 Multimedia audio controller: ATI Technologies Inc IXP150 AC'97 Audio Controller
0000:01:05.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc: Unknown device 5834
0000:02:05.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL-8139/8139C/8139C+ (rev 10)
0000:02:06.0 FireWire (IEEE 1394): VIA Technologies, Inc. IEEE 1394 Host Controller (rev 80)

[*]   Symmetric multi-processing support
[*]   SMT (Hyperthreading) scheduler support

[*] ACPI Support
[*]   Sleep States (EXPERIMENTAL)
<M>   AC Adapter
<M>   Battery
<M>   Button
<M>   Fan
<M>   Processor
<M>   Thermal Zone

Device Driver > ATA/ATAPI/MFM/RLL support
<*>       Generic PCI IDE Chipset Support
[*]       Generic PCI bus-master DMA support
[*]         Use PCI DMA by default when available
<*>        ATI IXP chipset IDE support

Devices Drivers > Graphics support
<*>   ATI Radeon display support

Section "Device"
#Driver      "ati"
Driver       "radeon"
VendorName  "ATI Technologies Inc"
BoardName   "Unknown Board"
BusID       "PCI:1:5:0"
EndSection

Device Drivers> Sound > Alsa PCI devices
<M> ATI IXP 150/200/250/300

I2C > Hardware Sensors Chip support
<M> ITE IT87xx and compatibles

it87-isa-0228
Adapter: ISA adapter
VCore 1:   +1.45 V  (min =  +1.42 V, max =  +1.56 V)
VCore 2:   +1.53 V  (min =  +2.40 V, max =  +2.60 V)   ALARM
+3.3V:     +6.40 V  (min =  +3.12 V, max =  +3.44 V)   ALARM
+5V:       +4.97 V  (min =  +4.72 V, max =  +5.24 V)
+12V:     +11.68 V  (min = +11.36 V, max = +12.60 V)
-12V:     -19.77 V  (min = -12.63 V, max = -11.41 V)   ALARM
-5V:       -2.38 V  (min =  -5.28 V, max =  -4.81 V)   ALARM
Stdby:     +5.02 V  (min =  +4.72 V, max =  +5.24 V)
VBat:      +3.16 V
fan1:     1795 RPM  (min =    0 RPM, div = 16)
fan2:        0 RPM  (min =  332 RPM, div = 16)
fan3:        0 RPM  (min =  664 RPM, div = 8)
M/B Temp:    +60°C  (low  =   +15°C, high =   +40°C)   sensor = diode
CPU Temp:    +44°C  (low  =   +15°C, high =   +45°C)   sensor = diode
Temp3:       +41°C  (low  =   +15°C, high =   +45°C)   sensor = thermistor