FPS Trouble

[Octal]

Hi guys. I post here cause I have a huge problem with my tremulous client. Indeed, I have some FPS Problems since few weeks. When I am playing, my fps are dropping to 1 or 2 without any reason. During 10seconds, my fps are to 0, 1 or 2. And then, my system (Debian with KDE) completely freezes. I verified with glxinfo :

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octal@debian:~$ glxinfo
name of display: :0.0
display: :0  screen: 0
direct rendering: Yes
<...>
OpenGL vendor string: ATI Technologies Inc.
OpenGL renderer string: ATI Radeon Xpress Series
OpenGL version string: 2.0.6747 (8.40.4)


I don't know how to repair it and I am very bored of this problem.

So, can someone help me ?
Thanks to you.

[next_ghost]

What's your video card and what other driver versions have you tried?

[epsy]

what's your fps in glxgears?
is this problem only related to trem ?

[Octal]

Hi Guys. First, thanks to you for trying to help me.

Concerning my graphic card, it is a :

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01:05.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc ATI Radeon XPRESS 200M 5955 (PCIE)


This problem only happens when I start to play Tremulous. Otherwise, when I'm doing everything else, I get no problem like this.
It is a little bit strange because it was working before.

Thanks to you.

[Caveman]

Go here and get 8.28.8 as that was afaik the last version that gave complete 3d-support for your castrated X300.

http://ati.amd.com/support/drivers/linux/radeonprevious-linux.html

It might not help much, but it's better than nothing.
Anyhows, you might want to say bye-bye to the idea that playing on a cheapo notebook is a good idea....

[ODDity]

Interesting. I have an old laptop with a Radeon card in it.The card is an IGP 320M and as such relies only on software acceleration for openGL.

Ive found that there are some options you can stick in xorg.conf to get some extra performance.

take a back up of your /etc/X11/xorg.conf like this:

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sudo cp /etc/X11/xorg.conf /etc/X11/xorg.conf.backup

then go ahead and do something like

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sudo pico /etc/X11/xorg.conf

To open the file in your favorite text editor.

(you can change pico to gedit or kate or whatever you want)

have a look at these option lines that ive added. Dont worry about the identifier but the driver should probably be radeon, not ati.

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Section "Device"
Identifier  "aticonfig-Device[0]"
Driver      "radeon"
Option     "DPMS" "true"
Option "XAANoOffscreenPixmaps" "1"
Option "ColorTiling" "On"
Option "EnablePageFlip" "On"
Option "AGPMode"      "4"
Option  "UseFBDev"    "true"
Option "AGPFastWrite" "On"
Option "DRI" "On"
EndSection


You could try these options and see what happens. If something borks you'll get a readout of what it was and maybe remove the offending option and try again.

make sure you have this:

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Section "DRI"
Mode         0666
EndSection
at the end of the file

This section usually found near the beginning at least contains:

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Section "Module"
Load  "GLcore"
Load  "dri"
Load         "dbe"
Load  "glx"

EndSection

For the changes to take effect press ctrl+Alt+backspace to restart X

Im not sure if any of that will help - at least know because you took a backup you can restore everything to how it was if it fucks up by going

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sudo cp /etc/X11/xorg.conf.backup /etc/X11/xorg.conf

Also there's some stuff here which i dont know would be relevant or not, might push you in the right direction if the above reveals no leads.

All the best

Odd

[ODDity]

by the by. .. sorry for double post but you could just try running the game under XFCE instead of on top of all the bloat that KDE give you..

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sudo apt-get install xubuntu-desktop (i think)

or maybe gnome

[Caveman]

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sudo apt-get install xubuntu-desktop

Sorry to say but that shit ain't in the DEBIAN repositories.

[ODDity]

gah.. my bad - its even easier on deb

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aptitude install xfce4
aptitude install xfce4-goodies

[Octal]

Ok Guys. Thanks to ODDity. Now it's better than before: I just get less FPS lags than before but I sometimes get some. I think that I am now going to upgrade my driver.

Thanks to ODDity and Caveman. I'll tell you the results  .

[Caveman]

uhm.... don't upgrade the driver DOWNgrade it

[Octal]

uhm.... don't upgrade the driver DOWNgrade it

Well, I tried the 8.28.8 version of the Driver but I have some problems. See :

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octal@debian:~/Autres$ ./ati-driver-installer-8.28.8.run
Creating directory fglrx-install
Verifying archive integrity... All good.
Uncompressing ATI Proprietary Linux Driver-8.28.8...
==================================================
ATI Technologies Linux Driver Installer/Packager
==================================================
Detected configuration:
Architecture: i686 (32-bit)
X Server: Xorg 1.3.0

Detected version of X does not have a matching 'x130' directory
You may override the detected version using the following syntax:
     X_VERSION=<xdir> ./ati-driver-installer-<ver>-<arch>.run [--install]

The following values may be used for <xdir>:
    x430        XFree86 4.3.x
    x430_64a    XFree86 4.3.x 64-bit
    x680        X.Org 6.8.x
    x680_64a    X.Org 6.8.x 64-bit
    x690        X.Org 6.9.x
    x690_64a    X.Org 6.9.x 64-bit
    x700        X.Org 7.0.x
    x700_64a    X.Org 7.0.x 64-bit
    x710        Unknown X Window
    x710_64a    Unknown X Window
Removing temporary directory: fglrx-install



My Xorg :

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octal@debian:~/Autres$ aptitude show xorg
Paquet : xorg
État: installé
Automatiquement installé: oui
Version : 1:7.3+2
Priorité : optionnel
Section : x11
Responsable : Debian X Strike Force <debian-x@lists.debian.org>
Taille décompressée : 49,2k
Dépend: xserver-xorg, libgl1-mesa-glx | libgl1, libglu1-mesa, xfonts-base (>= 1:1.0.0-1), xfonts-100dpi (>= 1:1.0.0-1),
         xfonts-75dpi (>= 1:1.0.0-1), xfonts-scalable (>= 1:1.0.0-1), xbase-clients (>= 1:1.0.1-1), xutils (>= 1:1.0.1-1),
         xkb-data, xterm | x-terminal-emulator, sparc-utils | not+sparc
Recommande: xorg-docs
Fournit: x-window-system, x-window-system-core



Even if I override the X_VERSION like they say, I am getting an installation error. What to do ?

[Caveman]

Sorry, I can't help you there, except to recommend to buy a gfx-card that actually has some real support.
But before you dish more money, how about you have a look the forums over at ati's or use google on a howto?