[plug] NVidia drivers and RENDER acceleration

[Michael Hunt]

On Thu, 2003-10-16 at 23:04, Craig Ringer wrote:
> Hi folks
> 
> I just ran into this one, and thought I'd post a note in case others 
> didn't know:
> 
> /usr/share/doc/NVIDIA_GLX-1.0/README
> 
>          Option "RenderAccel" "boolean"
>                Enable or disable hardware acceleration of the RENDER
>                extension.  THIS OPTION IS EXPERIMENTAL. ENABLE IT AT YOUR
>                OWN RISK.  There is no correctness test suite for the
>                RENDER extension so NVIDIA can not verify that RENDER
>                acceleration works correctly.   Default: hardware
>                acceleration of the RENDER extension is disabled.
> 
> In other words, RENDER acceleration is disabled by default on the NVidia 
> cards. I could've sworn this wasn't in the README of the older (probably 
> _much_ older) versions, either. I don't know about you folk, but I know 
> that I heard the NVidia drivers supported hardware-accelerated RENDER 
> and assumed it would be running. I then wondered why my text display was 
> so apallingly slow in any app that used freetype/xft2.
> 
> Well, that's why - it doesn't use the acceleration. Enabling it (by adding
> 	Option	"RenderAccel" "true"
> to my Device section in XF86Config) has massively sped up my desktop. I 
> strongly suggest that others try it out - bearing in mind the warnings 
> about it in the above README snippet, of course.
> 
> Yeah, you could say I'm posting a RTFM revelation. I think it matters, 
> because many people say that the NVidia drivers support RENDER accel but 
> it's never mentioned that it's disabled by default. Additionally, I've 
> seen enough comments around the place to show that I'm not the only one 
> wondering why anti-aliased text is so apallingly slow even when 
> "accelerated".
> 
> So ... have fun :-)
> 
> For the record, I'm using:
> 01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation NV28 [GeForce4 Ti 
> 4200 AGP 8x] (rev a1)
> Class 0300: 10de:0281
> 
> and it seems to work great for me. Woo ... I can remove the 'export 
> GDK_USE_XFT=0' in /usr/local/mozilla/mozilla now :-)
> 
> Craig Ringer


Explains why a gnome-terminal session takes so long to start up.

On a slightly different tangent I was running the xfree nv drivers for a
while and it used to take a good couple of seconds to switch from X to a
virtual console. It really annoyed me at first because it took so
appallingly long but I didn't have the time to stuff around with trying
to get the nvida drivers working. When I finally did get around to it I
was amazed at how quick the change happened and how I had become
accustomed to the change.

Michael Hunt 
(Soon to try out the RenderAccel option when he has finished his
assignment). 

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