[plug] NVidia drivers and RENDER acceleration

James Devenish devenish at guild.uwa.edu.au
Fri Oct 17 07:19:35 WST 2003


In message <3F8EC0FC.2010400 at postnewspapers.com.au>
on Fri, Oct 17, 2003 at 12:02:04AM +0800, Craig Ringer wrote:
> Try timing a C compile job under GNOME-terminal, then under xterm,
> though - you'll be horrified at the difference the display of the make
> output makes.

BTW also consider that there are a number of styles in which characters
can be displayed by a terminal and some (e.g. line-by-line) are
forgivably not guaranteed to be as fast as others, since their usage is
slightly different. For example, displaying 'full screen' or 'jump
scrolled' blocks of text should happen ASAP, but character-by-character
output is in some sense "not supposed to be" that fast (hence "scroll
delay" and "smooth scrolling" options). True that most people don't want
their compilation to go slower, though, and it's bad if a terminal
actually displays slowly because it's consuming large amounts of CPU
time. However, I find something comforting in the use of slowish
terminals in combination with GNU screen.

> Now, if only the free XFree86 drivers (ANY of them) supported 
> accelerated RENDER.

Why is everyone always after more speed!!

> Interesting. It still takes at least a full second for my system to 
> switch from X to a VC, and at least 1/2 a second to switch back.

OMFG 1 full second??? It takes longer than than for my CRT to switch
resolutions! How did our forebears survive? (Seriously, though: I
realise the point you're trying to make with the comparison to LCD
screens, and I appreciate the fact that developers should not
overlook sources of slowness.)


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