Nvidia 180.22: mrxvt transparency and reasonable benchmarks

Question

I just got a 9800GT a few days ago. Just now I upgraded from 173.X nVidia drivers to the newest 180 in the repositories. Two questions:
1) The tabbar transparency in MRXVT has been messed up with the driver upgrade. When I was using 173, it was fine, but using 180 breaks it. Now the tabbar has an odd semi-transparent hue to it, although other mrxvt transparency is fine. IIRC when I tried 177.X I had the same problem. Here's my xorg.conf, do I need to enable anything new with the latest driver? The only transparent-ish thing that has broken is the mrxvt tabbar. I'm not even using real transparency, just pseudo.
Section "ServerLayout"
Identifier "X.org Configured"
Screen 0 "Screen0" 0 0
InputDevice "Mouse0" "CorePointer"
# InputDevice "Keyboard0" "CoreKeyboard"
EndSection
Section "Files"
# RgbPath "/usr/share/X11/rgb"
ModulePath "/usr/lib/xorg/modules"
FontPath "/usr/share/fonts/misc"
FontPath "/usr/share/fonts/100dpi:unscaled"
FontPath "/usr/share/fonts/75dpi:unscaled"
FontPath "/usr/share/fonts/TTF"
FontPath "/usr/share/fonts/Type1"
EndSection
Section "Module"
Load "GLcore"
Load "dbe"
Load "xtrap"
Load "record"
Load "extmod"
Load "dri"
Load "glx"
Load "freetype"
EndSection
#Section "InputDevice"
# Identifier "Keyboard0"
#Driver "kbd"
# Driver "evdev"
#EndSection
Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Mouse0"
Driver "mouse"
Option "Protocol" "auto"
Option "Device" "/dev/input/mice"
Option "ZAxisMapping" "4 5 6 7"
EndSection
Section "Monitor"
#DisplaySize 340 270 # mm
Identifier "Monitor0"
VendorName "SAM"
ModelName "SyncMaster"
### Comment all HorizSync and VertRefresh values to use DDC:
HorizSync 30.0 - 81.0
VertRefresh 56.0 - 75.0
Option "DPMS"
EndSection
Section "Device"
### Available Driver options are:-
### Values: <i>: integer, <f>: float, <bool>: "True"/"False",
### <string>: "String", <freq>: "<f> Hz/kHz/MHz"
### [arg]: arg optional
#Option "SWcursor" # [<bool>]
#Option "HWcursor" # [<bool>]
#Option "NoAccel" # [<bool>]
#Option "ShadowFB" # [<bool>]
#Option "UseFBDev" # [<bool>]
#Option "Rotate" # [<str>]
#Option "VideoKey" # <i>
#Option "FlatPanel" # [<bool>]
#Option "FPDither" # [<bool>]
#Option "CrtcNumber" # <i>
#Option "FPScale" # [<bool>]
#Option "FPTweak" # <i>
#Option "DualHead" # [<bool>]
Identifier "Card0"
Driver "nvidia"
VendorName "nVidia Corporation"
BoardName "GeForce 9800GT"
BusID "PCI:1:0:0"
EndSection
Section "Screen"
Identifier "Screen0"
Device "Card0"
Monitor "Monitor0"
DefaultDepth 24
Option "NoLogo" "True"
Option "RenderAccel" "True"
Option "AllowGLXWithComposite" "True"
SubSection "Display"
Viewport 0 0
Depth 1
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Viewport 0 0
Depth 4
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Viewport 0 0
Depth 8
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Viewport 0 0
Depth 15
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Viewport 0 0
Depth 16
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Viewport 0 0
Depth 24
EndSubSection
EndSection
Section "ServerFlags"
Option "AutoAddDevices" "False"
EndSection
2) I ran glxgears on the old and new drivers. The old ones yielded about 6800 - 6900 FPS on average. The new ones yield about 6900 - 7000 FPS on average. So, about a ~50FPS improvement, not much to write home about. I've looked through other threads and this seems to be about on par for the graphics card I have (but I hear that on other distros nVidia cards can get much better benchmarks). Just want to check, does that sound about right? I'm unexperienced with tweaking Xorg for graphics performance and I basically just have what nvidia-config spit out.
Thanks.

Answer 1

Pseudo transparency works by placing a copy of your background in the background of your window. (like behind the words in your terminal)
True Transparency will do that, and add an image of your other windows that are behind the transparent window.
If you enable composite, (have a graphics card that can handle it), install xcompmgr and transset-df, then add
xcompmgr -C & # The & keeps it from waiting for the program to stop before doing anything else.
to you autostart, it will enable transparency. I'm using openbox and it works beautifully.
Here is my .Xdefaults (by the way if it doesn't exist, you can create it in your user folder, just don't miss the' . ' !
URxvt*foreground: #A8A8A8
URxvt*scrollBar_right: false
URxvt*scrollBar: true
URxvt*scrollstyle: plain
URxvt*borderLess: false
URxvt*inheritPixmap: true
URxvt*geometry: 124x24
URxvt*tint: white
URxvt*font: xft:monofur:size=8
#URxvt*font: xft:terminus-font:
#URxvt*font: xft:anorexia
URxvt*color0: #000000
URxvt*color1: #A80000
URxvt*color2: #00A800
URxvt*color3: #A85400
URxvt*color4: #0000A8
URxvt*color5: #A800A8
URxvt*color6: #00A8A8
URxvt*color7: #A8A8A8
URxvt*color8: #545054
URxvt*color9: #F85450
URxvt*color10: #50FC50
URxvt*color11: #F2FC50
URxvt*color12: #5054F8
URxvt*color13: #F854F8
URxvt*color14: #50FCF8
URxvt*color15: #F8FCF8
## xterm config
xterm*termName: xterm
xterm*background: #000000
xterm*foreground: #A8A8A8
urxvt*depth: 32
urxvt*background: rgba:0000/0000/0000/dddd #the transparent magic happens here!
URxvt.perl-ext-common: default,matcher
URxvt.urlLauncher: firefox
URxvt.matcher.button: 2
URxvt*matcher.pattern.1: \\b(mailto|http|https|ftp|file):[/]*[\\w-]\\.[\\w./?&@#-]*[\\w/-]
URxvt*matcher.pattern.2: \\bwww\\.[\\w-]\\.[\\w./?&@#-]*[\\w/-
I use urxvt, but if you just change the u to an m, it 'should' work.
Last edited by LeoSolaris (2009-01-29 18:28:15)