Problems with 3D Hardware acceleration on nVidia geForce 7300

Question

I have a system with a Core 2 Duo CPU and a nVidia geForce 7300 graphic card. I am trying to run a 3D robotics simulation program (Webots 7.0.3) and its performance is abysmal. I never had graphic performance issues before---but then again, I never tried to run this particularly intensive simulation software. Other simulation software compiled from source (e.g. player/stage ) runs smoothly.
Where can I start to look to find out where the problem is?
Here is what I've been able to find out so far:
1. Hardware acceleration seems to be enabled:
[stefano@polus]$ glxinfo | grep -n5 "direct rendering"
1-name of display: :0
2-display: :0 screen: 0
3:direct rendering: Yes
4-server glx vendor string: NVIDIA Corporation
5-server glx version string: 1.4
6-server glx extensions:
7- GLX_EXT_visual_info, GLX_EXT_visual_rating, GLX_SGIX_fbconfig,
8- GLX_SGIX_pbuffer, GLX_SGI_video_sync, GLX_SGI_swap_control,
2. glxgears reports very poor performance: about 60FPS. The software manufacterer says their product needs around 2000FPS to run smoothly
[stefano@polus]$ glxgears                                                                                                                                                                                                             
Running synchronized to the vertical refresh.  The framerate should be                                                                                                                                                                       
approximately the same as the monitor refresh rate.                                                                                                                                                                                         
301 frames in 5.0 seconds = 60.157 FPS                                                                                                                                                                                                       
299 frames in 5.0 seconds = 59.781 FPS                                                                                                                                                                                                       
3. The software (i.e. Webots) is proprietary, and their linux version is built against libjpeg version 6.2. Archlinux currently runs libjpeg 8, so I had to manually install the older version.
4. The software runs satisfactorily on my Kubuntu laptop, an old Lenovo T61 which has similar (or similarly aged) hardware. In other words, the CPU seems to be adequate and the prolem lies with the graphic setup in my Archlinux system, I believe. 
5. I read the nvidia pages on the Arch website, the nvidia-linux pages and the Xorg pages on how to set up xorg.conf. It did not help.
Some info on my system are appended below.
Any hint greatly appreciated.
Stefano
Hardware
CPU Version: Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU E6550 @ 2.33GHz
Graphic card: nVidia GeForce 7300/Gt/Pci/SS2
RAM: 4 GB
Double monitor setup with Xinerama enabled
SW:
Archlinux 64 bits
Kernel: Linux 3.6.11-1-ARCH
Graphic driver: nvidia304xx

Answer 1

chris_l wrote:
stefano wrote:
2. glxgears reports very poor performance: about 60FPS. The software manufacterer says their product needs around 2000FPS to run smoothly
Running synchronized to the vertical refresh. The framerate should be
approximately the same as the monitor refresh rate.                                                                                                                                                                                         
301 frames in 5.0 seconds = 60.157 FPS
Why you get 60FPS? you have your answer there.
I noticed that and was wondering about it. I am not familiar with glxgear at all and I am not sure about the exact meaning of the statement about framerate. But one of the developers of the software I am trying to run sent me this glxgear output, obtained on a recent Ubuntu system running under VMWare (on a Windows host, I presume):
$ glxgears
11030 frames in 5.0 seconds = 2205.791 FPS
11492 frames in 5.0 seconds = 2298.289 FPS
What gives? Are they running a different version of glxgears or is there some hidden switch in glxgears that unties it from monitor refresh rate and makes it work as a benchmark tool  (man glxgears did not report any)?