[SOLVED]Terrible Video Performance on ATI Rage Mobility Card

Question

Hello everyone, I just recently picked up an older Dell Latitude C800 from Craigslist and have installed Arch on it. My problem is 3D performance is really bad. When I try to load Chromium it sort of flashes the screen and scrolls real slow. So I'm guessing the 3D acceleration from the driver I installed is not working. Below is some info:
[griff3n@arch ~]$ lspci | grep VGA
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc Rage Mobility M4 AGP
[griff3n@arch ~]$ glxgears
199 frames in 5.0 seconds = 39.690 FPS
/etc/X11/xorg.conf
Section "ServerLayout"
Identifier "X.org Configured"
Screen 0 "Screen0" 0 0
InputDevice "Mouse0" "CorePointer"
InputDevice "Keyboard0" "CoreKeyboard"
EndSection
Section "Files"
ModulePath "/usr/lib/xorg/modules"
FontPath "/usr/share/fonts/misc/"
FontPath "/usr/share/fonts/TTF/"
FontPath "/usr/share/fonts/OTF/"
FontPath "/usr/share/fonts/Type1/"
FontPath "/usr/share/fonts/100dpi/"
FontPath "/usr/share/fonts/75dpi/"
EndSection
Section "Module"
Load "dri2"
Load "dbe"
Load "dri"
Load "extmod"
Load "glx"
Load "record"
EndSection
Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Keyboard0"
Driver "kbd"
EndSection
Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Mouse0"
Driver "mouse"
Option "Protocol" "auto"
Option "Device" "/dev/input/mice"
Option "ZAxisMapping" "4 5 6 7"
EndSection
Section "Monitor"
Identifier "Monitor0"
VendorName "Monitor Vendor"
ModelName "Monitor Model"
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 "ShadowFB" # [<bool>]
#Option "DefaultRefresh" # [<bool>]
#Option "ModeSetClearScreen" # [<bool>]
Identifier "Card0"
Driver "vesa"
VendorName "ATI Technologies Inc"
BoardName "Rage Mobility M4 AGP"
BusID "PCI:1:0:0"
EndSection
Section "Screen"
Identifier "Screen0"
Device "Card0"
Monitor "Monitor0"
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
Any help would be greatly appreciated. I'll post whatever you guys need me to, but I thought these would be the main things to look at. Thanks,
GriFF
Last edited by GriFF3nG (2010-09-24 00:41:14)

Answer 1

Ok, so I can get the server to run by altering a couple of options in xorg.conf. I changed all the options below but performance is still shot.
Section "Device"
Identifier "ATI Technologies, Inc. Rage Mobility M4 (AGP)"
Driver "r128"
BusID "PCI:1:0:0"
Option "AGPMode" "4"
Option "AGPSize" "32"
Option "EnablePageFlip" "true"
Option "Display" "BIOS"
Option "SWCursor" "true"
Option "CCEusecTimeout" "20000"
EndSection
I'll have a messed up screen that performs great with the above settings. As soon as i change the options below, the screen is normal, but the performance goes to hell. Any ideas?
Section "Monitor"
Identifier "Configured Monitor"
HorizSync 31-82
VertRefresh 40-110
EndSection