Performance problems with Linux

[AscoMania]

Hello,

at first, i want to excuse for my bad english.

My system: Acer Extensa 4014 Notebook
AMD Sempron 3500+
512 MB ram
ATI Xpress 1100 with 64 MB shared ram
Ubuntu 7.04

I have with Regnum Online under Linux large performance problems, when playing under Ubuntu I have only between 3 and 7 fps.

I know, my system isn't very well for playing games.
But I installed Regnum for testing on Windows XP and there I have between 15 and 50 fps. (Sometimes it's lower, but then always the harddrive led is blinking, so it's because of my low memory)

Fglrx (ATI Driver-Version 8.39.4) is running well.
glxgears so 1550 fps.

What could be cause of this problem?

Also I have with both Systems between 95 and 99 percent cpu usage (I think, with Windows it's a little bit better), but this seems to be normal?!?

Edit: I had used the safe mode with both systems.

[Athens101]

Ram ram ram is all I can say. Having a laptop is a double whammy since it shares systems memory for the video card as you know.

The only thing I would suggest to do is install a lighter Linux distro like Vector Linux.

[Froste]

glxgears is not a benchmark, your graphic card sucks for linux gaming

[AscoMania]

@Athens101: I know, next time put more ram in the Notebook, but with windows it's better. So the ram can't be the cause of the low fps.

@Froste: So, do you think, that's a problem with the bad ATI-fglrx driver under linux?!?
I knwo, that the onboard chip isn't realy fast, but I wonder about the differences between the speed of Windows and Linux.
Other games are running with Linux as well as Windows.

[Froste]

yes, garbage driver

[Athens101]

The only option you have is to free up your physical memory and stop the system from hitting the swap partition under Linux. It does not matter how many frames your card can render if the data is spending it's time crawling around on your HD.

Just for fun open a console and run top and see how much physical ram you have while the game is running then compare that to Windows.

[DuoMaxwell]

I dunno what to tell yah, it's ATI, they couldn't write drivers for ANY OS to save their grandmas.

I can only ever recommend ATI graphics to someone buying a Mac with it built in or as a BTO option from Apple, anything after market from ATI should be avoided like the plague till they either learn to write divers or let the community do it for them by sourcing what the have and releasing the documentation. Preferably the latter. If I remember right Apple writes the drivers for the cards that they install, anything you pick up that doesn't have apple made drivers from ATI is going to suck just as bad on OS X as it does on Linux and even Windows. If you own a Mac or know someone that does that wants to install a new card but can't get ahold of someone with the connections to get them a card direct from Apple they may be better off buying a flashed card of risking flashing the bios on a windows only version of the cards from ATI or Nvidia, but note that it only works with the cards that are of the exact same core revision as the one Apple used. Careful tho, if you fail you could brick the card.

Sorry if I'm ranting, I haven't slept in a long time.

[AscoMania]

Just for fun open a console and run top and see how much physical ram you have while the game is running then compare that to Windows.

Can you tell me the commands for this pease, i'm not a computer-crack and i'm a Linux-Noob.


So, the result is, that Linux, ATI and Regnum isn't a good combination.

Ok, I will play Regnum with Windows :mad: and must try again with Linux, when I have bought more memory.

[DuoMaxwell]

adding more system ram wont help too much, not with the gimped card for linux. Try using the top command in a terminal or if it's eaisier for yah pull up the system monitor, it's under system > administration > system monitor in Ubuntu. You'll have to select system monitor to show virtual memory used in the prefrences, it's just a check box.

[AscoMania]

Thank you DuoMaxwell and Athens101.
Reading Athens101 post again, I have seen that "top" is the command.

So I have two ways to watch the ram usage.

This weekend I want to try the latest ATI-driver Version (8.40.4), maybe it's getting better (but I don't think so).

[Froste]

linux and ati isn't a good combination period, regardless of the game

the memory usage displayed in top is not straight forward, you have to learn a lot about linux in general and top itself in order to read it correctly, ram is important, but at 500 megs you're sort of topping out, you have enough ram, it's the shitty graphic card, the shitty memory on the graphic card, and the shitty driver for the graphic card

my recommendation for linux gaming is nvidia

[AscoMania]

Yes, you're right, but the notebook was very cheap and when I bought it, I don't know anything about Linux.
So, shit happens, I must live with it.

Maybe, in the Future, there will be open-source ATI-drivers! ;)

[Athens101]

Well open source ATI drivers are out there. Granted they are not from ATI but they do support 3D.

As a last resort you can try to overclock your chipset using rovclock.

[DuoMaxwell]

In a laptop? Not that great an idea, least without tearing it all don and doing some work on the entire cooling system, TIM replacement with Arctic Silver 5 and a lapping job, possibly replace the blowers aswell, but for a laptop cooling system this isn't easy as you just can't go pick up replacement parts or upgraded parts, you have to work with what's already there.

[ExtremeCoder]

Hi, (first post here!)
As others said, I think the problem is from the ATI Driver, as my PC (with 512 MB Ram, P4 3.0 GHz, and a GeForce MX 4000, which is weaker than your gfx card) runs the game fine.

As a last measure, you could try running another distro. Try Mandriva or PCLinuxOS, they install the ATi driver when you install the distro.

[DuoMaxwell]

Ubuntu also started doing this aswell since 7.04, it's under System > Administration > Restricted Drivers or something like that, you just open that and it should grab you the right drivers, tho there where a few probelms a few weeks ago with it installing the correct driver as they opted for a newer version I think it did infact work just fone for me when I installend Ubuntu Studio and I've seen no reason yet to update the driver, it's fine till next I reformat whenever I decide it's time to update the OS lol.

[AscoMania]

The restricted driver doesn't work with my card, so i must use the fglrx driver.

Now, with the newest ATI-driver (8.40.4) it's better than before, but already slower than windows.

@ExtremeCoder: Your card is a nvidia, and they work much better with Linux than the ATI-graphics.

I have accepted this and boot Windows when I want to play Regnum.
And I don't want to install another distro, but all the other things work very well with Ubuntu.

[AscoMania]

I only want to tell that the problem is nearly solved with the fglrx 8.42 driver.

Now I have with ubuntu nearly the same performance like under windows xp. ;)