Hey, im trying to find a linux distro that can install nvidia drivers without completly destroying itself....if i can manage to do this, i might be able to actually not use windoze, lol. I want direct redering support...-_- the only linux ive gotten to work with my vid card is suse...i dun like suse though...ive yet to get the drivers from nvidia.com to work on any of em. (I installed the drivers on suse through yast online update =/) so, i need a linux distro besides suse that supports nvidia geforce 5200 cards...

01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation NV34 [GeForce FX 5200] (rev a1)

That's my card - great in Slackware-10.0, kernel 2.6.7

hmm...i installed that last week...why didnt i keep it then!? *pops in slackware disc and starts the install* lol

Slackware = Linux

Just get the driver from Nvidia and follow their instructions

Hey, this works right with Slackware. SuSE is where you have to follow
special steps. Stick with Slackware, use the force Luke, and read all the directions.
The Slackware forum at LQ has plenty of guys who can answer your questions.
You'll find Slackware does things "the Linux way."

Welcome to Slack!

mmm, i got my card up and running...only at 761FPS, but uh well...i didnt use it before because i was too stupid to change the xorg.conf file to change the driver from "nv" to "nvidia" =) lol mmm, my long search has finally ended.

thx for ur help ^^

PS: how DID u get it at 2k fps? O_O lol

did you change the config to use glx?

tbh that's still kinda low, I get 3-4000 with a gf4ti4200

/me only follows the directions.

Nothing special, just open a terminal and issue "glxgears"
and wait for the output. Might be my system, or my card?
Is yours the 128 MB card? Is your AGP set to 8X in BIOS?
I got a Athlon XP 2600+ Barton CPU, 1 GB Kingston DDR 333,
but it runs the same on my older P4 2.4 GHz w/ this RAM.

On my other three comps with Nvidia cards and 256 MB of
RAM I get around 1,000 FPS. RAM is really the biggest
kicker in Linux - even more so than CPU.

You might want to search, or post another totally new thread
about getting your settings up - though I don't think you
need them higher. Depends upon what you're doing, really.

/me plays no games, so "meiyouguanxi."

In Slack-10.0 with Xorg the GLX module loads by default. If it didn't
he couldn't have gotten a glxgears output, either.

Your card should perform better - our memory bandwidth is 6.4 GB/sec.
and yours is 8GB/sec. - along with other differences. Also, when you
clock those rates are you leaving the glxgears window open, and not
minimized, running on your screen where you can see it?

/me still has poor quality text display on his LCD monitor with Nvidia. :/

Actually you can get glxgears without the nvidia binary driver, albeit at 200fps since it uses software rendering.

And given I had to uncomment the glx module loading line in xorg.conf in slack 10.0 I find it odd that it loads by default.

minimised i get around 16000 lol

Even so about that mem bandwidth, 730 seems low.

EDIT: run glxinfo and it'll tell you what driver etc you're using.

http://www.nixnuts.net/benchmarks/cu...enchmarks.html gives an idea of the sort of values you shoudl be getting.

Not to argue with you, but I've got 4 boxen sitting here
with Slack installed and ALL of them haveeven the lappy with Neomagic Corporation NM2160 [MagicGraph
128XD] onboard. No matter.
But doesn't the amount of RAM matter?

I'm not going to hijack his thread, but would like to ask you
a few video questions once his issue is resolved, if you please.

Folks, just one note, You do not have to use Slackware if You want to get Your Nvidia card get working ;-)
I think all You need is ANY Linux distro with Xserver and official NVidia drivers, from their website, that are supposed to be used with Linux ;-)
So, if You like debian, gentoo, mandrake or whatever more that slackware, there is no problem to use that distro...

You're joking, right?????????????????

You're joking, right????????????????? [/QUOTE]

Of course not. First question was, that he was looking for some distro which will not crash with nvidia drivers ;-). Second reply was to use Slackware. You cas use nvdia drivers in other distros too. For expample I have tested it in gentoo and mandrake. I do not see, why should i be joking. All You need to do is download right driver. Its even able to compile itself for kernel not supported in binary distribution.

I have installed nVidia modules in Mandrake. It works. If the nVidia modules does not have any precompiled software for the kernel version that you are using, you have an option to try to download from nVidia's FTP servers or compile them for your kernel version. People argue that nVidia is closed source, but nVidia modules are not closed source. You can run the file to only to extract the source code. Then you can add anything to the code like overclocking feature or anything you want.

Setting AGP to 8X will not increase speed because not a lot of games can overload 4X. Memory bandwidth is just theortical not realistic.

GeForceFX 5200 is poor for playing games because the smaller memory path, memory clock speed is slow, and VPU core speed is slow. If you are going to play games, I suggest atleast GeForceFX 5700 Ultra or better. The amount of video memory will matter a lot but you have to worry about the maximum clock speed the memory chips can be clocked at and how fast it is clocked at. Usually 256 MB video cards has memory speed clocked slower than 128 MB versions. Check the fine print to know what you are really getting.

To get every last drop out your video card, you will have to tweak the settings and Linux to get what you wanted.

On my computer I get 4862.6 FPS. For my computer, I have
Pentium 4 2.0A
ABIT TH7II-RAID
256 MB RAMBUS
eVGA GeForceFX 5700 Ultra /w 128 MB DDR3

I say its working well with the default settings.

Using glxgears will show that 3D rendering is working. Using glxinfo will give you more information about what 3D libraries you are using. If you see mesa, then you have a problem. If you see NV, glx, and a word nVidia then your computer is using 3D hardware rendering.

For really benchmarking your video card, use FrameGetter from anandtech.com. Its the only 3D benchmark utility that gives you very good accurate results of your video card speed.