Hi,
recently installed ubuntu 8.04 and noticed that the graphics are very slow to update for example when moving a window across the screen, where the window was stays visible for a short period and eventually follows the window to where it ends up. Other graphics related problems include a non-working screen saver and very slow frame rate at times when playing videos. I assume this is due to an incorrect xorg.conf setup. Is there a program to correctly setup the graphics in the xorg.conf file.

The mother board is an Asus P4SC-E with a SiS651 controller and 512 meg ram. Monitor is a philips 170s.

Any help would be much apreciated.

Cheers.

Video playback may always be slow if there is no hardware decoder, and even slower if there are no SSE (or other proprietary equivalent) commands on the CPU. Since you have problems with the screen savers as well, it is most likely that you're not using the correct driver for your video card.

Anyway, for the SSE issues:
Check your current kernel version: uname -a

If the tag at the end is only "-i386" (generic 80386, no multimedia instructions) then you should look for and install a kernel which does have SSE:

* check your CPU type: more /proc/cpuinfo
* find a suitable Linux image: apt-cache search linux-image

If you have a Pentium-6 (or compatible) family of machine, you can replace 'libc' as well:
apt-cache search libc6 | grep 686


For the graphics card issues we need to know what hardware you have:
'lspci' lists your PCI Bus IDs and "Vendor String"
'lspci -n' lists your PCI Bus IDs and VendorID:ProductID code

Post the lines that refer to your graphics hardware.

Hi pinniped,
Thanks for the reply, it is much apreciated. The information you requested is below. It looks like the kernel is 686 so does this imply that it is a graphics card driver issue?

Cheers.

Linux Zen 2.6.24-16-generic #1 SMP Thu Apr 10 13:23:42 UTC 2008 i686 GNU/Linux

00:00.0 Host bridge: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] 651 Host (rev 02)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] Virtual PCI-to-PCI bridge (AGP)
00:02.0 ISA bridge: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] SiS962 [MuTIOL Media IO] (rev 25)
00:02.1 SMBus: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] SiS961/2 SMBus Controller
00:02.5 IDE interface: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] 5513 [IDE]
00:02.7 Multimedia audio controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] AC'97 Sound Controller (rev a0)
00:03.0 USB Controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] USB 1.1 Controller (rev 0f)
00:03.1 USB Controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] USB 1.1 Controller (rev 0f)
00:03.3 USB Controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] USB 2.0 Controller
00:04.0 Ethernet controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] SiS900 PCI Fast Ethernet (rev 91)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] 65x/M650/740 PCI/AGP VGA Display Adapter


00:00.0 0600: 1039:0651 (rev 02)
00:01.0 0604: 1039:0001
00:02.0 0601: 1039:0962 (rev 25)
00:02.1 0c05: 1039:0016
00:02.5 0101: 1039:5513
00:02.7 0401: 1039:7012 (rev a0)
00:03.0 0c03: 1039:7001 (rev 0f)
00:03.1 0c03: 1039:7001 (rev 0f)
00:03.3 0c03: 1039:7002
00:04.0 0200: 1039:0900 (rev 91)
01:00.0 0300: 1039:6325


processor : 0
vendor_id : GenuineIntel
cpu family : 15
model : 2
model name : Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 2.60GHz
stepping : 9
cpu MHz : 1300.150
cache size : 512 KB
physical id : 0
siblings : 2
core id : 0
cpu cores : 1
fdiv_bug : no
hlt_bug : no
f00f_bug : no
coma_bug : no
fpu : yes
fpu_exception : yes
cpuid level : 2
wp : yes
flags : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm pbe pebs bts sync_rdtsc cid xtpr
bogomips : 2605.03
clflush size : 64

processor : 1
vendor_id : GenuineIntel
cpu family : 15
model : 2
model name : Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 2.60GHz
stepping : 9
cpu MHz : 1300.150
cache size : 512 KB
physical id : 0
siblings : 2
core id : 0
cpu cores : 1
fdiv_bug : no
hlt_bug : no
f00f_bug : no
coma_bug : no
fpu : yes
fpu_exception : yes
cpuid level : 2
wp : yes
flags : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm pbe pebs bts sync_rdtsc cid xtpr
bogomips : 2600.39
clflush size : 64

Well, SSE will be there since you have a 686 kernel. I'll try to find out what the appropriate video driver is when I get back home.

I have no experience with using Zen; this may be a video driver problem or it may be a virtualization problem.