…The Drivers Suck! (8MB S3 Savage/IX-MV)
I just wrote a little test app which hums along at 110 fps. The following lines are executed during initialization:
GL.glTexParameteri(GL.GL_TEXTURE_2D, GL.GL_TEXTURE_WRAP_T, GL.GL_REPEAT) ;
GL.glTexParameteri(GL.GL_TEXTURE_2D, GL.GL_TEXTURE_WRAP_S, GL.GL_REPEAT) ;
If I move one of those two lines into the main loop, the frame rate drops to 19 fps. The solution? Move the other line into the main loop as well - back up to 110 fps. :
Uh…ok now that make no sense!
Ha ha ha! Are you using a 2.5 year old Toshiba laptop? I have the same graphics card, and I know what you mean. I am never ever touching S3 again!
The scary part of it all was that they used to make AWESOME 2D cards. But nearly every foray they made into 3D was absolutely terrible! I remember trying a Virge “enhanced” version of Tomb Raider. The thing looked horrible with hidden polygons suddenly popping to the front and garbage appearing and disappearing. Truly, truly horrible.
I’ve prodded the app a little more and discovered the init work should be being overridden, so the situation isn’t quite as I first thought…
…It now appears that it renders textures pretty fast (considering) when the texture wrapping policy is the same in both directions, but slows to a crawl once there’s a mismatch. A bit more understandable, but they still must be doing something really funky to let that matter.
Nick, have you tried AlienFlux on your machine? Here is a screenshot from a beta release, although the final version does the same. Not exactly what the developer intended… ;D
I had an issue a while back that appeared to be with glDrawPixels, although I didn’t bother researching too far. It seemed if I were using glDrawPixels and something in the system tray updated at the same time… the computer locked. Took a long time to fix, that! Reboot computer. Connect to the internet, start GetRight and resume download. Open up the source code, stare at it for a while. Shake head in disbelief, then run app. Reboot computer…
Sounds familiar. We built a Java3D app that we had to show off on a laptop with a S3 card once. OpenGL-version did not work, but the DirectX version of Java3D saved the day.
IIRC there someone is still developing the linux drivers for the S3 IX (which is installed on my Portegé 3480). They worked perfectly for me but I switched back cause I could not get power management to work correctly.
/Kalle
Ah, now that’s interesting! I must track them down.
(Also, power management should be a lot better under kernel 2.6. Nice!)
Hmmm… My previous card was a S3 Savage 4, and I must say my experiences with that one was far better than my current Gforce 4 Ti4200 once the drivers got stable. Some games still perform better on the S3, like Unreal Tournament for example. Half Life has horrible graphics corruption on the Ti4200, as well as Metal Gear Solid 2:Substance which was supposed to be ‘nVidia only’. Yeah right >:(. I am on the latest drivers which are like 6 times as large which is no pleasure for my dial up modem (Who needs that ‘unified driver system’ when that means you’re practically downloading drivers for all nVidia cards?)
I did use some tweaked drivers for my S3, but the difference between the official ones was not very large IIRC.
I still have some trouble running my own game sometimes.
No nVidia card for me ever again.
[quote]Nick, have you tried AlienFlux on your machine? Here is a screenshot from a beta release, although the final version does the same. Not exactly what the developer intended… ;D
[/quote]
AF runs on my laptop, in the loosest sense of the word. I had to turn off all the cool options, and it still ran slowly.
[quote]Ah, now that’s interesting! I must track them down.
(Also, power management should be a lot better under kernel 2.6. Nice!)
[/quote]
Here it is:
http://www.probo.com/timr/savage40.html
Be aware though - I didn’t test the drivers throughly so I have no idea what performance or stability in the long run is.
Kalle
Ach, they don’t support OpenGL unfortunately. The UtahGLX guys seem to have embryonic Savage/IX support, but they aren’t overly interested in it and apparently their support is no faster than software MesaGL.
I also found an S3-supplied X-Server binary, but no OpenGL support there either, just accelerated 2D.
Looks like I’m confined to WinME until I decide to buy a new laptop! :’(
[quote]Ach, they don’t support OpenGL unfortunately. The UtahGLX guys seem to have embryonic Savage/IX support, but they aren’t overly interested in it and apparently their support is no faster than software MesaGL.
I also found an S3-supplied X-Server binary, but no OpenGL support there either, just accelerated 2D.
Looks like I’m confined to WinME until I decide to buy a new laptop! :’(
[/quote]
Are you sure? I definitely got lwjgl running under linux on my toshiba…
Well, in the Known Issues section there’s this:
[quote]DRI/OpenGL/Mesa support.
There is currently no DRI driver for the Savages for XFree86 4.x, which means that OpenGL applications are entirely simulated in software. There was work going on at one time to add this support, by the same fellow who did the UtahGLX driver for XFree86 3.3.6, but his e-mail address no longer responds.
[/quote]
I wonder if that section is out of date then? ??? I’m reinstalling shortly, so I’ll give them a go! 
[quote]
Hmm… ever tried the 30.82 Drivers from NVIDIAs archive ?
most hardcore gamers i know told me they are most compatible and the fastest nvidia made for the geforce.
everything that followed seemed to slow things down.
I use them myself on my Geforce3, and experienced no problems. Maybe its worth a try.
Greets !
mbw
I’ll give them a try, thanks!
Np !
But i fear they just support openGL 1.3.1… 
mbw
