Game Speed Dog Slow

F

Fink

Spaceman
I'm not sure if this is a Privateer issue or not, but I have downloaded and installed to a Redhat Fedora Core 3 install (patched up to date as of now), and with the hardware spec as below.

When I attempt to start the game in default settings (1024x800 screen, 24bit) the game loads but runs as slow as anything you can emagine... well I assume in game is the same because its too slow to actually get off the main screen menus (try a 2 second lag on the mouse for starters). My system is by default running at 1280x1024 32bit, under both KDE 3 and GNOME (tried launching from both with same effect).

Athlon MP 2Ghz (CPU)
1GB 333Mhz RAM (memory)
MSI Master (dual capable motherboard)
Adaptec 2400a Raid controler and 5 drives (in RAID 5)
NVIDEA GForce FX 5200 128MB (video)
Creative Labs SB Live (sound)
Wireless, USB mouse / keyboard combo (Chicony)

Notes:
When running, the game will drive my CPU to 90-95% load from nothing.
My memory is heavily cached by the machine but with Privateer again aproaches 90-95%.
I have tried setting my desktop to 1024x800 (to match game) before launch, but no difference.

Like I say, game starts and runs, just goes like sludge... i guess drivers? or something i'm totally missing... the manual is a bit vague on installing for linux and im stumped now. Any thoughts on where to look to troubleshoot will be gratefully recieved!

cheers
Chris R.
 
Fink said:
I'm not sure if this is a Privateer issue or not, but I have downloaded and installed to a Redhat Fedora Core 3 install (patched up to date as of now), and with the hardware spec as below.

When I attempt to start the game in default settings (1024x800 screen, 24bit) the game loads but runs as slow as anything you can emagine... well I assume in game is the same because its too slow to actually get off the main screen menus (try a 2 second lag on the mouse for starters). My system is by default running at 1280x1024 32bit, under both KDE 3 and GNOME (tried launching from both with same effect).

Athlon MP 2Ghz (CPU)
1GB 333Mhz RAM (memory)
MSI Master (dual capable motherboard)
Adaptec 2400a Raid controler and 5 drives (in RAID 5)
NVIDEA GForce FX 5200 128MB (video)
Creative Labs SB Live (sound)
Wireless, USB mouse / keyboard combo (Chicony)

Notes:
When running, the game will drive my CPU to 90-95% load from nothing.
My memory is heavily cached by the machine but with Privateer again aproaches 90-95%.
I have tried setting my desktop to 1024x800 (to match game) before launch, but no difference.

Like I say, game starts and runs, just goes like sludge... i guess drivers? or something i'm totally missing... the manual is a bit vague on installing for linux and im stumped now. Any thoughts on where to look to troubleshoot will be gratefully recieved!

cheers
Chris R.
Click to expand...


Sorry forgot to say this is 0.9d as downloaded 26th December, 2004 (priv_009d.sh)
 
My investigations outside this forum are showing that Linux has known severe slow-down problems with certain card / kernel / driver configurations. If I find a solution I will post back here in case anyone else finds the same issues now or in future.
 
try a *slightly* older/newer nvidia driver... that's fixed the problem for a lot of people...it's certainly not my fault...

see how many fps you get with glxgears (should be around 5000) and other 3d apps
 
Here's one for you, hellcatv.

I was smoking along on my machine, averaging around 80-100 FPS. I jumped into Aldebran to do battle with some cats and something went totally screwy. My CPU jumped to 100% and the game turned into a slide show at less than one frame per second. I had to exit the game and reload to get my speed back. It was almost as though the game or video driver (nvidia) decided to throw everything back to software rendering.
First time I've seen this particular thing happen (though I think I read one of Wendy's posts describing something similar)

I suspect the video driver was at fault but I am wondering if any other linux users have encountered anything similar.

My system is a Pentium 3 running at 700mhz with an nvidia 5200 or 5600 FX (can't remember which offhand). I'm running Mandrake 10.
 
Rmemember, the one I described was on a system with an AGP data handling issue with Athlon chips, Doze 2k and a very non-standard video card. And it only reared it's ugly head when I was really pushing the comms keys hard. I DO, even now, experience severe frame drop when I get a LOT of screeen movement, (20 or more Kilrathi in the screen). Perhaps you were fighting a few more than your machine could render easily?
 
Well yep software rendering seems to be the key... the NVIDIA site says that you need to junk the existing 'nv' drvier and a few other things and install their 'nvidia' one, after dropping to runlevel 3 or similar...

NOTE: that would _appear_ to be the answer for those in a similar position. There is a Linux (one size fits all) driver available to download from their site http://www.nvidia.com/.

Thats the good news... bad news is you really need a bucket load of patience and I suspect a good system backup first. I have not myself yet been able to install the driver as it first complained about unlinked files (which I fixed as it rather nicely tells you what to do in the error dialouges :) )... then it barfs cos existing drivers are in the way... appears Fedora is a right royal pain in the butt and installs everything under the sun... which makes this type of fix a nightmare... gonna have to rebuild the kernel maybe now, certainly drop some loadable mods for it as they conflict, then find every hidden driver (no friendly RPM's, must be sneaked in someplace) that they placed that conflicts. Ho hum..... Google here I come :-(

BTW, take a look at Vendetta Online - http://www.vendetta-online.com/ - (there is a 30 day free trial, no payment details required) for an interesting direction to take the VS multiplayer aspect... seems they create a static binary and apply minor patches by incremental forced download (I guess to be replaced on each major update). Interesting idea on the points scoring methods etc too... and I think that (suspect) they are using multiple servers, each of which is a base station and covers part of the univerese... as you select a base station you effectively spread the player load over the univerese. I might be wrong on that but seems the way... nice idea.

F.
 
Wendy said:
... I DO, even now, experience severe frame drop when I get a LOT of screeen movement, (20 or more Kilrathi in the screen). Perhaps you were fighting a few more than your machine could render easily?
Click to expand...

Couldn't have been. There were only about 5 ships in the system.

At this point I'm pretty well convinced that my video driver just barfed.
 
@Fink

I have never tried to run an OpenGL app under the nv driver. The NVidia driver is far far better than the nv driver that comes with XFree86 (or XOrg) and is definately worth the effort to install.

I can't comment on Fedora core 3, but the driver installs painlessly on Mandrake 10 and Debian Woody.
 
Fro said:
I have never tried to run an OpenGL app under the nv driver. The NVidia driver is far far better than the nv driver that comes with XFree86 (or XOrg) and is definately worth the effort to install.

I can't comment on Fedora core 3, but the driver installs painlessly on Mandrake 10 and Debian Woody.
Click to expand...
I don't think the nv driver does any 3d acceleration at all.. Nvidia keeps their specs under wraps, so the open source nv driver just doesn't perform. Fortunately the official nvidia driver works quite well on just about any distro, as you said.
 
I'm hitting a similar problem on an Athlon64 3400 w Radeon 9200. Hardware GL acceleration is working in other programs.

I suspect that the problem may be that the 32-bit privateer/vegastrike binaries aren't able to properly use the DRI 3d interfaces on this 64-bit system; I'm running a x86_64 native kernel and libraries (Ubuntu/amd64). I'm not sure how to test this theory, though.
 
Ah, that would seem to be confirmed. Grabbed a 32-bit binary of glxinfo and glxgears: the former reports no direct rendering, and the latter runs about the quarter of the framerate of the 64-bit version
 
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