2D accaleration is simply a joke!

[XElef]

This was a quite unfriendly thread, however I'll not do it this way.

1.) I would like to ask please to fix the problem with lcd text, it really annoying. I bought a 100$ Geforce 6600 board and now I see performance like using an old P2-233.
That was the reason why I bought the card, to not see performance problems like this, however as it is for now I am using the onboard unichrome chipset as it works many times better than the overpowered nvidia card.
Please fix it, I guess we would have seen fixes years ago if Cleartype on windows would be affected :-/

2.) I did some visual programs (some kind of new UI used in conjunction with special touchscreen, may not say more). They just do some AA'ed fills, sometimes transculescent. It works slow, even unichrome is faster.
X11perf suggests that many render functions don't work well. Please fix this too, as soon as Cairo will be used more and more (GTK already uses it) these functions will be used more and more.
If you do it now you wouldget some positive attention, if you wait as long as possible nobody will notice that nvidia can do what all others do for ages.

an angry customer who has wasted 100$ for a card he doesn't use

[Linuxhippy]

Yes, please fix it *soon*!

I wonder if these kinds of problems also happen on GeForce6150 based motherboards, since they do not have to worry about "bus access patterns"? Any experiences with these GPUs and subpixel-AA'ed glyphs?

Thank you in advance, lg Clemens

[zbiggy]

I have geforce 6150 and use KDE 3.5 with RGB font antialiasing at full hinting. No single problem with this. DVI-D connection to NEC 1560NX 15" panel. I also use firefox build with --with-x --enable-xft --enable-svg --enable-mathml --enable-canvas --enable-svg-renderer=cairo --enable-system-cairo

svg rendering, MathML works. I have firefox with cairo enabled.

In KDE I have slowdown only with fading in/fading out windows effect. But turned this off and no slowdown. This slowndown effect can be KDE effect not bug in driver.

I have cairo built with x11 and glitz OpenGL output.

I have disappearing text in java applications when used sun java plugin with output set to OpenGL -Dsun.java2d.opengl=true

What application you use?

[Linuxhippy]

Originally Posted by zbiggy

I have geforce 6150 and use KDE 3.5 with RGB font antialiasing at full hinting. No single problem with this. DVI-D connection to NEC 1560NX 15" panel.

Thanks for sharing your experiences :-)

What application you use?

I experience a slowdown with practically any QT/KDE program when using subpixel AA, the more text they use ... the bigger the impact.
Although some nvidia devs said its a hardware problem, I still don't understand why GTK based programs don't show that low performance.

I have disappearing text in java applications when used sun java plugin with output set to OpenGL -Dsun.java2d.opengl=true

Just because I experienced the same some time ago - did you force antialiasing?
Otherwise you could report it to linux-bugs@nvidia.com?

Thanks, lg Clemens

[zbiggy]

Originally Posted by Linuxhippy

I experience a slowdown with practically any QT/KDE program when using subpixel AA, the more text they use ... the bigger the impact.
Although some nvidia devs said its a hardware problem, I still don't understand why GTK based programs don't show that low performance.

Just because I experienced the same some time ago - did you force antialiasing?

I use very often KEdit, Kate, OpenOffice. No problems. Sometimes only in OpenOffice at some parts of screen fonts look strange because screen is not redrawn but I scroll up and then scroll down so screen is redrawn and fonts appear correctly. Get used to this, usually type not looking at screen so it is not so annoying.

Maybe your Qt is bad? I have Qt 3.3.5

Do not use antialiasing. Enabling it using nvidia-settings made java2d OpenGL rendering much worse. A black square appeared below java applet, text was more broken.

[Linuxhippy]

Originally Posted by zbiggy

Maybe your Qt is bad? I have Qt 3.3.5

No this is a known problem with not-onboard-nvidia-gpu's, they are delivering much worse performance than the 5xxx series did. Nvidia developers said this is because of "bus access patterns" and they can't do much except adding "real" accaleration instead of readbacks and software rendering.
Its really ugly, my 6600 is so slow that I can watch how text gets painted line by line!

I was asking since I plan to buy a motherboard with onboard-gpu, and since a onboard-gpu does not have a bus, I was interrested wether there are any problems with "bus access patterns" on an implementation without a bus

Do not use antialiasing. Enabling it using nvidia-settings made java2d OpenGL rendering much worse. A black square appeared below java applet, text was more broken.

[/quote]
Strange. I tested this combination some time ago and with an GeFoce-Go488 (nv17) it worked (mustang build ~60 or so). However the 61xx chips seem to have some special bugs, there have been reports of problems with software that works flawless on all other nvidia gpus.

lg Clemens

[zbiggy]

Originally Posted by Linuxhippy

No this is a known problem with not-onboard-nvidia-gpu's, they are delivering much worse performance than the 5xxx series did. Nvidia developers said this is because of "bus access patterns" and they can't do much except adding "real" accaleration instead of readbacks and software rendering.
Its really ugly, my 6600 is so slow that I can watch how text gets painted line by line!

???
Does it mean that my integrated geforce is only dumb video out without any acceleration? Next time I will invest in the cheapest video and the most powerful CPU. It so sad that nvidia is forced to provide real acceleration
I know that setting up GPU engine for every text character is slower than software rendering but it must be any idea to solve such everyday problem. Matrox Parhelia has hardware glyph antialiasing so it can be done. I know that probably hardware must be redesigned and 2D part improved but it would be good for everyone. I could buy new geforce chip with full real 2D acceleration. I do not want to drop nvidia because of best tech support I ever seen. Hope with xorg7.1 acceleration will improve as it is accelerated by 3d engine.

Originally Posted by Linuxhippy

I was asking since I plan to buy a motherboard with onboard-gpu, and since a onboard-gpu does not have a bus, I was interrested wether there are any problems with "bus access patterns" on an implementation without a bus

If nvidia drivers are fake accelerators and do everything in software on CPU more powerful CPU will give you more speed. I hope my Athlon64 is not software emulated
Someone mentioned that Via unichrome is faster than nvidia in 2D.

Strange. I tested this combination some time ago and with an GeFoce-Go488 (nv17) it worked (mustang build ~60 or so). However the 61xx chips seem to have some special bugs, there have been reports of problems with software that works flawless on all other nvidia gpus.

lg Clemens

Hope

[zbiggy]

double post removed

[Linuxhippy]

Originally Posted by zbiggy

Does it mean that my integrated geforce is only dumb video out without any acceleration? Next time I will invest in the cheapest video and the most powerful CPU. It so sad that nvidia is forced to provide real acceleration

The driver accalerates many (common) things quite well,but its currently not able to paint rgb-aa'ed glyphs in hardware.

I know that setting up GPU engine for every text character is slower than software rendering but it must be any idea to solve such everyday problem.

Sun has implemented it for the Java2d pipeline with GLSL (very high level), and on newer boards (6600/6800 and up) it was faster than their software path.
So if you only have to support a limited set of GPUs (e.g. only nvidia 6xxx and higher) and you know the exact instruction set and gpu limitations I guess it should be able to produce quite well performing drivers. However thats a should/could/maybe guess and as soon as nvidia does not solve this problem ... nothing will change :-/
The biggest problem of software rendering is in this case not the rendering itself but rather the readback from graphic memory so that it can be processed by the CPU and sent afterwards back to the gpu (again over the system-bus).

Btw. I am quite sure you Prahelia falls back to software too when subpixel-aa is used.
There are currently (as far as I know) no gpu's which have accalerated X11 drivers for this task.

lg Clemens

[zbiggy]

The driver accalerates many (common) things quite well,but its currently not able to paint rgb-aa'ed glyphs in hardware.

Do you know any application that check what features X11 driver supports?
For example in Windows there is freshdiagnose or everest app that will tell you that none of geforces can accelerate gradientfill() function of GDI+ and that some directx functions are not supported at all.

There is x11perf but is very weak.

Sun has implemented it for the Java2d pipeline with GLSL (very high level), and on newer boards (6600/6800 and up) it was faster than their software path.
So if you only have to support a limited set of GPUs (e.g. only nvidia 6xxx and higher) and you know the exact instruction set and gpu limitations I guess it should be able to produce quite well performing drivers. However thats a should/could/maybe guess and as soon as nvidia does not solve this problem ... nothing will change :-/
The biggest problem of software rendering is in this case not the rendering itself but rather the readback from graphic memory so that it can be processed by the CPU and sent afterwards back to the gpu (again over the system-bus).

I think GLSL is available since geforce3...

Btw. I am quite sure you Prahelia falls back to software too when subpixel-aa is used.
There are currently (as far as I know) no gpu's which have accalerated X11 drivers for this task.

lg Clemens

I don't have Parhelia but like high quality 2D and video. Nvidia is focused on OpenGL, 2D looks mediocre, Video very weak. I usually need fast 2D and high quality video. Sometimes, once per month play any game but almost always this is DOS game via dosbox. Dosbox uses OpenGL for accelerated screen update.
However xorg7.1 goes more in 3d so OpenGL can be more important than now.
I'm thinking of VIA Unichrome or other chip with good 2D and video, but wait how companies will behave with xorg 7.1.

When Parhelia appeared with its hw glyph-aa people was not happy because there was no ClearType acceleration. So there was no subpixel-aa.

Geforce 7800 is advertised that has 'Accelerated antialiased text rendering' as part of 'Composited Desktop Hardware Engine'. Maybe this function will be available in X11 driver?

[PenGun]

I dunno my Matrox G400 was nice but my GT6600 pci on my Asus A8NSLI is just as sweet, maybe a bit nicer, in 2D. We are talking same monitor here.

PenGun

[zbiggy]

Originally Posted by PenGun

I dunno my Matrox G400 was nice but my GT6600 pci on my Asus A8NSLI is just as sweet, maybe a bit nicer, in 2D. We are talking same monitor here.

PenGun

Yes. I was interested in buying recent Matrox. When I saw how Linux support looks like I went back to Nvidia. The only real competition to Nvidia is VIA-S3 Unichrome at 2D and Video or ATI at 3D. Via-S3 supporting hardware frame buffer and MPEG-4 acceleration in Linux at full VLD level is superior to Nvidia. ATI with its 3D is close to Nvidia but misses some things.