No 3D acceleration

English Hardware
1

I just installed opensuse 11.2 32bit on this crappy computer, which is not that fast an does not have a lot of memory… it has a S3 unichrome integrated video card. I installed the drivers and everything seems to work correctly, except that there is no 3d acceleration. I don’t care about compiz or fancy effects or anything like that, but the super slow scrolling on almost every website is so annoying!

I opened sax2 and the 3D option is grayed out. did sax2 -r and nothing changed… any clue?

here is a post of my xorg.conf

# /.../
# SaX generated X11 config file
# Created on: 2009-11-17T12:16:56-0500.
#
# Version: 8.1
# Contact: Marcus Schaefer <sax@suse.de>, 2005
# Contact: SaX-User list <https://lists.berlios.de/mailman/listinfo/sax-users>
#
# Automatically generated by [SaX2] (8.1)
# PLEASE DO NOT EDIT THIS FILE!
#

Section "Files"
  FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/misc:unscaled"
  FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/local"
  FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/75dpi:unscaled"
  FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/100dpi:unscaled"
  FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/Type1"
  FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/URW"
  FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/Speedo"
  FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/PEX"
  FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/cyrillic"
  FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/latin2/misc:unscaled"
  FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/latin2/75dpi:unscaled"
  FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/latin2/100dpi:unscaled"
  FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/latin2/Type1"
  FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/latin7/75dpi:unscaled"
  FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/baekmuk:unscaled"
  FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/japanese:unscaled"
  FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/kwintv"
  FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/truetype"
  FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/uni:unscaled"
  FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/CID"
  FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/ucs/misc:unscaled"
  FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/ucs/75dpi:unscaled"
  FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/ucs/100dpi:unscaled"
  FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/hellas/misc:unscaled"
  FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/hellas/75dpi:unscaled"
  FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/hellas/100dpi:unscaled"
  FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/hellas/Type1"
  FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/misc/sgi:unscaled"
  FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/xtest"
  FontPath     "/opt/kde3/share/fonts"
  InputDevices "/dev/gpmdata"
  InputDevices "/dev/input/mice"
EndSection

Section "Module"
  Load         "dri"
  Load         "dbe"
  Load         "extmod"
  Load         "glx"
EndSection

Section "ServerFlags"
  Option       "AllowMouseOpenFail" "on"
  Option       "ZapWarning" "on"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
  # Driver "kbd" will be disabled unless 'Option "AutoAddDevices" "off"' 
  # is set in "ServerFlags" section. 
  Driver       "kbd"
  Identifier   "Keyboard[0]"
  Option       "Protocol" "Standard"
  Option       "XkbLayout" "us"
  Option       "XkbModel" "microsoftpro"
  Option       "XkbRules" "xfree86"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
  # Driver "mouse" will be disabled unless 'Option "AutoAddDevices" "off"' 
  # is set in "ServerFlags" section. 
  Driver       "mouse"
  Identifier   "Mouse[1]"
  Option       "Buttons" "5"
  Option       "Device" "/dev/input/mice"
  Option       "Name" "PS/2 Mouse"
  Option       "Protocol" "explorerps/2"
  Option       "Vendor" "Sysp"
  Option       "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
EndSection


Section "Monitor"
  DisplaySize  331 207
  HorizSync    30-62
  Identifier   "Monitor[0]"
  ModelName    "AUO LCD MONITOR"
  Option       "DPMS"
  Option       "PreferredMode" "1280x800"
  VendorName   "AUO"
  VertRefresh  43-60
  UseModes     "Modes[0]"
EndSection


Section "Modes"
  Identifier   "Modes[0]"
  Modeline 	"1280x800" 83.46 1280 1344 1480 1680 800 801 804 828
  Modeline 	"1280x800" 69.75 1280 1328 1360 1440 800 803 809 823 +HSync -Vsync
EndSection


Section "Device"
  BoardName    "P4M800Pro, CN700, VN800"
  Driver       "unichrome"
  Identifier   "Device[0]"
  VendorName   "VIA"
EndSection


Section "Screen"
  DefaultDepth 16
  SubSection "Display"
    Depth      15
    Modes      "1280x800" 
  EndSubSection
  SubSection "Display"
    Depth      16
    Modes      "1280x800" 
  EndSubSection
  SubSection "Display"
    Depth      24
    Modes      "1280x800" 
  EndSubSection
  SubSection "Display"
    Depth      8
    Modes      "1280x800" 
  EndSubSection
  Device       "Device[0]"
  Identifier   "Screen[0]"
  Monitor      "Monitor[0]"
EndSection


Section "ServerLayout"
  Identifier   "Layout[all]"
  InputDevice  "Keyboard[0]" "CoreKeyboard"
  InputDevice  "Mouse[1]" "CorePointer"
  Screen       "Screen[0]"
EndSection


Section "DRI"
    Group      "video"
    Mode       0660
EndSection

Thanks for any help.

2

this crappy computer
You said it!
Do those VIA chips even support 3D. I didn’t think so.

3

Hi
Try the uni(open?)chrome driver.
http://www.openchrome.org/trac/wiki/Components
http://software.opensuse.org/search?baseproject=openSUSE%3A11.2&p=1&q=chrome

–
Cheers Malcolm °¿° (Linux Counter #276890)
SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 11 (x86_64) Kernel 2.6.27.37-0.1-default
up 1 day 1:46, 3 users, load average: 0.08, 0.06, 0.01
GPU GeForce 8600 GTS Silent - CUDA Driver Version: 190.18

4

ok. may be it does not support 3D acceleration. but how do I make it run faster? in windows xp, youtube videos work fine, and the page scrolling works as well.

With puppy linux, all that seems to work fine as well.

Now, I prefer opensuse and I’m trying to make it work.

5

This can be a crapy card, but it used to work under win XP… any suggestions? its impossible to watch youtube videos or scroll web pages…

I don’t want to install XP back!!! please help

6

As we don’t know exactly the specifications it’s difficult to say but you figure from here:
Sysreqs - openSUSE

From that you can work out if openSUSE is suited to your system. And as you have already told us that Puppy works well, it kind of suggests that you need a lighter weight distro. There are plenty out there that offer a little more refinement than Puppy does too.
Eg: Linux Mint 5 “Elyssa” - XFCE Community Edition - Linux Mint

7

ok here is my sys info:

Linux linux-k7zv 2.6.31.5-0.1-default #1 SMP 2009-10-26 15:49:03 +0100 i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux

system.hardware.primary_video.vendor = 4358 (0x1106)
system.hardware.primary_video.product = 13124 (0x3344)

it is a s3/via cn700 integrated video.

I know its crappy but it should work.

I know it is the driver because if I use the unichrome driver its ridiculously slow. It works better with the vesa driver.

Is there a way to tweak the vesa driver to simulate 3d acceleration? at least to be able to watch youtube videos.

I know the pc can handle it, because it used to work with win XP, loaded with all the trojans and viruses you can imagine, plus an useless antivirus that used to take half of the resources…

8

Sorry but this tells me nothing.

9

tell me exactly what to post and you will have it in no time!

10

IMHO, I don’t think there is much configuring that you can do that will improve your graphics card performance. Have a read of man unichrome reference. There are some xorg.conf acceleration options available:

Option AccelMethod string
The driver supports XAA and EXA acceleration methods. The default method is XAA, since EXA is still experimental. Contrary to XAA. EXA implements acceleration for screen uploads and downlads (if DRI is enabled) and the Render / Composite extension.
Option EXANoComposite boolean
If Exa is enabled using the above option, Don’t accelerate composite. Since EXA, and in particular, it’s composite acceleration is still experimental, This is a way to disable exa composite acceleration.

Its going to take experimentation on your part. Again, I’d be surprised if the default options (used by Xorg driver) are not already the most optimal for such a low-end chipset.

11

Some online searching (as I encourage you to do) located this ArchWiki link:

Via Unichrome - ArchWiki

Unichrome and OpenGL

OpenGL support for Via’s graphic chipsets is seriously outdated. At the moment you will not be able to run more fancy applications, games or compositing desktops like Compiz Fusion that rely on OpenGL as a backend, because the more recent OpenGL extensions are not yet supported in Unichrome 3D driver. You will be able to run simple OpenGL-applications though. The 3D driver for Unichrome is provided by the the DRI project.