Sluggish response with Dual monitor setup when moving items

English Hardware
1

Although I have experimented with linux a lot in the past, I am still newbie in the area so I require your help guys.

First off I want to say that I have tried searching everything in the forums and google and many other websites regarding this and I am still trying a few things, however I figured I would post a question here for some guidance to speed up my efforts and minimize my frustration.

I will provide as much info as possible to my dual monitor issue because as far as troubleshooting pc problems and posting in forums I am NOT a newbie.

PC setup:

Athlon 3500+ 64
Abit 3rd eye mobo,
3GB ram (1 GB geil dual channel DDR 400, 2 GB Kingston DDR 400)
Antec 550 PSU
74 GB western digital raptor 10000rpm
Visiontek Ati hd2600 512 MB video card (AGP version)

Intallation of Opensuse 11.0 32-bit (attempted 64bit too but could not sort out issues with video card).

Problems:

The initial problem I have managed to overcome was enabling the dual monitor display as an extended desktop. It would only recognize it as a cloned desktop and although xinerama and dual head could be selected (through sax2), after restarting it would still be in cloned desktop mode. After research I tried doing the instalation of ati drivers the easy way through instructions found here: ATI - openSUSE

This worked fine and I thought my problems were finally over since I even had the catalyst control and enabled dual display through there, however the fglrx was not selected and 3d acceleration was greyed out.
animation effects could not be selected and moving windows or brwosing webpages that required scrolling took too long. Performance was generally sluggish.

I then tried doing it the hard way as instructed from that same page. I followed all steps and when running the fglrxinfo command I saw that it was not the ati driver but the mesa one. I tried going through all the troubleshooting steps and it still is using the mesa version. I am in the process of repeating installation steps in the hopes that if i do it with more care it would work. One note here is that when testing the kernel based on the instructions on the page, I received a message “build of kernel failed” (or something in that manner) and there are no instructions with regards to that. (I think I also remeber something about the kernel not being in a pae directory or something…apologies but I am writing this post from work in the hopes that I will have some sort of answers and advice to try when I get home).

So my questions are:

  1. What are the steps required if the kernel check does not go as planned as instructed in the page with the hard way of installing ati drivers. (I was surprised that with all the detail and the troubleshooting steps, and the fact that it specifically mentions to check the kernel is ok, it does not have steps to rectify if it is not and my attempts to find information on this were futile).

  2. If the kernel issue above is fixed, will my efforts to get the fglrx working succeed? A guess would do :slight_smile:

  3. Is the sluggish performance due solely on those issues? Is that where all my attention should focus on to get my dual monitors working?

Any and all help will be greatly appreciated. I have been waiting for years to make the transition from windows to linux, but due to several applications I used, things I did with windows that I could not do in linux, ntfs writing and some other stuff I kept on waiting. I thought the time was right with Opensuse 11.0 and I could start my quest of knowledge in the linux world officially by having it as my main OS. (this was my first time I did not go for the dual boot xp/linux attempt but a clean format and install of linux ONLY). hopefully I can overcome this and start enjoying opensuse :slight_smile:

P.S. sorry for the long post but I always hate when someone has a post with 3 lines saying…dual monitor problem…realy…what problem? It forces people to waste posts asking details which should have been initially included in the question. Also any details not included were part of the method used in installation which is included in the steps from the page supplied. I assumed that anyone trying to help me is familiar with the steps and did not need me repeating them in this post. If however anyone needs the exact steps and can not (or does not want to) read the page I attached to see what I did, I can post them here. Thanx again

2

P.S.2 On a side note, the automatic updater shows me there are 43 available updates, but then when I click ok to install them it comes back with an error message (once again, not fresh in my memory but it was something with KDE and I believe a timeout). I dont know if this would affect anything with regards to the video card and the sluggish performance. I just thought I would solve one thing at a time. Anything I can not remember now I will come back to this post to add.

3

Hi
Try the following commands from the CLI (Command Line) konsole/console;


sudo zypper ref
sudo zypper lu
sudo zypper up

The first command refreshes the repositories, the second lists any
updates, the third will apply the updates.

If your running KDE 4.0.x, there are a lot of issues with KDE4 off the
dvd install, I suggest you have a look here and upgrade to 4.1

KDE4

If not, consider dropping back to KDE3 for a more stable desktop.

–
Cheers Malcolm °¿° (Linux Counter #276890)
openSUSE 11.0 x86 Kernel 2.6.25.18-0.1-default
up 23:50, 2 users, load average: 0.04, 0.04, 0.00
GPU GeForce 6600 TE/6200 TE - Driver Version: 177.80

4

Thanx for that. I will try as soon as I get home. I was trying KDE 4.0 due to the widgets feature. Thought it looked cool and I would give it a try. I know linux is all about the reliability and such…but I figured if it looks cool too I can make windows vista fans stop talking.

Will KDE 3.0 also help with the video card performance issue perhaps? No sluggish window movement? Or is the reliability only as far as crashes (or white screens of death I have experienced)?

5

Hi
I’m not sure as I’m a Gnome user, but you can update your KDE4 and also
have KDE3 installed, you can just select your session at the login
screen.

–
Cheers Malcolm °¿° (Linux Counter #276890)
openSUSE 11.0 x86 Kernel 2.6.25.18-0.1-default
up 1 day 0:46, 1 user, load average: 0.01, 0.03, 0.08
GPU GeForce 6600 TE/6200 TE - Driver Version: 177.80

6

So the update solution worked. Everything is updated and updater works now. Maybe Kernel was updated and I can manage to get the ati instalation working this time.

Once again…any advice on the sluggish performance and which path to follow is appreciated.

Thanx malcomlewis for the help.

7

Ok, so I have managed to get everything working, dual monitor, compiz, fglrx, desktop cube, animation effects. However somewhere along the lines my video playback got all jumpy. It has something to do with one of the many settings, but which one? Anyone advanced enough to know the configuration recommended in the ati setup and tell me which part is affecting the video playback? It’s still part of the same post because it is all regarding this ati video drivers setup

8

A solution I tried which seems to have fixed the problem but created another, is to disable the animation effects from the quick compiz settings option, restart the xorg with ctrl-alt-bksp twice and then login and play video. I thought…cool, I dont mind doing that whenever I want to play video (until of course I find the solution), then enable them again when im done watching videos.

I was a happy penguin…until I noticed that I cant enable the video effects again. I think I’ll try and restore my xorg.conf file from when I succeeded last with the dual monitor and animation effects setup (yes I make a backup of it each time I have a succesful step and restor to my best option) and then I need to figure out what is causing the jumpy playback of videos. This problem by the way occurs with any player, even my fav vlc.

So, is there anyone out there who could guide me in this jumpy video playback issue? Which setting needs tweaking to have it all, animation effects, cube, compiz, smooth transition of windows from one screen to the other and video playback without problems???

I noticed my post has started to fall with no more post from anyone since malcomlewis helped me fix the update issue, whcih in turn enabled me to fix the video issue, which in turn gave me the video playback issue (videos were fine before the whole sluggish problem), so I posted this extra section explaining some extra steps I took and hoping for some brainstorming by some elder penguins…

??? :’( ???

9

I dont want to start a new thread for this continuing issue. Is there anyone who can help?

What can I do to have animation effects enabled and smooth playback of videos. What settings do I tweak? This is a continuing issue with the video drivers and the slow response. I keep making slight configurations which improve one thing and make another go wrong.

Another issue I discovered is the youtube video playback won’t go fullscreen and I tried a few things which only made it worse. I am posting it as a secondary issue , but will open a secondary thread for this. I just figured, last time malcomlewis answered my secondary issue in my first post, which resulted in a solution to my main issue…so why not.

Hope someone can answer here and my post doesnt keep dropping.

How can I have enabled animation effects and smooth video playback together?

10

Hi
So when it’s all running is there much load on the cpu? Have you tried
posting on the ati forums? Are you playing the youtube items in a
separate player or plugin?

–
Cheers Malcolm °¿° (Linux Counter #276890)
openSUSE 11.0 x86 Kernel 2.6.25.18-0.1-default
up 3:12, 3 users, load average: 0.24, 0.17, 0.21
GPU GeForce 6600 TE/6200 TE - Driver Version: 177.80

11

Hey Malcomlewis…are you the only person who replies in this forum? :stuck_out_tongue:

Well so far only you reply to my questions.You’re my personal suse guru :stuck_out_tongue:

So, details:

Video playback is jumpy whether I play through vlc player, mplayer, or any suse video player. Also when happens when I try to play youtube videos (that’s when I could cause with my attempts to load a flash player that supports full screen like latest adobe flash 10, or gnash…I lost capability all together).

I have not checked cpu load. It did not occur to me. Didnt think that could be an issue with a 3500+ athlon 64 and 3 gb of memory. But then again a driver or application which was misbehaving could cause full load. So how do I check the cpu load (wouldnt know the equivalent of the task manager…i’m assuming somewhere in yast?).

And once again on another side note, I now lost internet connectivity through wired connection after a reboot. I was uninstalling firefox and flash to get youtube fullscreen and after a reboot I have lost the internet. Didn’t think that could happen with wired…full of surprises.

If I can’t get the internet back i’m tempted to try ubuntu and see if I get less problems. Always been a suse fan…but didnt expect the internet to go on me.

12

Hi
LOL, wait to you get the bill!!! :wink:

OK, the programs I use are top and xrestop, then there is also vmstat
all CLI applications.

Then for general monitoring I use gkrellmn with a few plugins for a
graphical display on the desktop. Conky is good as well. I don’t use
KDE, but there is ksysguard?

Have you removed beagle? Does the system seem better after a reboot?

I’m leaning towards an errant flash process still running and sucking
up cpu load…

Have you tried youtube-dl and play with mplayer?
http://www.arrakis.es/~rggi3/youtube-dl/

–
Cheers Malcolm °¿° (Linux Counter #276890)
openSUSE 11.0 x86 Kernel 2.6.25.18-0.1-default
up 13:04, 2 users, load average: 0.98, 0.43, 0.23
GPU GeForce 6600 TE/6200 TE - Driver Version: 177.80

13

Hi
Oh if you want to run them in the background have a look at this
Xwinwrap

–
Cheers Malcolm °¿° (Linux Counter #276890)
openSUSE 11.0 x86 Kernel 2.6.25.18-0.1-default
up 13:26, 3 users, load average: 0.11, 0.08, 0.10
GPU GeForce 6600 TE/6200 TE - Driver Version: 177.80

14

Thanx. Will try all those when (IF) I get the wired internet working again. Playing around with yast network management to see if I can fix it. Weird losing it after a reboot.

P.S. Cheque is in the mail.

15

This post you said:
> How can I have enabled animation effects and smooth video playback
> together?

First post you said:
> Visiontek Ati hd2600 512 MB video card
3GB ram (1 GB geil dual channel DDR 400, 2 GB Kingston DDR 400)

Now I say:

You will NEVER find enough software tweaks to get what you want with only half a
gig of video RAM to two monitors. It is just NOT possible to push enough bit
often enough through so little memory. Even if your graphics card is able to use
some of your 3 gig system memory–it is FAR too slow to be much help. Do the
math (and do not forget the speed of light)!

16

So basically you are saying that suse can’t utilize the hardware I have as well as windows xp can? That doesnt make sense. That hardware can run perfectly smooth on windows xp and play the latest games with high res while running on dual monitors. I find it hard to believe that suse can’t. It’s all a matter of correctly installing and configuring drivers and settings.That’s why I was asking in these forums…for help.

No offense but your post is off and not really useful.

Malcomlewis, I tried everything I found in here to get the wired internet back and it won’t work. Can’t understand why it would lose it all of a sudden. Trying ubuntu now, but no fear I will have suse as a dual boot to keep experimenting. I’ll see which one I can get working with everything and take it from there. You have been very helpful.

17

Hi
I don’t agree with this comment re video RAM :slight_smile:
My SLED 10 SP2 machine AMD 4400x2 with 2GB of RAM and running a Nvidia
8600GTS (256MB). I use two Viewsonic VX1940w’s running a total desktop
of 3360x1050, Xgl/compiz with all the effects available and never had
issues running videos, flash etc.

This machine only has 64MB of video RAM and runs fine :slight_smile:

–
Cheers Malcolm °¿° (Linux Counter #276890)
openSUSE 11.0 x86 Kernel 2.6.25.18-0.1-default
up 1 day 3:04, 1 user, load average: 0.12, 0.31, 0.33
GPU GeForce 6600 TE/6200 TE - Driver Version: 177.80

18

Hi
Ok, your dual booting, have you tried turning off the power to the
system and leaving for a short period of time? I believe there are some
power management issues with interfaces and windows OS changing
something… there have been some posts about this(?)

If you can disable any power features on the interface in windows, WOL
etc it may help. This can be done via device properties from memory.

–
Cheers Malcolm °¿° (Linux Counter #276890)
openSUSE 11.0 x86 Kernel 2.6.25.18-0.1-default
up 1 day 3:16, 1 user, load average: 0.61, 0.43, 0.35
GPU GeForce 6600 TE/6200 TE - Driver Version: 177.80

19

Yeah I found those posts…only thing is I have Suse only installed. No Windows. So that post didn’t really help or apply to my case. I did try everything though. Manual settings of network in yast, power off, everything. Now formatted and trying ubuntu but things are worse :P. Have to do more research and retry suse. Only problem…my girlfriend is complaining i am spending too much time with pc :stuck_out_tongue: Have to find time… I will reinstall, try what you mention and update you. Might even install an older X800 ati card I have for more compatibility.

20

Hi
It’s not the ethernet cable is it, have you tried running ethtool, also
if not try using traditional ifup method. Maybe even the BIOS
settings…

Now, you have to go and take your girlfriend out to lunch… no
computer for the rest of the day!

–
Cheers Malcolm °¿° (Linux Counter #276890)
openSUSE 11.0 x86 Kernel 2.6.25.18-0.1-default
up 1 day 5:04, 1 user, load average: 1.00, 0.71, 0.53
GPU GeForce 6600 TE/6200 TE - Driver Version: 177.80