EXA or XAA

[pavsid]

Hi,

I run Ubuntu Jaunty (9.04) with an NVIDIA geforce 8600GT graphics card. Sometimes response is a bit slow and i have heard that there are graphics engines called EXA or XAA and one is better than the other.

Is this right? And how do i find out which i am using and how do i switch to the better one? Which is the better one?

Many thanks

[Melcar]

Your xorg.0.log should specify what acceleration type is being used. EXA is faster.

[pavsid]

Your xorg.0.log should specify what acceleration type is being used. EXA is faster.

Well, did a search for both and nothing came up - where should i be looking?

Thanks

[Melcar]

Something like "Loading XAA" or "Acceleration in use XAA".

[RealNC]

Well, did a search for both and nothing came up - where should i be looking?

Thanks

/var/log/Xorg.0.log

You can search for EXA and XAA in it.

grep XAA /var/log/Xorg.0.log

and then:

grep EXA /var/log/Xorg.0.log

This will show the lines in the log containing the word "XAA" and "EXA". For me, it returns this:

"(II) fglrx(0): Using XFree86 Acceleration Architecture (XAA)"

[bridgman]

I thought I remembered someone saying that NVidia used a different acceleration architecture, ie neither XAA nor EXA.

[pavsid]

Something like "Loading XAA" or "Acceleration in use XAA".

A search for EXA or XAA shows nothing, neither did a search for 'loading' but 'acceleration' came up with the following:

Using the NVIDIA 2D acceleration architecture

i also tried adding - Option "AccMethod" "EXA" to the device section in xorg.conf but that doesn't seem to have had any effect.

Perhaps bridgman is right and NVIDIA use another method?

Not sure if it's related, but Eclipse is slow as well, as is OpenOffice - but is that due to issues with Java? Is there a fix for that?

Appreciate ur help folks

[tuke81]

Jep. If you use nvidia's propietary drivers you get nvidias own 2D mysterious acceleration method... What drivers are you using? For newer nvidia graphics cards the 2D performance have been poorly for a while, but there are work arounds for them. But if you have enough new driver allready, then them should be enabled by default.

Oh the wotkaround was just adding following options to device section:
Option "InitialPixmapPlacement" "2"
Option "GlyphCache" "1"

Oh and that openoffice thingy try this

http://trailfire.com/floweringmind/marks/114156

Hmm I just don't remember now was it faster with official sun-java or was it better to use that opensource version...

[deanjo]

Make sure you also have

Option "RenderAccel"

in your device section of xorg

[pavsid]

Thanks for all your tips guys, i added the following to my xorg.conf in the device section:

    
    Option 		"RenderAccel"
    Option          	"AccelMethod"    "EXA"
    Option 		"InitialPixmapPlacement" "2"
    Option 		"GlyphCache" "1"

..but on reboot my RAID drive wasn't mounted - any reason for this? i commented them out again and it mounted - weird no?

Gonna try uninstalling Sun's JRE and installing OpenJDK to see if that makes Eclipse run any faster/slower

Sorry, forgot to mention that i'm using proprietory graphics drivers as i had some problems with the open source ones - perhaps it's worth trying them out again and then enabling EXA?