ATI R200 (Radeon 9200) with Ubuntu 8.10: Painfully slow!

[projectwoofer]

Hello to everyone on the forum!

I'm really new here, I have installed Ubuntu 8.10 on two machines, a laptop with NVidia GeForce Go6400 that works like a charm, and an older desktop with an ATI Radeon 9200. Although the 9200 works really well with Windows XP (including the integrated TV-out), I seem to have problems in Ubuntu.

The card seems to be properly detected and it supports 3D acceleration but it is too slow (especially with the glxgears test where it seems to obtain about only 600 fps, and scrolling in Mozilla which is VERY slow).

Watching movies doesn't seem to be a big problem but I would really use any advice on this!

The drivers I use are the Open-Source bundled with Ubuntu. I tried to install the proprietary ATI drivers with no luck because the Catalyst 8.12 doesn't support my card and the old ATI drivers that support it, don't seem to be compatible with the version of Xorg that comes with Ubuntu 8.10...

Are there any tweaks I could try? Or other drivers (or driver version I should try....even experimental)...or I should just buy an NVidia card??

Any help will be appreciated!

Thanks a lot...

[Kano]

Replace card, maybe add an old nvidia GF6 or GF7 - do not buy a new card for an old system as you can not reuse AGP cards anyway.

[projectwoofer]

I was afraid about this, considering that the old PC has only AGP 1x and 2x support, the best NVidia card I found to be compatible, is the GeForce FX 5600 with 256MB of memory...however, I'd really like to first try every chance I've got with the ATI before spending more money on such an old machine...

[bridgman]

If you don't have EXA acceleration enabled, turn it on in the conf file. I think that should help even with an older card like the r200.

[sc3252]

What drivers are you using? Since you should be using the radeon driver, which are the drivers that support the r200 based cards. If you could post your xorg.conf file, which is located in /etc/X11/xorg.conf, we will be able to tell which driver you are using.

:edit
"The card seems to be properly detected and it supports 3D acceleration but it is too slow (especially with the glxgears test where it seems to obtain about only 600 fps, and scrolling in Mozilla which is VERY slow)."
on second thought it could be that your old computer is just to old. Glxgears isnt a good indicator other then checking for working 3d acceleration, but seeing 600 makes me belive you have a very old cpu. Can you post the rest of your system specs for both machines?

[DanL]

glxgears isn't a good indicator other then checking for working 3d acceleration, but seeing 600 makes me believe you have a very old cpu

glxgears is not a CPU benchmark either (even if Mesa is using the software rasterizer). I only get ~50fps with my 780G system (Athlon X2 2.5 GHz, 4GB DDR2-800)

[RealNC]

I was afraid about this, considering that the old PC has only AGP 1x and 2x support, the best NVidia card I found to be compatible, is the GeForce FX 5600 with 256MB of memory...

You should be able to run a GeForce 6600GT/6800 or Radeon X700/800 in AGP 2x.

For the current 9200, for the "radeon" driver, make sure you have EXA anabled in the card's "Device" section:

Option "AccelMethod" "EXA"

[projectwoofer]

Thanx for all the replies!
Actually I did switch to "EXA" and it is a lot better now! Not perfect, but it's really ok...!