Poor Performance SIS Graphics Card...[SOLVED}

[Gunmetal_Ghoul]

I recently built an older ASUS Terminator barebones desktop on the cheap and happily installed Linux Mint on it. I began to notice that Compiz would not activate @ all and whenever I played a youtube video or ran several apps at once my 2.6 GHZ CPU spiked up between 95%-100% and everything slowed down significantly. I tested it further by running a few games (which I usually enjoy without a hitch) and on each one the slowdown is horrendous! My stock EEE PC runs much faster than my desktop and I still could not figure out why. I thought that when I had built it the IDE ribbon cables could have been blocking the airflow of the CPU fan, so I bought a braided cable and installed that. That showed no improvements. I also reapplied the thermal grease with no success. I then tried changing the video driver, switching to a blurry color depth on xorg, changing out the RAM, tweaking the BIOS and trying out different distros with no success only to find out that this could be out of my hands to fix. I discovered that the makers of my onboard graphics card, an SIS M650, does not provide any supported 3D acceleration for the Linux community and probably not having support for 3D acceleration points out to these CPU spikes I've been having. This sucks! What should I do to keep the CPU from spiking so often?

[lagagnon]

Not a very good graphics chip I'm afraid to say. Have you read these?:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php? ... ost2429328

[DrHu]

This sucks! What should I do to keep the CPU from spiking so often?

You have already changed some small (but costly parts/components) ide cables, and thermal grease

http://reviews.cnet.com/barebones-pcs/a ... 00225.html
http://www.digitalschool.net/edu/502_513/asus.html
I don't know the exact Asus terminator model you have, but doesn't look good; small case, small power supply
If you want to improve the power bus operation, if that is really the issue, get a new power supply on sale, that will fit that case, or get a new case with more room and an included power supply or separate case with your own choice of power supply
--you have probably spent around 50.00 or less depends where you buy (retail) for the cables or thermal grease; but that has likely been a waste of money and time, since the problem is more the mainboard and its integrated graphics chip

Turn of all compiz setting effects
Mint menu>control center>Look & Feel>Appearance>Visual TAB [x] None

[Gunmetal_Ghoul]

I'm out of luck. This problem has been unresolved by the Linux community for years and it doesn't look like it would be anytime soon. What can I do now...?

[DrHu]

I'm out of luck. This problem has been unresolved by the Linux community for years and it doesn't look like it would be anytime soon. What can I do now...?

Is that a joke or a RANT
--you were given suggestions already..

To put it plainly..
Inferior equipment means inferior results

[lagagnon]

Plug in a better video card? You could find a nice second hand FX-5200 for perhaps $10-$15.

[Gunmetal_Ghoul]

Well, I would have to look @ this objectively and learn to live w/ an inferior piece of hardware or get something else. This video performance is the only performance problem thing that's keeping me from being a happy Linux user on this computer, and the suggestion for a video card upgrade seems like a good one. What sort of performance improvements would I see immediately by plugging in a video card and what would I need to set up after installing it into the PCI slot? I'm just looking for a solution, and one that would finally resolve this problem w/o changing out the hardware I already invested my time, money and effort into....

[DrHu]

Plug in a better video card? You could find a nice second hand FX-5200 for perhaps $10-$15. ;-)

Exactly, there are plenty of low-priced (cheap) Nvidia based cards available from various manufacturers from well known ones like Asus or BFG to others..

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison ... sing_units
--read some data, determine what you want and pick one based on your price preference.

Well, I would have to look @ this objectively and learn to live w/ an inferior piece of hardware or get something else. This video performance is the only performance problem thing that's keeping me from being a happy Linux user on this computer, and the suggestion for a video card upgrade seems like a good one. What sort of performance improvements would I see immediately by plugging in a video card

...learn to live w/ an inferior piece of hardware or get something else
I would think so.

What sort of performance improvements would I see immediately..
Obviously much more than you are getting from the SIS card.
But, perhaps that will also depend on what else you do

In terminal, check

• inxi -F
  --short list of all the hardware
  free
  --how much RAM is there

[Gunmetal_Ghoul]

I found this one to be good for my budget and the specs I would like, but it's not an Nvidia card:

http://cgi.ebay.com/NEW-AGP-Ati-Radeon- ... 286.c0.m14

Are ATI cards any good, and could there be any problems between that 8X card and my 4X AGP motherboard? I googled how this card works under Linux and it did not seem to be supported that well, but there were workarounds that yielded pleasing results. Besides the card that lagagnon suggested, what other well-supported video cards could be found for less than $30?

[Gunmetal_Ghoul]

It turns out that my motherboard has only one PCI slot that is already used by my wireless card and I would need to get an AGP graphics card. I'm still looking into a decently supported video card for less than $30. The ATI Radeon 9200 looks like it has promising specs for $23 new on ebay, but I'm a little unsure about how well it is supported. I also saw a refurbished Nvidia FX-5200 for $20, but 128MB might probably be too slow for a comfortable 3D experience w/ Compiz. Are there any cards you could point me out to?

[terrorblader]

Get the FX5200 , the performance in compiz is ok and Nvidia are well supported on Linux.

[Gunmetal_Ghoul]

So the ATI Radeon 9200 doesn't seem to stack up all that well support wise compared to the Nvidia FX-5200? I kinda had my heart set on the ATI card because of the specs/price looked good, but if it's more poorly supported I should just go ahead and go for the Nvidia. Could I still make the ATI Radeon card work properly, though?

[terrorblader]

I tried getting an ATI X1550 to work in Gloria and after a few hours I managed to get compiz working on it,but the framerates were poor.On my Nvidia 6600 with 128 Mb of RAM Compiz works great (and the PC only has 512 Mb of RAM),so I'd suggest the Nvidia one.

[Gunmetal_Ghoul]

I double checked to make sure if I have an AGP slot (I do), but how can I be sure if it would be compatible w/ my motherboard? I may need to double check the notches to see if it would fit once it comes in....

[terrorblader]

The AGP slot is usually coloured in brown and it is shorter (smaller) than the PCI ones.If you have that in there then it will fit.Just remember to enter BIOS and make AGP the primary video before putting the card inside.

Good Luck!

[Gunmetal_Ghoul]

I got it inside just fine (the metal is really rusty though--how do you fix that?), but when I installed the recommended driver and rebooted all I got was a blank screen. I googled it and quickly became acquainted w/ the dreaded "Black Screen of Death". Anyone else had trouble w/ this?

[richyrich]

at the boot screen, drop down to Recovery Mode, and choose Fix X . . . it's worked for others, and easy to try . .

[Gunmetal_Ghoul]

I tried using to fix the xserver in recovery mode but after I resumed a normal boot all it did was disable the driver. Maybe I should reconfigure the configuration file or something like that I read from Google?

[Gunmetal_Ghoul]

Any help out there? The furthest progress I got was seeing the Nvidia splash screen just before the screen goes blank....

[terrorblader]

go into recovery mode and run xfix,then resume boot,go here , download the driver , open up a terminal :

Code: Select all

sudo /etc/init.d/gdm stop
cd into the folder where you saved the driver
sudo sh nvidia-*

and follow the instructions there.If it asks for building a module for the kernel type y and [ENTER].

Code: Select all

sudo /etc/init.d/gdm start

And you should have full 3D acceleration.