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LinuxDolt
Tux's lil' helper
Joined: 05 May 2003
Posts: 104
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 Posted: Mon Aug 04, 2003 5:21 pm Post subject: nvidia agp stuff... |
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i had been curious about tweaking my nvidia agp gpu, and found the following when cat'ing the nvidia stuff:
| Code: | # cat /proc/driver/nvidia/agp/card
# cat /proc/driver/nvidia/agp/host-bridge |
gets me the following, respective:
| Quote: | -snip-
Fast Writes: Supported
SBA: Supported
AGP Rates: 4x 2x 1x
-snip-
Fast Writes: Not Supported
SBA: Supported
AGP Rates: 4x 2x 1x
-snip- |
this basically means that my card is capable of Fast Writes, SBA, and AGP Rates up to 4x, but my host-bridge can't do the fast writes... when i cat status i get the following:
| Quote: | -snip-
AGP Rate: 4x
Fast Writes: Disabled
SBA: Disabled |
so basically, my AGP Rate is the max i can do, which is good, my Fast Writes are disabled, as my host-bridge is unable to handle it, and my SBA is disabled even tho i am fully capable of handling it...
therefore my question is: what is sba, is it something i should want, and how do i enable it if i want it? |
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NeddySeagoon
Administrator
Joined: 05 Jul 2003
Posts: 54317
Location: 56N 3W
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| Posted: Mon Aug 04, 2003 6:04 pm Post subject: |
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LinuxDolt,
SBA is side band addressing. It makes no difference to the performace of your box.
What is does is to vary the AGP clock frequency slightly to spread the EMC emissions over a broader band than they otherwise would be.
Regards,
NeddySeagoon
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NeddySeagoon
Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail. |
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floam
Veteran
Joined: 27 Oct 2002
Posts: 1067
Location: Vancouver, WA USA
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| Posted: Mon Aug 04, 2003 9:24 pm Post subject: |
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I doubt it will help performance much, but you can enable it by uncommenting the sba portion of /etc/modules.d/nvidia
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Think about your breathing.
http://floam.sh.nu |
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LinuxDolt
Tux's lil' helper
Joined: 05 May 2003
Posts: 104
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| Posted: Tue Aug 05, 2003 3:44 am Post subject: |
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| NeddySeagoon wrote: | | SBA is side band addressing. It makes no difference to the performace of your box. |
with the above info... as in knowing that SBA stands for side band addressing, i proceeded to do a google search on "side band addressing" and i got the following:
| 3dSpotlight.com wrote: | | Side band addressing. Side band addressing (SBA) enables AGP to use 8 extra (Side band) address lines in addition to the 32 main ones to transmit requests for data, which should further improve AGP performance. Those of you with PCI Graphics cards can ignore this option, or even Untick it altogether. When Grayed out SBA support will be automatically determined, though should you wish to force it be sure to Tick this option. NOTE On some systems this can cause stability problems. |
you had said:
| NeddySeagoon wrote: | | What is does is to vary the AGP clock frequency slightly to spread the EMC emissions over a broader band than they otherwise would be. |
so i basically get the idea that it doesn't really effect performance much, but it might be able to tweak a little more efficiency at the cost of possible instability...
i think i am gonna give it a shot and if i burn up see if gateway will send me a new one  (if nothing else, gateway is very good for giving away upgraded hardware if yours goes bad, even if the reason it went bad is your own tinkering...)
actually i have never really found my gateway provided hardware to have problems with stability, so i should be ok i would think... |
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Peaceable Frood
Guru
Joined: 06 Apr 2003
Posts: 338
Location: New Jersey, USA
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| Posted: Tue Aug 05, 2003 4:06 am Post subject: |
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SBA and Fastwrite don't really do much anymore, well maybe if your running a 2x AGP, but even then. All it really does is cause instablility on some systems.
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"Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we, they never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we." George W. Bush |
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LinuxDolt
Tux's lil' helper
Joined: 05 May 2003
Posts: 104
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| Posted: Tue Aug 05, 2003 8:29 am Post subject: |
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| i just enabled SBA in my nvidia module a few hours ago and i dunno if a benchmark would show it, but i FEEL snappier, and i have not noticed any bugginess, so i think i'm gonna keep it enabled... anyone have any other tips for improving the performance of an nVidia GeForce4 TI 4200 AGP? |
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