Getting better OpenGL performance from Prosavage hardware

[Gullible Jones]

I have DRI running perfectly, with no problems whatsoever, on a machine with VIA Prosavage 8 (P4M266) onboard video hardware... And I still have ridiculously pokey graphics. To play BZFlag, I have to shrink the window drastically and turn off all texturing and effects. Tuxracer is almost unplayable, and even OpenGL screensavers are sloooowwwwww.

Now, to assure you that DRI works:

[proteus@localhost ~]$ glxinfo
name of display: :0.0
display: :0  screen: 0
direct rendering: Yes
server glx vendor string: SGI
.......

But I still get crappy performance from glxgears:

[proteus@localhost ~]$ glxgears
624 frames in 5.0 seconds = 124.800 FPS
762 frames in 5.0 seconds = 152.400 FPS
765 frames in 5.0 seconds = 153.000 FPS
772 frames in 5.0 seconds = 154.400 FPS
769 frames in 5.0 seconds = 153.800 FPS

That's with 24-bit color. I get a bit under twice as much with 16-bit color, but I don't like to use 16-bit, since it turns grey into pink; and even with 16-bit color, performance in OpenGL games is craporrific.

Now, I've heard that people using Intel's onboard graphics often get about 500 FPS with 24-bit color... Is there a way to get speeds anywhere near that with Prosavage, using the open-source drivers from the Mesa and DRI projects? Or does Intel just make better onboard graphics hardware?

Also, does anyone know how VIA's own Prosavage drivers (recently open-sourced and available for XFree86) fair, compared to DRI's drivers? And has anyone gotten them working on XOrg, or is that impossible?

[NeoSNightmarE]

Good question. One of my computers using Prosavage. So if anybody knows about this...I would be interested also.

I would like to say that although Tuxracer plays like crap on there, Frozen Bubbles is still awesome.