choosing the proper graphics driver

[srikanth_dhondi]

I have problem using some visualization software. Someone suggested that it might be because I don't have a proper graphics driver.

lspci | grep VGA
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Mobile GM965/GL960 Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 0c)

So it's a intel graphics card.

To know which graphics driver is installed I did

lsmod | grep drm
drm 82452 3 i915
agpgart 34760 3 drm,intel_agp

I interpret that as Intel 915 graphics driver or something.

Another method

System > Administration > Hardware Drivers

which says "No proprietary drivers are in use on this system".

What do I make out of these two outcomes? Which driver I am using? How do I know it is the best choice?

Any reps will be highly appreciated.

[bigtomrodney]

It sounds like your driver is already installed, which is as expected. You should only need to use Hardware Drivers if you are using proprietary drivers that can't be shipped on the install disc. Sounds like you're good to go!

[coopstah13]

you can tell if you have 3d acceleration enabled by running the command

glxinfo | grep -i direct

if it returns with yes, then that means the correct driver is in use for your system, if that command isn't available, you will need to install the package mesa-utils

[D-cat]

glxgears is also a quick demo that'll give you a good idea if 3D acceleration is working. The gears should run smooth and you should have a framerate of no less than several hundred per second (thousand(s) preferred).

If 3D acc. is not enabled, the gears' motion may be choppy and your framerate will be less than 200, maybe even single or double digits, depending on your processor and how many tasks you have running.

[srikanth_dhondi]

Thank you all for your suggestions. This forum has been so far the most friendliest forum I have ever been.

@coopstah13:

glxinfo | grep -i direct
direct rendering: Yes

@D-cat: glx gives values in the range as you have shown in the figure.

I guess the problem is something else. I would just briefly describe it here and would like to hear what you think of it.

I use VMD (Visual Molecular Dynamics), a package to view molecular dynamics simulations. I am using it to visualize 2D simulations where I want to render the particles as points. There are two problems here

i) When I first load the particles, some of them don't appear on the screen.
ii) As the size of the points increased they should become circular, in my they appear to be rectangular.

Previously on my old desktop I never had these problems. To your convenience I am attaching the snapshots of situations i & ii.

Waiting for some replies.

[D-cat]

Accelerated graphics is kind of buggy with Intel chips, that might be your issue. Do you know what you had for a card on the old desktop?

You may be served well by upgrading to a nVidia card, though you may have to do some research to find out what works in your motherboard.

[r3dm4n]

Yeah I have an Intel GMA950 chipset on my laptop and any type of semi-intensive graphics (either opengl or d3d) is either buggy or slow.

Supposedly, Intel will be releasing improved proprietary drivers sometime soon - beware of rumors though. But, yes, I second the advice to get an affordable NVidia card if possible.

* For some reason I remember getting fairly good performance running Fedora 10... not sure if they use different drivers (probably not, I know) or what.

[coopstah13]

glxgears is not a great indicator for 3d, as it is CPU based for its framerate, this is why i suggest checking to make sure direct rendering is enabled

[D-cat]

I don't disagree. They work good together though. Just because it's on doesn't mean it's working.

That's another point I forgot to mention. See if you can set your inital window size to 1024x768 or less, and don't resize the window after rendering has started. I have found in some cases that large or resized windows will cause glx to drop to software rendering.