NVIDIA Lockup Tip
September 30th, 2001 by CrusaderBernhard Kuhn has sent in an additional workaround fora lockup issue with NVIDIA’s Linux driverswhich occurs under heavy system load:
http://www.linuxgames.com/articles/morenvidiatips-20010930.txt
UPDATE: A response from NVIDIA on this issue can be found in the comments below.
November 30th, -0001 at 12:00 am
I’ve had problems with 3 different nvidia systems completely locking up, disabling agp fixed it in every case. I may of been able to just set it to AGP 1X but I don’t really care about 3d performance on these systems so I just disabled it. Each system used to lockup about once a day from this, now they never crash.
Not sure if this is the same issue on the linuxgames post but it might be.
November 30th, -0001 at 12:00 am
FYI: i received the following mail from nvidia:
————–
The symptoms you are describing are that of a system problem
such as overclocked hardware, insufficient cooling or, most likely,
broken AGP. They are not NVIDIA driver problems. Our QA department
runs OpenGL stress tests for days straight for all our releases
on many different systems. We do not see the problems you are
describing.
Those are not spinlocks, those are register polls. Your
patch has effectively disabled synchronization between 2D and 3D
pipelines. On a functioning system this will lead to screen corruption
during moves of 3D windows. It can cause hardlocks when switching
VTs or quiting X while 3D apps are running. These polls will
only fail if parts of the hardware are hosed.
If you can’t live through something like:
x11perf -shmput500 -rop GXxor
you most likely have broken AGP support. If you are using
AGP GART please try NVIDIA’s GART instead. Also, I suspect
that disabling AGP would make your problems go away.
November 30th, -0001 at 12:00 am
Most of you might need a better power supply. Thats most overlooked component, when computer fails. AMD chips with Linux optimizations on can spike AMP load on power supply.
If it does not keep up, then you can get a lockup.
Strange, I had problems with Nvidia drivers before, but now its all rock solid, I run my system 24 hrs a day. I dustclean stuff every 2 months. I use A7V + Enermax 350W + GeForce Deluxe.
November 30th, -0001 at 12:00 am
I have a VIA MVP-3 Board and a TNT. The System locks up some minutes after power on but after the second reboot or so it works for the whole day.
Disabling AGP does not help but the System works reliably with the XFree86 “nv”-Driver even under heavy load.
Has anybody tried these “fixes” yet and did they help?
November 30th, -0001 at 12:00 am
Wow,
I NEVER lockup with the Nvidia drivers using an old Abit BH6 motherboard and P3-650. Problem is, I have a Gigabyte 7DX motherboard siting right nere that I was about to use as an upgrade to a 1.4 gig Athlon. I dont want to upgrade if I will sacrifice stability. What do yall think? I havent bought a processor yet. Should I buy the 1.2 gig at 200 mhz instead of the 1.4 at 266? I need stability!
–Dweebs
November 30th, -0001 at 12:00 am
I don’t get lockups, but I just wanted to say I love the Nvidia drivers. It was hell with my old ATI card. I just wish there was a better way to configure Nvidia(such as the cursor shadow)….even with RPMs you have to ‘Load “GLX”‘ and “nv”->”nvidia” Why can’t a script do this automatically?
November 30th, -0001 at 12:00 am
Folks,
Hiya. My nvidia card (Hercules Prophet GeForce 2 GTS) doesn’t lock up. What it DOES do is drop me out to the desktop (KDE) when playing Heavy Gear 2 and going from 3d (gameplay) to 2d (mission debrief, etc.). It does this consistently. This means that I can never move forward in missions.
Lessee, I’m running RedHat 7.1 with the latest (as of a week ago) nvidia hardware drivers. This is on an 850 MHz Athlon (slot A), 512 Mb of RAM, an ASUS K7V mobo, and a SoundBlaster Live! 5.1.
Any help would be appreciated. Thanks!
November 30th, -0001 at 12:00 am
I have had some lockup experiences with my Geforce 2 and AMD 761 mobo. First with Mandrake 8.1 and the new nvidia drivers. Once they were installed I would experiece random lockups during normal use and instant lockups in anything 3d related.
After switching back to Redhat 7.1 and upgrading to the 2.4.10 kernel, I still had random lockups in 2d apps and instant lockups with 3d apps. Everything ran fine (minus 3d support) with the XF86 “nv” driver in both cases.
Even though Nvidia recommends using the NVAGP driver, for the heck of it I tried using the AGPGART driver. Since that change the lockups are gone and I can play Unreal Tournament without any problems. Try putting:
Option “NvAgp” “2″
in your XF86Config-4 file under the device section. This forces it to use the AGPGART instead of the NVAGP driver. Better than disabling AGP alltogether if it works for you.
November 30th, -0001 at 12:00 am
I’ve got an AMD 1.3, Abit-KT7A, Leadtek Geforce 2 Pro 64meg running the NVIDIA drivers off of their site, and I have had NO stability issues what-so-ever with 2D/3D under linux in X nor in any game =P
Just thought I’d put my two cents in.