Most computers support AGP modes called "Fast Writes" and "Side Band Addressing".
i wont go into detail about what they are, its way too confusing.

but whats important about them is
1) they are dissabled by default .
2) dissableing them causes a noticable drop in 3d graphics performance.

The reason they do this, is because some chipsets (some versions of VIA for example) become very unstable and crash when FastWirites are enabled.

this is rare... but, but defaulting to off, willsave Nvidia alot of money on the customer support side of things.

But many of you Nvidia users out there have hardware which is Stable with FastWrites and SBA,,but you are not using it.

FIRSTLY... before you go on, make sure that you have a rescue disk, AND you know how to use it, just incase your system is one of the few unstable chipsets. if you are unlucky enough to have an unstable chipset, you will need to boot the rescue disk, and edit a config file to resore your system to default... but more on that later.

to find out if your system is capable of SBA and FastWrites
run the following 2 commands...



both commands MUST report that SBA and fastWrites are "Supported"

example output


if your Host Bridge reports "Not supported" then you may need to enables it in your system Bios,, or update your bios... Otherwise, your system isnt capable of this performance tweak.

Now.. lets have a look at the current status of SBA and Fast Writes..
run the code



here is some example output...


Your SBA might already be enabled... but your Fast Wirtes Will be Disabled.
(if they are enabled... then this tweak has already been carried, possably by your distro vendor)

So far.....
you have seen alot of code, lots of quotes and yet not actually done anything.
the tweak is surprisingly simple..

make a backup of the file "/etc/modules.d/nvidia"


now open up the file /etc/modules.d/nvidia and add these lines.



now reboot.

if your computer starts hard crashing shortly after the graphical user interface starts up, then boot your rescue disk, delete the file /etc/modules.d/nvidia and replace with the backup.

after a sucessfull rebott, check to see if FastWirtes was correctly enabled. by having anouther look at the following output...


now run your fave game

on my AMD64 3400+ and GeForce FX 5700LE this cuased a coonsiderable increace in performance on Ut2004 and other 1s person shooters.

Nice work man - I'm off to buy a NVidia card after reading this

I wouldn't be so sure on your place. Some Linux systems eg. Mandrake/Mandriva does not support Nvidia. I don't mean it doesn't at all, but installing the correct (any) drivers is very difficult and might still not work.

However, there are safe Linux operating systems for use: I mean here Slackware and Debian. Drivers work on them in supreme way ( though the newest drivers were too buggy it's prefered to install older ones ).

It's also good to read problems about nvidia drivers on linuxquestions.org

wish ya good experience with nvidia cards !!!

Heyy .. nice info on nvidia cards .. i have a NVIDIA GeForce4 MX 440 with AGP 8x .. would my card be supported with this tweak ? ..

Oh and u mentioned that we should run the command cat /proc/driver/nvidia/agp/host-bridge .. could u please tell us where .. as in for n00bs like me .. is it in the command promp or somewhere else ?

lastly .. u said .. " make a backup of the file "/etc/modules.d/nvidia " where or what is this etc, mv, touch .. are these commands or just folders ? i searched but didnt find em ..

Plz do update us on this ..

Thankx for the tweak again .. guess nvidia users would finally get some real work out of their cards ...

Cheers

You are n00b....big n00b. No offense.

Every Linux is based on command prompt ! You can't use Linux without using command prompt ( command prompt <=> bash <==> shell <=> Bourne again shell ). 90% things which you perform, you do right in the command prompt.


Where the command prompt is? Press ctrl+alt+F2 and you'll see.
Where to learn how to use it? read abs.

Man i would love to do this, is there anyway to do the same thing, or something similar in Windows. I have a Nvidia Geforce 6800 and its maxed out on most games, but some like Doom3 still are totally maxed. I would love to get more out of my card!

Hey - this is some cool info! Thanks!! I'll keep in mind to do this thing after I'm through defragging my hard drive. It's 8% after an hour or so in SAFE MODE. I don't know if that's fast or slow.

I have a GeForce FX 5700 and I think it will lag like hell in Doom 3 or other grpahic / memory intense games. I don't really know... like I said: my computer needs medical attention

Thanks anyway

It sounds like the defraggin is a little slow haha unless you just gotta crapload of stuff on there. Mine took about 20 minutes to defrag but it has very little on it. Now my external hard drive on the other hand, that one will take a long time. I started to defrag it, but after about 3 hours it wasnt even half way done.

20 minutes?!?!! What the heck? Okay then... there is something seriously wrong with my computer!!

Mine took at least 6 hours, I think, even on Safe Mode.

I need help. Like dhanesh says, I don't know where to put this code in. I've tried command prompt but it doesn't work.

I need help!!

The nVidia OpenGL GLX binaries contain some closed source texture compression algorithms.
Because of this, the nVidia driver cannot be distributed WITH your installation cd's.

However, All linux distro's will work with nVidia Graphics cards 100% when you download the driver from nVidia.com.

to dhanesh:
Read the first post, there is a guide on how to detect if your card supports FastWtires and Side Band Addressing.

However from your confusion with the basic UNIX filesystems and commands, i would recomend you bcome more comfortable in linux befiore atempting this tweak.

If you have one of the unstable VIA chipsets, you will need to know how to use a little command line to get your system running in graphical mode again.

Enjoy.