Better graphics driver

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annafil

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Does anyone else notice how the gradients on the screen come in bands? This is because the default graphics driver on the AAO is a pretty old and bad one. It's lacking support for direct rendering (which means less CPU usage when watching videos, flash stuff and playing games), and it seems to drop to 16 bit colour.

I have found a better driver, I'm uploading it as an attachment to this post. Extract the .rpm file from inside the archive. After that, double clicking on the file should launch an install promt, so it's very easy.


Edit Aug 19th: There'sa better driver (found instructions courtesy of macles.blogspot.com), which will NOT break your webcam.

http://www.mediafire.com/?xudwd9sddhf

Turns out acer made some mistakes when applying their patches. This is still version 2.1.1, so stay tuned for 2.2.1 with proper EXA support. It's also still not the best colours the LCD can display, also better in 2.2.1, as soon as i package it.

UPDATE Sept 1: Instructions on getting version 2.2.1 working available here:
viewtopic.php?f=39&t=2481
 
I'm interested in upgrading my graphics driver, but don't really want to use the functionality of the webcam.

What speeds are you now getting if you run glxgears?
 
Hmm, actually, I'm pretty sure direct rendering was enabled with the old driver, though I did update lots of things pretty quickly, so I can't say I'm 100% certain. In any case, there's an updated version of the driver available via Yum, which (once Fedora gets its repositories back up) can be added with:

Code: 
sudo yum update xorg-x11-drv-i810
It will give you the most recent Fedora 8 driver, and didn't break the webcam on my One at least. The driver annafil's linked to isn't really necessary, all it adds beyond the official one is support for certain advanced features in Intel's newer X3000 line of graphics chipsets, which are of no use to the One's modest 950 chipset.
 
BlackLagoon said:
Hmm, actually, I'm pretty sure direct rendering was enabled with the old driver, though I did update lots of things pretty quickly, so I can't say I'm 100% certain. In any case, there's an updated version of the driver available via Yum, which (once Fedora gets its repositories back up) can be added with:

Code: 
sudo yum update xorg-x11-drv-i810
It will give you the most recent Fedora 8 driver, and didn't break the webcam on my One at least. The driver annafil's linked to isn't really necessary, all it adds beyond the official one is support for certain advanced features in Intel's newer X3000 line of graphics chipsets, which are of no use to the One's modest 950 chipset.
Click to expand...

That didnt work for me, anyone else get it to work?
 
martymcr said:
Doesn't work for me either - get message 'No Packages marked for update'
Click to expand...
Well, if you've already applied the update from the top of the thread, it won't work, since that one registers as a newer version than the one available through yum. You'd have to forcibly downgrade it to the Fedora version, and I'm not quite certain what the best way to do that would be... Maybe someone with more Fedora experience could chime in?

If you haven't... Well, maybe I'm misremembering. Could be that the One already came with the newest Fedora driver package. Or it could be that Acer updated it with the Live Update. In any case, if go to the terminal and run

Code: 
yum list installed | grep i810
and it lists version 2.1.1-7.fc8, you already have the most recent version, and you have nothing to worry about.
 
2.1.1-7 has broken xv support - its different from direct rendering (sorry my bad, mistyped). XV support is what makes sure watching videos doesn't eat CPU. It's a known bug from Fedora8, I know because I used Fedora 8 before.

For me this is not an option as I watch videos and use compositing extensively.

Neither is the suggestions on other threads about recompiling the original acer modified driver and enabling the dithering (dont have a link on hand but that's also an option for some). Because this still does not solve XV issues.

If you're fine with that, great, but if like me you want to get the most out of your machine, better drivers are a must.

BTW my output with glx gears has never reached beyond 420FPS with any driver - that doesn't seem right. Any one else have better results?

My most current suggestion is to use the 2.2.1 driver with some Ubuntu patches (best color setting and performance), but that requires compilation from source thus I didn't post it here yet.
 
PS.
Code: 
sudo yum update xorg-x11-drv-i810
doesn't work because acer's version of the driver is 2.1.1-8 as well which is higher than the default fedora driver.

Acer's 2.1.1-8 is different from the 2.1.1-8 that I've posted. And no, the one I posted doesn't just have x3100 updates.

I will post 2.2.1 if I can get it into an rpm - it's a much better driver.
 
annafil said:
2.1.1-7 has broken xv support - its different from direct rendering (sorry my bad, mistyped). XV support is what makes sure watching videos doesn't eat CPU. It's a known bug from Fedora8, I know because I used Fedora 8 before.
Click to expand...
Okay, that makes more sense. Though the blog I linked to seemed to indicate that this was mainly an issue with newer Intel chipsets...? xvinfo certainly recognizes "Intel (R) Textured Video" and "Intel (R) Video Overlay", and my One plays h.264 DVD rips in fullscreen without issues.

annafil said:
PS.
Code: 
sudo yum update xorg-x11-drv-i810
doesn't work because acer's version of the driver is 2.1.1-8 as well which is higher than the default fedora driver.
Click to expand...
Oh? Yum reports the one on my system as 2.1.1-7.
 
Quite annoying that the colour depth is only 16bit.

Hopefully you will find a solution. I don't want to use the webcam function.

Thank you so far!! :D
 
blacklagoon: i'm sure the blog you linked to is also right to an extent, i'm just reporting my experiences with all the various versions :)

In any case, the 2.2.1 version of the driver uses a newer rendering technology, EXA, which is the preffered method now because the one the 2.1.1 driver uses, XAA, is no longer supported and quite unstable. So it would be better to use the newer driver.

Problem is packaging a rpm for a different version is not very straightforward, so I'm still pouring over the documentation. Stay tuned!

zero: you could try the rpm I posted
 
Hey Guys, I was just reading over this thread and didn't realize that it was in 16bit resolution with the servers I had. Looks like I had 2.1.1

I added the development yum repos a few days ago. I just did a quick search and it let me update to 2.4.1!

So I'm running 2.4.1.
 
phil1: that means you're using some fedora10 packages already? i;m curious, did it break anything on your old system?
 
annafil said:
phil1: that means you're using some fedora10 packages already? i;m curious, did it break anything on your old system?
Click to expand...

Tried grabbing this driver, it pulls down several other packages for dependencies and basically breaks X pretty good, had to recover from my last image :(

Phil1: you sure you actually grabbed the driver and not just the -devel package?
 
Colour looks a lot better with version 2.11 and the webcam is still working! Thanks alot! 8-)
 
Gradients look much better and the (video)camera works in Messenger application, but the Webcam application cannot show live view, although you can play the captured videos just fine.
 
I installed all the deps associated with it. Does it automatically start running them on reboot? Nothing has broken yet.
 
Zero: glad it worked for you!

apaige: you must be an ubuntu user :) (which is fine) it's just that fedora has only one package for both intel drivers, and in fact the "i810" package ships with what you would call "intel" by default.
 
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