nvidia X driver and OpenGL performance problem

[Hans Nieser]

Hi list,

Recently I've been trying out games such as the Doom 3 demo (Linux 
binaries), Quake 2, Quake 3 Demo (Linux binaries) and the new Quake 4 port 
(also Linux binaries) under FreeBSD, and although they run without any 
errors or visual oddities, the performance has been somewhat 
dissappointing - they all run about 3 to 4 times slower than they do on 
Windows and are hardly playable (except for Quake 3 / 2, but those 
obviously require much less of the video hardware). This seems to be the 
case with all OpenGL games / apps. glxgears with its default settings 
(that is, I just typed 'glxgears' with no options) renders about 7200 FPS 
on average.

I know I shouldn't expect things to run perfectly, especially since most 
of these games are Linux binaries, but still, most people I've asked tell 
me it should be able to run faster, and in some cases even outperform 
Windows. Yet I can't figure out what is making these games run so slow for 
me. I'm posting this here hoping someone can assist me, maybe there's some 
magical tweak I can try or something I misconfigured. Or perhaps it is 
simply not possible, but that would at least give me closure ;)

I have the following hardware:

Mobo:   ASUS A8N-SLI Deluxe (BIOS 1015)
CPU:    AMD Athlon64 3500+
Memory: 2x512 PC3200 DDR RAM, running at 400MHz in Dual Channel
Video:  Geforce 6800GT PCI-Express (non-SLI, just one)
Sound:  SoundBlaster Audigy 2 ZS

I run 6.0-RELEASE with the following versions of related ports (all 
up-to-date as I type this):

dri-6.2.1,2
gnome2-2.12.1
linux-XFree86-libs-4.3.99.902_4
linux-doom3-demo-1.1.1286
linux-quake3-demo-1.11.6_4
linux-quake4-1.0.5,1
linux-sdl-1.2.5_2
linux_base-8-8.0_9
linux_dri-4.4.0
nvidia-driver-1.0.7676_1
nvidia-settings-1.0_6
quake2lnx-0.16.2_1
svgalib-1.4.3_5
xorg-6.8.2

I have logs of Doom 3 / Quake 4 / Xorg startup, installed ports, my 
xorg.conf, an error I get when launching Doom3/Quake (ttyv0.txt), and my 
kernel config (MYKERNEL) attached. As far as I can tell I have installed 
everything according to the handbook chapter on X and read the README for 
the nvidia FreeBSD driver (although I skipped most steps relating to AGP 
since I have a PCI Express card).

PS: I have the logs/configs mirrored at http://nieser.net/files/xorg/1/ 
incase they are stripped off by the maillinglist.

PS2: My xorg.conf contains two lines RenderAccel / AllowGLXWithComposite 
which I believe are experimental, but I had the same issues before I added 
these.