Removal of XAA acceleration in X.org, and older NVIDIA GeForce

[Mark Martinec]

Tijl Coosemans wrote:

> This card is still supported by x11/nvidia-driver-304

Good suggestion! It does seem to draw screen and scroll
much faster than NV (although it seems to stall from time
to time (like unresponsive mouse) on a busy host).
Will need to test more thoroughly tomorrow when poudriere
builds will be over. Thanks!

   Mark


2014-12-22 20:18, je Tijl Coosemans napisal
> <Mark.Martinec+freebsd at ijs.si> wrote:
>> /usr/ports/UPDATING:
>>> 20141219:
>>>  AFFECTS: users of x11/xorg and all xorg ports
>>>  AUTHOR: dumbbell at FreeBSD.org
>>>  The X.Org server (x11-servers/xorg-server) is updated to 1.14.
>> 
>> http://blogs.freebsdish.org/graphics/2014/11/19/xserver-1-14-update-ready/
>>> Changes since xserver 1.12
>>>   The most visible change is the removal of XAA. This is a 2D
>>> acceleration
>>> method which was deprecated some time ago, in favor of EXA or
>>> Intel-specific’s
>>> UXA or SNA. For the end user, this means that some drivers
>>> (xf86-video-*)
>>> are not supported anymore, mostly for older GPUs according to 
>>> Phoronix.
>>> If you encounter this case, please let us know.
>> 
>> Ouch!!! Upgrading X -related ports went with no problems (FreeBSD 
>> 10.1),
>> but I didn't realize the outcome would be so terrible. Scrolling or
>> refreshing a full-screen page in a web browser now feels like in the
>> good old days of a 19200 bps line and a glass terminal. Even scrolling
>> or paging through plain text with 'less' or editor on a KDE konsole
>> or xterm feels sluggish. Certainly the size of the display does not
>> help in this regards (2560x1600).
>> 
>> The Xorg.0.log reports:
>>    NV: Found NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT at 02 at 00:00:0
>> 
>> Now I fear that upgrading ports on my other workstation
>> (GeForce 7600 GS) would lead to similar results.
>> 
>> I know these graphics boards are not the latest of breed
>> (the CPU and mb are still fairly decent). They were chosen for being
>> fan-less, and coping sufficiently well with 2D and text even on
>> largish displays.
>> 
>> So is my only choice now replacing graphics with heat- and noise-
>> sources I don't really need, or being stuck with frozen ports?
>> I wonder if I'm the only one in this situation.