MTRR failure revisited (nVidia) 8-STABLE/RELEASE

[Marius Nünnerich]

On Sat, Dec 12, 2009 at 12:47, Chris H <chris#@1command.com> wrote:
> Greetings,
>  I brought this same error to the list back in May 2009.
> Under: failed to set mtrr: invalid argument.
> Well, I'm back using the same card:
> GeForce4 MX 440-SE - VideoRam 65536 - BusID PCI:1:3:0.
> The driver is different, I'm using: nvidia-driver-96.43.13 out of ports on a
> custom 8-STABLE kernel. Xorg starts up, and produces a desktop. But it's
> "dog slow", and the nvidia driver emits the following error:
> NVIDIA: failed to set MTRR 0xf0000000, 0M (write-combining)
> several times. I understand John Baldwin provided some "invaluable" help some
> time ago: http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-hackers/2006-June/016995.html
> and I was wondering if anyone has gained any further "insight" with these cards,
> and how to better "interface" them in BSD. Last I spoke on the topic, I was
> informed that the memory was basically "untouchable" - or perhaps in other words;
> can't be manipulated. Has this changed? Surely someone else has had to deal with
> this besides me. It seems crazy to spend a "boat load" of $$ on these high
> performers, and not be able to use them on a high performing OS - no? :)
> Sure, the one I'm working with now is "legacy". But I have 3 near new, top of
> their line cards, and thus far it appears that if I ever hope to use them, I'll
> be forced to... hack, choke.. spin up a WIN CD. :(
>
> Thank you for all your time, consideration, and insight.

FreeBSD as of 8.0-RELEASE supports PAT which obsoletes MTRR. It was a
requirement for the nvidia amd64 blob. So in the future it should all
work fine if you have at least a card which is supported by the newest
nvidia driver.