Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Nvidia-drivers + kernel 3.4

[Alan McKinnon <alan.mckinnon@gmail.com>]

On Wed, 20 Jun 2012 22:47:08 -0400
"Walter Dnes" <waltdnes@waltdnes.org> wrote:

> On Wed, Jun 20, 2012 at 07:04:13AM -0700, walt wrote
> 
> > I just did the same update.  I thought at first everything was okay,
> > then I ran glxgears, which runs at 1/5 normal speed.  Going back to
> > 295.59 fixed it.  Very puzzling, since there was nothing unusual in
> > Xorg.0.log.
> 
>   What does glxgears prove anyways?  With 295.59 I get 5300 fps, and
> 302.17 gives me 3 spf (yes... seconds per frame!!!).  But Youtube, etc
> seems to function the same.  So I'm wondering about the point of
> glxgears.
> 

glx gears shows you that stuff works or not.

So it's a quick go-no go test, just not useful for measuring anything.
It's designed for the scenario where you want to judge relatively how
well things are working today video-wise. Now, you could run a 3D
rendering app, or play a video, or something like that and see how it
performs compared to the same thing yesterday. But those apps all do
many other things as well as drive the video card so you don't really
know what is influencing the mix.

With glxgears, all it does is drive the video and draw spinning gears,
nothing else. So if version X-1 yesterday worked fine and the video was
smooth, but version X today plays very jerkily, and nothing else
changed, then you know your system does not like version X.

It's a perfectly valid test, just don't trust the numbers - trust what
your eyes tell you.



-- 
Alan McKinnnon
alan.mckinnon@gmail.com