7. Tweaking the driver


Some information about your nvidia driver is provided by the /proc file system.
To see information about Fast Writes SBA and AGP mode type
cat /proc/driver/nvidia/agp/card and
cat /proc/driver/nvidia/agp/host-bridge
To enable FW or SBA it must be listed as "Supported" in for both the card and the host-bridge.
"Not Supported" means, that you can not use these features. "Disabled" means, you may be able to use them, but further conditions need to be fullfilled. Your HostBridge needs to support FastWrites and it has to be enabled in your system BIOS. But the driver may still decide not to use it for a more stable system.

Edit the file "/etc/modules.conf". At the end of the section concerning the nvidia driver place the following line to enable FastWrites, SBA and AGP 8x support:

options nvidia NVreg_EnableAGPSBA=1 NVreg_EnableAGPFW=1 NVreg_ReqAGPRate=8

or for SBA and FW support only:

options nvidia NVreg_EnableAGPSBA=1 NVreg_EnableAGPFW=1

These lines may also be placed in other files depending on your distribution and kernel version. For example in /etc/modprobe.conf if you are using kernel series 2.6. Always make sure the line is placed behind the other nvidia driver entries.

For further documentation refer to the sources given below or to the documentation coming with the driver. Its usually sored somewhere in /usr/doc or /usr/share/doc.

alias /dev/nvidia* nvidia
alias char-major-195 nvidia

### update-modules: start processing /etc/modutils/nvidia
alias /dev/nvidia* nvidia
alias char-major-195 nvidia