Good day Thanks for your response. Suspecting that there could be a problem with the card itself (rather inconveniently coincidental, since I just bought a new mobo, psu and ram after a power surge (as far as I can ascertain) killed my PSU and I wasn't sure exactly what was dead, and just wanted to cover my bases; also, as noted in the OP, I reloaded, going from 32bit Jaunty to 64bit -- that seemed like the most likely culprit since 2D was working fine and 3D worked for a while), I bought an XFX GTX260 -- I've wanted to upgrade for the last year or so anyways... No problems now. (: I still find it odd that 2D worked flawlessly and 3D worked for a short amount of time -- about 5 seconds for glxgears and anywhere from 5 minutes to a few hours for GL screensavers... But perhaps there was a circuit in the "3D parts" (I'm no electronic engineer!) which was damaged and just needed to warm up a little through usage to become blatantly broken. I'm going to give the card to someone else to test -- will report back. If the card works fine for someone else, then I really don't know how how to proceed with debugging this. I would have to assume that if the card isn't faulty elsewhere, then someone else may encounter the same issue. I'm still annoyed by the "nvidia flicker" on my laptop -- but apparently that's a long-standing issue (allegedly the quick black flicker is from the onboard gpu changing power usage / clock levels). To answer all posed questions (because it would be rude not to (: ). Some answers are from memory, so please bear with me: 1) glxinfo showed the usual large amount of stuff -- with the gl extensions supplied by NVIDIA 2) Yes, the NVIDIA closed driver was not only installed, but in use -- lsmod confirmed this (I also started to wonder...) 3) I did have compiz-fusion enabled. Never had the problem before, but I do believe I tried disabling compiz and still found simple apps like glxgears to cause lockup. See the wierdness? Compiz-fusion worked fine (with all its GL interaction), but something with a little more demand wreaked havoc) 4) Yes, totally up-to-date. Compulsively so (: -d <div class="gmail_quote">On Wed, Jun 10, 2009 at 12:41 AM, Dane Mutters <<a href="mailto:dmutters@gmail.com">dmutters@gmail.com</a>> wrote: <blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;"><div><div></div><div class="h5">On Mon, 2009-05-25 at 07:59 +0200, Davyd McColl wrote: > Good day > > I've used Ubuntu for quite some time (years), following upgrade cycles > on 32-bit and staying clear of 64-bit just because a lot of people > have reported having a hard time of it. I recently installed 64-bit > Jaunty on my laptop (HP Pavillion dv9352 with NVIDIA 7600 go graphics) > and it worked so swimmingly that I decided to finally do a clean > 64-bit install on my desktop instead of just dist-upgrade'ing to > Jaunty as I would have normally done. > > Things have been good for a while -- but the problems have started as > soon as I've required 3D applications to work. It started when I > switched from "Blank Screen" to the "BlinkBox" screensaver. I came > back to my machine to find it locked up after a while. This process > was repeatable. Suspecting gnome-screensaver, I uninstalled and > installed xscreensaver instead -- no change. And other 3D screensavers > (like Bouncing Cow) cause the same issue. > > When I was playin Diablo II via WINE last night, I got a lockup after > about 20 min play. All system temps are well within normal operating > ranges -- the hardware doesn't seem to be the problem. <ALT>-<SYSRQ> > keys still work, so the kernel is still alive. Suspecting graphics, > I've downgraded from the 180 driver to the 173 -- same effect. The > older 96 (iirc) driver doesn't seem to allow compiz, but does seem to > suck just as much -- glxgears brought the system to a standstill, with > occassional response from the mouse cursor -- but nothing else. I must > also note here that glxgears quite reliably reproduces the system > lockup for the 173 and 180 drivers. > > My next recourse is to try the beta (185) drivers from NVIDIA. I would > have already but the download I left going overnight apparently broke > somehow: the installer is complaining about a checksum mismatch -- so > I'm re-downloading. > > What I want to know is: is this common for 64-bit systems (to have > dodgy proprietary (ie, NVIDIA / ATI) drivers)? I've seen a lot of > posts online about similar issues but they range right from Warty days > -- has this always been an issue? Should I have rather just stuck with > 32-bit? And does anyone know of aything other than trying the beta > drivers which I can give a bash? I'm not a hectic gamer, but I do like > to play something now and then (doom, quake, diablo, serious sam, > etc), and it sucks that I'm unable to use a simple GL screensaver. > > Any ideas are appreciated. > > -d </div></div>Hi, Davyd. I've been playing around with a few different motherboards at work, and have found that some of the ones with built-in 3d accelerated graphics behave oddly when the 3D drivers are installed. (Some of them will exhibit the behavior you've described, even though they're up to spec for running a given application.) That being said, perhaps you could post (or attach) the output of this command? (Omit the '$'--as you probably know, it's part of the command prompt.) $ glxinfo Also, please post or attach your /etc/X11/xorg.conf file, and the output of the command, 'lsmod | grep nvidia'. I'm interested in knowing whether the nVidia driver is actually being used, or if it's installed but disabled for some reason. Do you have Desktop effects (compiz-fusion) enabled? Try turning them off; perhaps the problem lies in compiz, not in the driver. I take it you've gotten all the system updates via the Update Manager? If not, it might be a good thing to do. I may not be a devel, but at least I can help troubleshoot. :-) --Dane Mutters </blockquote></div> -- -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Truth doesn't cease to be just because you don't agree with it.