Guide to Get the Best Performace from the GMA 500

**samusishere** · October 24th, 2009

HI can someone tell direct me in the right direction on how to get ubuntu 9.10 running on a acer aspire one 751h with compiz. i curenty run ubuntu 9.04 with compiz and a oveclocked cpu and its the best operating system i have ever used. but i really want to stay up to date. please helppppp

**cabrerachaparro** · October 26th, 2009

Hi samusishere,

How did you overlock your Aspire One? I would like to do it in my Aspire.

Thanks.

**FrozenFOXX** · October 28th, 2009

Just wanted to chime in with my Asus Eee 1101HA. Thanks to all the hard work and this wonderful tuning guide, sammy (and naturally the others referenced and even in this thread) my netbook is no longer a cute, stylish, expensive brick and a slick, crowd-drawing system.

Using Kubuntu 9.10 RC with this guide and the Net Book Remix. Wireless works, suspend works, everything works. Still testing to see if I can get kwin effects working but even if they don't the EXA option was plenty stable and the UXA option thus far seems pretty stable.

No noticeable difference for me doing a mem=896mb for the /etc/default/grub but then it's not like I'm going to be seeing it as a barn burner in the first place. I'm just happy it's all working nicely and it's all thanks to you hard-working folks. Thank you.

**crownedzero** · October 29th, 2009

Originally Posted by sammyboy405

Ive been running a new config setup. Thought id share it. Haven't had any lock ups yet. AND im getting 130 to 150fps with Compiz Working.

Here it goes. Im going off memory on what I did. You must already have done guide written above.

I Perfer nano to edit. ctrl+o to save and ctrl+x to exit

Open A Terminal:

Code:

sudo nano /boot/grub/menu.lst

You should find a line that looks like this (your root UUID and kernel version will/may vary)

Code:

kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.28-14-generic root=UUID=c34d1d57-59d3-4f6f-abc1-fd83aea4 ro quiet splash

Change it to this (bold is to emphasize what needs changing)

Code:

kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.28-14-generic root=UUID=c34d1d57-59d3-4f6f-abc1-fd83aea4 ro quiet nosplash mem=786mb

This tells grub to force the kernel to recognize only 786mb of the installed 1GB, leaving 238mb free for the graphics adapter to use. The “nosplash” option prevents any sexy graphics being displayed during boot. I’m not sure if this is *essential* but it seemed like a good idea?

Now for Compiz.

Code:

sudo nano /usr/bin/compiz

press ctrl+w and type whitelist and press enter.

Code:

WHITELIST=”nvidia intel ati radeon i810 fglrx”

Change it to this:

Code:

WHITELIST=”psb nvidia intel ati radeon i810 fglrx”

Now your going to need to edit a line in your xorg.conf file. Doing this will allow for 3d effects.

Code:

sudo nano /etc/X11/xorg.conf

Find the line

Code:

Option "DRI" "off"
and make it look like
 Option "DRI" "on"

Now Reboot.

Once Rebooted

click System -> Preferences -> Appearance and click the Visual Effects tab. I chose “Normal” just to get things started…

Now Hope and Pray? LOL Have fun with it .. Also Check out X.Org Wiki - Home check out there FAQ there on some different options you can do inside your xorg.conf file with the 3d/2d settings.

Also Play with the Memory settings for the Kernel. I just choice a semi round number. I also installed compizconfig-settings-manager to fine tune the compiz setup you might or might not want to try it? Rotating desktop seems to work.

I have the upgraded 2 gigs of RAM what would you suggest allocating for system/vid use?

I also followed your instructions up to excluding the memory allocation and I am still experiencing random freezes; thoughts?

**samusaranisback** · October 30th, 2009

hi, i have a acer aspire one 751h and would like to know if its worth it to upgrade to ubuntu 9.10 or just keep 9.04. i have excellent video performance and dont want to loose that. but if eny of you have good performance with the acer aspire one 751h and ubuntu 9.10. please tell me.

**jjzone** · October 30th, 2009

Sammyboy 405;
Those are some excellent instructions! Thanks for sharing. I was able to get my GMA 500 equipped Acer A0751 up and running with the 3d acceleration by following your instructions. The only thing I did a little differently is since I used another route to get the Poulsbo function in the first place I had the launchpad repositories on my machine, so I let Synaptic get the 2d/3d driver for me. But otherwise I followed your instructions and everything worked flawlessly.

**Ubscenee** · October 30th, 2009

Originally Posted by fiamazo

I've here to say my very truth on 1101ha. I initially installed 9.10 Beta on my 1101ha, and after installing the proper *psb* drivers, I had a somehow working machine. The real problem was that, sometimes and indipendently from the cpu usage, X decided to freeze, showing some sort of distorted "previous" image flickering and dancing ... No way to recover, only reboot helped. BTW, the problem showed up exactly every time I resumed from suspend, just few seconds afterwards ... and only randomly after a fresh reboot.
Because of that, I decided to give a chance to 9.04. Great, rock solid, I guess I've still to reboot once (after installing psb stuff, obviously ...), I'm just suspending and resuming

Anyway, I really hope that there will be a standard way in the future to use the Poulsbo drivers also with later kernels, and that Karmic will support GMA 500 chipset in a semi official way (~official ppas).
Cheers,
Fiamazo

I have the same netbook (eee 1101ha) and had that issue for every single release of ubuntu 9.10 kernel, it is the ath9k wifi driver, i have to recompile it everytime (obviously you need build-essential and blah blah):

Code:

wget http://wireless.kernel.org/download/compat-wireless-2.6/compat-wireless-2.6.tar.bz2

Code:

tar xvfj compat-wireless-2.6.tar.bz2
cd compat-wireless-2.6
./scripts/driver-select ath9k
make
sudo make install
sudo make unload
sudo reboot

everything should work fine after that (sorry for the half-OT)

**russki_drewski** · October 30th, 2009

Originally Posted by sammyboy405

Ive been running a new config setup. Thought id share it. Haven't had any lock ups yet. AND im getting 130 to 150fps with Compiz Working.

Here it goes. Im going off memory on what I did. You must already have done guide written above.

I Perfer nano to edit. ctrl+o to save and ctrl+x to exit

Open A Terminal:

Code:

sudo nano /boot/grub/menu.lst

You should find a line that looks like this (your root UUID and kernel version will/may vary)

Code:

kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.28-14-generic root=UUID=c34d1d57-59d3-4f6f-abc1-fd83aea4 ro quiet splash

Change it to this (bold is to emphasize what needs changing)

Code:

kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.28-14-generic root=UUID=c34d1d57-59d3-4f6f-abc1-fd83aea4 ro quiet nosplash mem=786mb

This tells grub to force the kernel to recognize only 786mb of the installed 1GB, leaving 238mb free for the graphics adapter to use. The “nosplash” option prevents any sexy graphics being displayed during boot. I’m not sure if this is *essential* but it seemed like a good idea?

Now for Compiz.

Code:

sudo nano /usr/bin/compiz

press ctrl+w and type whitelist and press enter.

Code:

WHITELIST=”nvidia intel ati radeon i810 fglrx”

Change it to this:

Code:

WHITELIST=”psb nvidia intel ati radeon i810 fglrx”

Now your going to need to edit a line in your xorg.conf file. Doing this will allow for 3d effects.

Code:

sudo nano /etc/X11/xorg.conf

Find the line

Code:

Option "DRI" "off"
and make it look like
 Option "DRI" "on"

Now Reboot.

Once Rebooted

click System -> Preferences -> Appearance and click the Visual Effects tab. I chose “Normal” just to get things started…

Now Hope and Pray? LOL Have fun with it .. Also Check out X.Org Wiki - Home check out there FAQ there on some different options you can do inside your xorg.conf file with the 3d/2d settings.

Also Play with the Memory settings for the Kernel. I just choice a semi round number. I also installed compizconfig-settings-manager to fine tune the compiz setup you might or might not want to try it? Rotating desktop seems to work.

sammyboy, I'm using Karmic 9.10, and the file that you specified above ("/boot/grub/menu.lst") doesn't exist on my system. Should I create it or is it somewhere else. I know that Karmic does use a new grub loader, so maybe I need to look elsewhere?

thx,
russki_drewski

**Ubscenee** · October 30th, 2009

@russki-drewski: It should be in /boot/grub/grub.cfg

**frehberg** · October 31st, 2009

By default poulsbo driver did not allow me to run external 1440x900 display at Dell Mini 10 via HDMI port. But, the following Modeline added to "Monitor" Section, solves the issue. If you intend to use a different resolution or different refresh-rate, you need another Modeline.

Section "Monitor"
Identifier "Configured Monitor"
Modeline "1440x900_60.00" 106.47 1440 1520 1672 1904 900 901 904 932 -HSync +Vsync
EndSection

I generated the modeline using the following command
"$ cvt 1440 900 60"

For more details see: http://en.gentoo-wiki.com/wiki/X.Org/Modelines

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