HELP!! Awful performance on SunBlade 150 + XVR-100 ... Also OpenGL accel?

Help!!!

I just got a new SunBlade 150, 1 gig RAM, 80 gig disk, onboard video
(not sure what it is + our sysadmin installed an XVR-100 card, freshly
installed Solaris, ...
The display is terribly (unacceptably) slow.

helios:~(4)% uname -a
SunOS helios 5.9 Generic_112233-11 sun4u sparc SUNW,Sun-Blade-100

It is running dual head (displaying on some LCD flat panels), with one
(right) head panel being run by motherboard gfx card, and the other
(left) head being run by the XVR-100. Both heads are mapped into a
single large display (see xdpyinfo below).

The display is just dog slow. If I have a number of windows open and
I switch desktops, it takes several seconds to refresh the
display/windows. My expectation is that it should take maybe 0.25
seconds; I run a dual head Athlon Linux box that feels super snappy in
comparison, with refreshes being like 0.05 or less.

I'm running Gnome desktop 2.0. I suspect a driver problem, as I feel
the window manager/desktop has nothing to do with this. I guess I
could be wrong.
In any case, CDE did exactly the same thing.

It looks like there is only one visual available: 24 bpp. I wish
there were a 16 bit visual (which is what I run for my Linux box).

Is this a known problem?
Is OpenGL acceleration possible with this board/combo/setup?
Fixes/patches available? (I did some searching on sun.com and found a
couple of patches that said that sdtimage is extremely slow on
XVR-100:

http://sunsolve.sun.com/pub-cgi/retrieve.pl?doc=fpatches/114537

(from 114537-16)
4857383 fbconfig -prconf -propt reports a mismatch of depth when fake8
is
disable.
4868991 panic on resolution change
4893876 sdtimage extremely slow on xvr-100

Thanks!
Ralph

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helios:~(5)% xdpyinfo
name of display: :0.0
version number: 11.0
vendor string: Sun Microsystems, Inc.
vendor release number: 6610
maximum request size: 262140 bytes
motion buffer size: 256
bitmap unit, bit order, padding: 32, MSBFirst, 32
image byte order: MSBFirst
number of supported pixmap formats: 4
supported pixmap formats:
depth 1, bits_per_pixel 1, scanline_pad 32
depth 8, bits_per_pixel 8, scanline_pad 32
depth 16, bits_per_pixel 16, scanline_pad 32
depth 24, bits_per_pixel 32, scanline_pad 32
keycode range: minimum 8, maximum 254
focus: window 0x924dc4, revert to Parent
number of extensions: 30
AccessX
Adobe-DPS-Extension
DOUBLE-BUFFER
DPMS
DPSExtension
Extended-Visual-Information
FBPM
LBX
MIT-SCREEN-SAVER
MIT-SHM
MIT-SUNDRY-NONSTANDARD
Multi-Buffering
RECORD
SECURITY
SHAPE
SUN_ALLPLANES
SUN_DGA
SUN_OVL
SUN_SME
SYNC
SolarisIA
TOG-CUP
XC-APPGROUP
XC-MISC
XEVIE
XIE
XINERAMA
XInputDeviceEvents
XInputExtension
XTEST
default screen number: 0
number of screens: 1

screen #0:
dimensions: 2560x1024 pixels (722x289 millimeters)
resolution: 90x90 dots per inch
depths (2): 1, 24
root window id: 0x27
depth of root window: 24 planes
number of colormaps: minimum 1, maximum 1
default colormap: 0x21
default number of colormap cells: 256
preallocated pixels: black 0, white 16777215
options: backing-store YES, save-unders YES
largest cursor: unlimited
current input event mask: 0xfa203f
KeyPressMask KeyReleaseMask ButtonPressMask
ButtonReleaseMask EnterWindowMask LeaveWindowMask
ButtonMotionMask StructureNotifyMask
SubstructureNotifyMask
SubstructureRedirectMask FocusChangeMask
PropertyChangeMask
ColormapChangeMask
number of visuals: 1
default visual id: 0x22
visual:
visual id: 0x22
class: TrueColor
depth: 24 planes
available colormap entries: 256 per subfield
red, green, blue masks: 0xff0000, 0xff00, 0xff
significant bits in color specification: 8 bits
helios:~(6)%

 

(Ralph Seguin) writes in comp.unix.solaris:
|I just got a new SunBlade 150, 1 gig RAM, 80 gig disk, onboard video
|(not sure what it is + our sysadmin installed an XVR-100 card, freshly

The on-board video is a PGX-64 - uses the m64 driver patches.

|It is running dual head (displaying on some LCD flat panels), with one
|(right) head panel being run by motherboard gfx card, and the other
|(left) head being run by the XVR-100. Both heads are mapped into a
|single large display (see xdpyinfo below).

Xinerama will add overhead and slow the system down a bit.
Make sure you are up to date on m64, pfb, and Xsun patches
for your OS version.

|I'm running Gnome desktop 2.0.

Make sure you install MediaLib and try some of the other suggestions on:
http://docs.sun.com/db/doc/817-3853/6mjdu70di?a=view

(The one tip they don't list that I find helps with GNOME is to just
kill Nautilus completely - but then I use a command-line shell, not
a GUI file manager to manage my files on Solaris. For some reason,
I do the complete opposite on MacOS X and have never figured out why
the difference is - perhaps just habit.)

|Is OpenGL acceleration possible with this board/combo/setup?

No - the PGX-64 and XVR-100 are both sold as low-end 2D cards - you
can install OpenGL, but it will mostly render in software without
hardware acceleration.