DRI on S3 Savage IX/MX

Finally, after searching the net for months earlier and again this time for information on S3 Savage IX/MX, I'll be able to play games on my Linux box.

Without DRI, it was impossible to play games like tux-racer. The frame rate was too slow. I tried to enable DRI support earlier but could not succeed. I almost lost hope of playing games in Linux on my notebook.

This time I came across this wonderful post at www.linuxquestions.org.
Here people were discussing same problem, i.e. making S3 Savage have DRI support. I followed the instructions in post #40 and things went well without any errors. But still, DRI did not work. I checked the X log (/var/log/XFree86-0) and found the error

(II) SAVAGE(0): 9348 kB of Videoram needed for 3D; 8192 kB ofVideoramavailable



(EE) SAVAGE(0): Insufficient Videoram available for 3D



(EE) SAVAGE(0): Try a lower color depth or smaller desktop

I changed, default color depth to 16bpp and Wow, glxgears shows a frame rate of 160fps (in comparison to 38fps without dir).



During this process, I came across a webpage on DuoView (DuoVue) feature of S3 Savage video card.



I exchanged some mail with the author Alex (who is a wonderful person to reply to all my mails with accurate information) and he helped me to confirm my solution to enable DRI.

Thank you Alex.