Better drivers for SiS 650/740 integrated video?

Question

I installed Xubuntu 10.10 on an old box today and the graphical performance is horrid. According to lspci, the video card is this:

01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] 65x/M650/740 PCI/AGP VGA Display Adapter (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
    Subsystem: ASUSTeK Computer Inc. Device 8081
    Flags: 66MHz, medium devsel, IRQ 11
    BIST result: 00
    Memory at f0000000 (32-bit, prefetchable) [size=128M]
    Memory at e7800000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=128K]
    I/O ports at d800 [size=128]
    Expansion ROM at <unassigned> [disabled]
    Capabilities: <access denied>
    Kernel modules: sisfb

Is there a way to make it faster? Alternative drivers? The additional drivers tool shows nothing. I'm specifically interested in improving Java's Java2D rendering speed, because I'll be running a "stat screen" written in that language on it.

Answer 1

You can have a look here

http://www.winischhofer.net/linuxsisvga.shtml

The main problem is that SIS has a proprietary windows driver which enables 3D acceleration , but has not produced one for linux. Th linux driver basically makes your system usable nothing else.

Even if you are able to install the drivers from the above link, dont expect any drastic performance improvements as your chip is 10 years old.

Answer 2

This long page seems to be very recent, as it mentions "Ubuntu 14.04+ and Linux Mint 17". It contains a long story about the steps the author took, but it ends with a download of readymade driver packages as well as a package for SiS iMedia and installation & configuration instructions.