ati 9250 can performance be improved ?

radeon 9250 256 mb .athlon xp 2400+
gentoo linux        xorg server 1.2
x11-drm  : 20060608
1024 768 at 87 hz ( real fast for this old screen )
well .. here we are .. the 9250 is out the
proprietary drivers updates , the 8.28.8 wont
work with xorg-server 1.2 .. leaves the open
source driver ..
there i went .. installed the drivers and dri and
lo and behold direct rendering = yes ..
i got 1180 fps in glx gears after a few tweaks.
only thing .. impossible to get lower than 87 hz ..
which does seem too high for the display ..
again .. i tried but dont know how to fix this ..

thing is .. the driver seem to have several issues
that im not sure are known/unknown ..

in ppracer ( ex tuxracer ) all the fonts are gone
but for a pixel or so .. impossible to read anything ..
also in pp racer the video is choppy .. smooth , chops
then goes smooth again and chops ..

in any application scrolling / moving a window there
is a " shimmer " it's like at each line of display the
text jumps creating a weird shimmering effect
all things that i didnt use to have with the ati cs driver.

im missing somethign ?  ( say yes here ; )

thanks for any input you may have.

Ric





here's my xorg.conf

Section "ServerLayout"
	Identifier     "X.org Configured"
	Screen      0  "Screen0" 0 0
	InputDevice    "Mouse0" "CorePointer"
	InputDevice    "Keyboard0" "CoreKeyboard"
EndSection

Section "Files"
	RgbPath      "/usr/share/X11/rgb"
	ModulePath   "/usr/lib/xorg/modules"
	FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/misc/"
	FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/TTF/"
	FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/OTF"
	FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/Type1/"
	FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/100dpi/"
	FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/75dpi/"
EndSection

Section "Module"
	Load  "extmod"
	Load  "dbe"
	Load  "record"
	Load  "GLcore"
	Load  "xtrap"
	Load  "dri"
	Load  "glx"
	Load  "freetype"
	Load  "type1"
EndSection

Section "ServerFlags"
        Option      "AIGLX" "off"
EndSection


Section "InputDevice"
	Identifier  "Keyboard0"
	Driver      "kbd"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
	Identifier  "Mouse0"
	Driver      "mouse"
	Option	    "Protocol" "auto"
	Option	    "Device" "/dev/input/mice"
	Option	    "ZAxisMapping" "4 5 6 7"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
	Identifier   "Monitor0"
	VendorName   "Monitor Vendor"
	ModelName    "Monitor Model"
#        DisplaySize  347        260
        VertRefresh  50 - 100

EndSection

Section "Device"
        ### Available Driver options are:-
        ### Values: <i>: integer, <f>: float, <bool>: "True"/"False",
        ### <string>: "String", <freq>: "<f> Hz/kHz/MHz"
        ### [arg]: arg optional
        #Option     "ShadowFB"           	# [<bool>]
        #Option     "KGAUniversal"       	# [<bool>]
	Identifier  "Card0"
	Driver      "radeon"
	VendorName  "ATI Technologies Inc"
	BoardName   "RV280 [Radeon 9200 PRO]"
	BusID       "PCI:1:0:0"
        Option     "AGPMode" "4"
        Option     "AGPFastWrite" "True"
        Option     "EnablePageFlip" "True"
        Option     "EnableDepthMoves" "True"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
	Identifier "Screen0"
	Device     "Card0"
	Monitor    "Monitor0"
        DefaultDepth     24	

	SubSection "Display"
		Viewport   0 0
		Depth     8
#                Modes    "1024x768"
	EndSubSection
	SubSection "Display"
		Viewport   0 0
		Depth     15
#               Modes    "1024x768"
	EndSubSection
	SubSection "Display"
		Viewport   0 0
		Depth     16
#                Modes    "1024x768"
	EndSubSection
	SubSection "Display"
#		Viewport   0 0
		Depth     24
                Modes    "1024x768"
	EndSubSection
EndSection

Section "dri"
        Mode    0666
EndSection


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