Poor 2D performance problems ..

From: Tom Poliquin (poliquin_at_softcomp.com)
Date: 08/28/03

  • Next message: Allen: "Re: Poor 2D performance problems .." 
    Date: Thu, 28 Aug 2003 09:41:44 -0700

    My 2D screen performance is terrible ..
    I'm not sure if this is an X problem or
    a WM problem .. or something else ..

    I don't what to do next. I've been
    working on this for about 2 weeks and I
    am hoping someone can give me a direction
    to research ..

    Overview ...

    2D Screen performance on RH 8 is quite slow ..

      - I can watch the menus being painted.

      - When I slide one window over another
        my CPU usage goes to 100% and I get
        window "tails".

      - The GUI speed is almost *faster* on
        my laptop X server.

    Here's what I have ..

       - Athlon 2000+
       - Radeon 7000 VE
       - Asus A7N8X Deluxe MB
       - 1GB RAM

       - Red Hat 8.0

    Here's the software I've upgraded ..

       - Upgraded kernel to 2.4.22-pre7
       - Upgraded XFree86 to 4.30
       - Upgraded radeon.o kernel module

    Here's some other things I've tried ..

       - Different WMs .. Gnome, KDE, WindowMaker
         all slow.

       - Told Gnome to use ugly fonts .. better
         performance but only a little. Sliding
         windows across each other used *only*
         93% of the CPU instead of 100%.

    Here's what the logs are saying ..

       - All the related logs/configs I know about look fine ..

         Links are here:
            XFree86 Config
            http://www.softcomp.com/logs/xfconfig.html
            XFree86 Log
            http://www.softcomp.com/logs/xflog.html
            Kernel Log
            http://www.softcomp.com/logs/kernel.html

      - XFree86 log says that DRI acceleration
        is enabled and DRM is OK .. but I only
        really care about 2D.

      - I'm running the board in an AGP slot
        (AGP 4x) and all the kernel logs
        say this is fine. The board was placed
        at irq 5.

      - The only thing I can see is that DDC test
        fails but I've seen other posts about this
        and no one seemed to care.

    Here's some other info ..

      - I've looked at the radeon X options and couldn't
        find anything interesting.

      - Glxgears runs about 550 fps and this is only slightly
        slower when I turn 3d acceleration off .. so at
        least *something* is getting accelerated :-)

      - I had read that this Radeon board had reasonable
        2D performance ..

      - It seems that 2D performance is an orphan, I've
        seen tons of info on 3D but very little on 2D (or
        I don't know how to find it).

    How do I orthogonalize this problem? ..

    Is it X, Gnome, Kernel, Hardware, Stupidity,
    Delusions of Grandeur, or Gray Davis .. ?

    Any help greatly appreciated ..

    Tom

  • Next message: Allen: "Re: Poor 2D performance problems .."