Fedora ATi driver performs much worse than the vanilla code

[Joshua C.]

2009/3/6 planetf1 <bugs at cherrybyte.me.uk>:
> On 04/03/09 23:50, Joshua C. wrote:
>>
>> 2009/3/4 Roberto Ragusa<mail at robertoragusa.it>:
>>>
>>> Joshua C. wrote:
>>>
>>>> I did some test and here are the results:
>
> On the subject of performance...
>  I'm running Fedora rawhide right up to date with
> xorg-x11-drv-ati-6.11.0-3.fc11.i586
> kernel-PAE-2.6.29-0.203.rc7.fc11.i686
> xorg-x11-server-Xorg-1.6.0-7.fc11.i586
>
> Under regular desktop usage I'm noticing
>  * With compiz running, various special effects like wobbly windows
> have a relatively low CPU impact -- good acceleration. This has been fixed
> in the last few weeks (thanks Dave)
>  * glxgears is ok (getting 1800 ish on a V5200/X1400) - could be a bit
> better but just fine.

I can only dream of this (max with F9 = 800 without compiz) and
usually ~400. It's not quite a pleasant experience with this value

>  * Some seemingly minor activity like firefox's rotating circle that
> appears in a tab whilst loading a page hit the CPU hard (up to 40% + on
> Xorg)

I hope they can do the same for r400

>  * Another app "Personal Brain" which is relatively visual has a
> similar huge impact
>  * The latest flash player takes lots of cpu, getting up to 50% (ie 1 cpu
> maxed out) at < 1/4 size (default BBC iPlayer desktop size) at fullscreen it
> struggles -- with jerky video
>  * mplayer/wmv appears to work significacantly better
>
> So it's a real mix of working & not so working ... and not clear whether the
> app or driver (or mesa, X etc) is to blame...
>
> The system is a core duo " 2.16Ghz, 3Gb ram, V5200 FireGL ie R500 series
> with 256Mb, 3200x1600 virtual (large desktop across 2 screens)
> EXA acceleration is enabled
>  From log I note - page flipping disabled, dma 4 xv enabled, color
> tiling enabled
>
> I have a few questions
>
> * Apart from glxgears are there any good "benchmark" apps that can be
> used to help check for any regressions between updates? glxgears gives a
> very basic working/not working, but something that's more typical of how
> firefox etc drives X
>
> * Is there any good way of concisely capturing the X/ati workload
> pattern that may assist in identifying specific impacts of that workload
> type as it might relate to various config parameters
>
> * Are there some obvious settings I may have missed.
>
> * Is anyone else seeing this...
>
> Given the above I might have enough to raise a bug... but currently am
> not sure if it's working as designed. Even if not I realise the info is
> far too vague.
>
> Regards
> Nigel.
> bugs at cherrybyte.me.uk

 I also saw improvements in the last week because of updates of mesa
and xserver. my cpu usage is still quite high (100% with glxgears) and
flash player really tries to squeeze it out.