Catalyst 9.9 + KWIN + RAM question

[idyllictux]

Greetings,

My current laptop specifications are as follow
- ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4330 (512 VRAM).
- 3GB DDR3 RAM.
- KDE 4.3.2 with KWIN and default config.
- Ubuntu Jaunty 9.04 + nobackfill patch + binary Catalyst 9.9.

The current situation I am experiencing is with compositing enabled in KWIN, the system physical memory usage was around 500MB RAM higher than without compositing enable. Does KWIN actually use up all the texture (512 VRAM) that it needs to borrow more from Physical RAM? I don't run anything that require that extensive graphic rendering (KATE, firefox, pidgin, dolphin and XAMPP). After a long period of working, even typing is text is kind of slow. Switching desktop or alt-tab will take 1-2s before rendred. My friend laptop with an Integrated Intel graphic card with KWIN doesn't exhibit this problem and he has only 1GB of physical RAM.

Is this behaviour expected or is it some sort of 'leaked' ? Is there away to limit the graphic to use the VRAM only without using the physical RAM? I am kind of new when it comes to graphic card and memory management. Please forgive my ignorance, and also thank you for shed some light on this matter.

I have attached relevant info. If further information are required, I am gladly to supply them.

$ fgrxinfo

display: :0.0  screen: 0
OpenGL vendor string: ATI Technologies Inc.
OpenGL renderer string: ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4300 Series
OpenGL version string: 2.1.8918

$ Xorg.0.log

(--) fglrx(0): Video RAM: 524288 kByte, Type: DDR2
(II) fglrx(0): PCIE card detected
(--) fglrx(0): Using per-process page tables (PPPT) as GART.
(WW) fglrx(0): board is an unknown third party board, chipset is supported
(II) fglrx(0): Using adapter: 1:0.0.
(II) fglrx(0): [FB] MC range(MCFBBase = 0xf00000000, MCFBSize = 0x20000000)
(II) fglrx(0): [pcie] 2040832 kB allocated

[nanonyme]

The current situation I am experiencing is with compositing enabled in KWIN, the system physical memory usage was around 500MB RAM higher than without compositing enable. Does KWIN actually use up all the texture (512 VRAM) that it needs to borrow more from Physical RAM?

Might be a memory leak somewhere.

[idyllictux]

Might be a memory leak somewhere.

I can't identify where is the leak from `ps aux` and `top`. Even after I closed all the apps, `free -m` -/+ buffers/cache used: 1253. =/ Very daunting indeed. Turn off KWIN compositing effect (not suspend) will release the physical memory.

[idyllictux]

Shameless bump + another question:
In my BIOS, I have no option to use SIDEPORT only. Is there anyway to set it in Xorg or amdcccle to use SIDEPORT and not UMA?

Thanks once again.

[bridgman]

Are you still talking about the HD4330 system ? If so then AFAIK it cam only use VRAM.

UMA and Sideport are for integrated graphics (IGP), yours is a discrete GPU which doesn't normally use UMA.

[idyllictux]

Are you still talking about the HD4330 system ? If so then AFAIK it cam only use VRAM.

UMA and Sideport are for integrated graphics (IGP), yours is a discrete GPU which doesn't normally use UMA.

Thanks for your enlightenment. It is always a pleasure to get schooled by other.

But that's the problem I encountered now, it started eating my physical RAM (which is vital when I do my JAVA EJB compiling and webserver). I suspect either KWIN used up all the 512MB of texture on my card or the card doesn't use its VRAM at all. Please correct me! Thanks.

Same set of running applications (KATE, firefox, pidgin, dolphin) with compositing enabled on different boot.
* Expected behaviour: X MB of RAM.
* Exhibited behaviour: sometimes X MB of RAM, sometimes X+500 MB of RAM (majority of the times).