HD4850+lucid+fglrx = horrible performance

[Arch]

I think I'm doing something wrong here ...

Today I updated to Ubuntu 10.04. I did a clean install, only migrating my /home which lies on a different partition. I then installed fglrx via Administration --> Hardware Drivers and did an "aticonfig --initial".

Performance is absolutely abysmal, especially in OpenGL-applications. I get around 250fps in glxgears, while the OSS-driver reaches 1600fps. I don't know what numbers I had on Karmic, but fglrx used to outperform the OSS-drivers by a significant amount. Other apps (a small clutter-program i wrote and snes9x) are basically unusable.

I'd use the OSS-driver, unfortunately it's deep frying my card. Using ForceLowPowerMode is not an option, because that means turning off kms which somehow destroys OpenGL completely ...

I'm not using any Visual Effects ? strangely enough enabling them gives me better performance (around 900fps in glxgears).

I already tried this:
http://www.phoronix.com/forums/showthread.php?t=23502
No use though.

Any help is very much appreciated.

Here's my xorg.0.log
http://pastebin.com/suMHRSFY

and my xorg.conf

Section "ServerLayout"
	Identifier     "aticonfig Layout"
	Screen      0  "aticonfig-Screen[0]-0" 0 0
EndSection

Section "Files"
EndSection

Section "Module"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
	Identifier   "aticonfig-Monitor[0]-0"
	Option	    "VendorName" "ATI Proprietary Driver"
	Option	    "ModelName" "Generic Autodetecting Monitor"
	Option	    "DPMS" "true"
EndSection

Section "Device"
	Identifier  "aticonfig-Device[0]-0"
	Driver      "fglrx"
	BusID       "PCI:4:0:0"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
	Identifier "aticonfig-Screen[0]-0"
	Device     "aticonfig-Device[0]-0"
	Monitor    "aticonfig-Monitor[0]-0"
	DefaultDepth     24
	SubSection "Display"
		Viewport   0 0
		Depth     24
	EndSubSection
EndSection

[Jimbo]

What opengl applications are u talking about? glxgears?

Well, certainly something happened to glxgears, i have to 300 fps too.

Anyway glxgears (or wine) is not the correct way to measure drivers opengl performance.

- glxgears is a simple test, sometype of memory copy function. It is not realistic.

- wine developers own a nvidia hardware and mainly focus, test and develop on this hardware.

Please could you try some *real* linux opengl application and post your numbers, before criticize fglrx, lucid...

Here are some numbers for ati 4350:

9.10 karmic, fglrx 9.10:

- Unigine sanctuary: 10.0 fps, score 428
- Lightsmark 2008 2.0: 40,7

10.4 lucid, fglrx 10.4:

- Unigine sanctuary: 10.7 fps, score 454
- Lightsmark 2008 2.0: 38,9 fps

[Arch]

I neither criticized lucid nor glxgears, I merely asked what I was doing wrong.
I'm aware that glxgears is not a benchmark, it's just that under normal circumstances the open source drivers are slower than fglrx.
The other OpenGL-applications are, as mentioned, an app that uses the clutter-toolkit, which has become dead slow, and the snes9x-emulator, which is unplayable when using OpenGL (while with karmic + fglrx there was no issue).

A small regression wouldn't have surprised me, but this feels more like there is no direct rendering (according to glxinfo, there is).

Strangely enough, I just tried the lightsmark-test (via PTS), and got 275fps on average.

[Jimbo]

I really think there is not and opengl problem / regressions. But more tests on other *real* opengl applications should be fine to clearly see this.

I see your point, and maybe there is something wrong with 2d (I got 300 fps on glxgears too), but I completely disagree on "Performance is absolutely abysmal, especially in OpenGL-applications".

Are snes9x and clutter-toolkit opengl applications?? maybe you can try to enable 2d acceleration:

aticonfig --set-pcs-str=DDX,Direct2DAccel,TRUE

aticonfig --set-pcs-str=DDX,Direct2DAccel,TRUE

[Arch]

Tried your aticonfig-settings, no use unfortunately, performance is the same but i get screen corruption.

But I think you're right, this might not be related to OpenGL after all. I just tested some videos and mplayer with the opengl-backend is actually running smoother than totem with xvideo.

An observation I made was concerning KMS. The OSS-drivers with kms enabled give me normal performance, with kms disabled the system is basically not usable anymore. I get a similar performance hit with fglrx, which disables kms as well ... Of course I have no idea what to make of this

And as I mentioned, the biggest performance increase I got was by turning Desktop Effects *on*.
Are there other options for 2d-acceleration I should be aware of?

[Jimbo]

All is working fine on my pc, wine (the games that work), opengl demos and video with opengl output. Except for glxgears, this 300 fps appears to be symptomatic.

I dont use snes9x and clutter-toolkit, but the bug / regression that is causing glxgears 300 fps should be affecting those applications too.

Have you filled a bug at ubuntu or ati?

[Arch]

Yeah, it's not like overall performance is bad here either. The desktop in general (Firefox, Thunderbird, Inkscape and so on) is smooth. It's just those certain applications that are a lot slower than they should to be. The performance being below that of the oss-drivers is what leads me to believe I misconfigured something ...

As you seem to have somewhat similar experiences, could you check how desktop effects affect your performance? As I said, with effects turned off i get around 250fps in glxgears. With effects turned on (Normal and Extra, there's no difference) i get roughly 1000fps.
This is what puzzles me the most.

[Jimbo]

Now I am totally puzzled with this glxgears thing!

ubuntu 10.04 fglrx 10.4 kde effects on
glxgears 300 frames in 5 seconds

ubuntu 10.04 fglrx 10.4 kde effects off
glxgears 300 frames in 5 seconds

ubuntu 9.10 fglrx 9.10 kde effects on
glxgears 150 frames in 5 seconds

ubuntu 9.10 fglrx 9.10 kde effects off
glxgears 150 frames in 5 seconds

no idea what is happening here, but i remember the last time I used glxgears on karmic the result was something like 5000 frames in 5 seconds or maybe 15000 frames in 5 seconds, I dont remember exactly.

[bridgman]

Looks like you are being limited by sync-to-vblank, ie you're running at 30 or 60 frames per second. Check in cccle and see if you have OpenGL vsync turned on.

[Arch]

Nope, it's turned off. Turning it on does limit me to the 300 frames per 5 seconds Jimbo experiences. Performance of the apps i mentioned is the same either way though.

What I don't get is why enabling compiz is actually increasing performance. Is there like a different mode when not using effects that isn't being accelerated (anymore)?