Huge performance problem with r300 and KWin on openSUSE

[RealNC]

I've installed openSUSE 11.4 on an older machine. It's an Intel P4 2.6GHz CPU with 1.5GB of RAM. Graphics card is a Radeon 9450.

KDE ran like crap. I decided to update everything to their latest versions, so I added the Tumbleweed repo as well as the X.Org repo:

http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/X11:/XOrg/openSUSE_11.4

I replaced all packages from those in XOrg. This gave me the Gallium3D version of the radeon driver (r300g).

But... KWin still runs like total crap :-P For example, moving a window with the mouse looks like driving a boat. When you move the mouse, the window needs about 1 or 2 seconds to follow the mouse. It's totally unusable.

Anything I can do?

[pingufunkybeat]

Your drivers are not accelerated.

Give the output of:

glxinfo | grep ender
dmesg | grep drm
Xorg.0.log

I assume that the kernel should be recent enough for r300g.

[Kano]

@RealNC

Best install Kanotix Hellfire 32 bit, then check

http://kanotix.com/files/fix/oss-test/readme.txt

Do a dist-upgrade/reboot before you try. My scripts will compile the absolutely latest snapshots, with llvm enabled for native libs (not for 32 bit libs in a 64 bit host). Kanotix should be really fast with your system for websurfing or video in sd quality. There are no indexing options active which slow down the system.

[RealNC]

I'm currently not in front of the machine, so I can't run glxinfo right now. Here's Xorg.0.log:

http://pastebin.com/raw.php?i=pbLyguMf

And this is dmesg | grep drm:

http://pastebin.com/raw.php?i=TCnTwqNh

One thing I didn't mention, is that the machine was running 11.3. So 11.4 was not a fresh install, but an update on top of 11.3. And 11.3 was installed the same way a few months back, on top of 11.2.

[RealNC]

@Kano
Thanks, but this is a Univesity machine and I don't want to run experimental stuff on it. It needs to be rock solid, running for weeks without reboot.

[Kano]

That should not be a problem.

[RealNC]

No wait, that script doesn't work with openSUSE in the first place :P What you meant was I should replace openSUSE on that machine. Sadly, that is not possible. It has to run openSUSE, period. I would have installed Arch Linux lang ago otherwise

[monraaf]

Breaking news. Kano recommends Kanotix

[pingufunkybeat]

AGP really might be the problem, I remember hearing about issues with these cards.

You could try disabling KMS and using the classic r300c driver in UMS mode, this might work better.

[yotambien]

this systems runs like shit because the AGPx8 do not work correctly.

you get the best result if you upgrade to an AGP hd2000-hd4000 and install the catalyst.

LOL. See? Problem solved!

Next question!