Low performance with AMD gallium driver

[elTed]

Thank you brosis, your explanation fits for my problem: I'll resurrect my gentoo installation to test the upgrades you recommend.
Anyway, i don't understand how Michael obtained much better results more than a year ago, in the "The May 2012 Open-Source Radeon Graphics Showdown" with kernel 3.4/mesa 8.1/radeon 6.14.99; in that test he reached 67 fps already.

[gradinaruvasile]

You definitely need to upgrade mesa at least (make sure you have a recent libdrm too).

I have a A8-5500 and TDM runs just fine on its IGP using kernel, mesa, drm, xf86-ati compiled from latest git (as i have a 64 bit system i had to compile mesa and drm for both 64 and 32 bits).

[brosis]

Thank you brosis, your explanation fits for my problem: I'll resurrect my gentoo installation to test the upgrades you recommend.
Anyway, i don't understand how Michael obtained much better results more than a year ago, in the "The May 2012 Open-Source Radeon Graphics Showdown" with kernel 3.4/mesa 8.1/radeon 6.14.99; in that test he reached 67 fps already.

I am sure that would be unnecessary complicated.
Debian/Ubuntu allow one to build packaged kernel (make-kpkg),
upgrade initramfs easily (update-initramfs),
quickly (checkinstall) or correctly (debian-createpackage) create packages,
and pin those old standard packages to prevent them replacing yours.

After Ubuntu moves to similar newer versions, you can unpin those and force reinstall from ubuntu, overwriting those generated by you.

Chances are - with Gentoo, you will encounter more problems that didn't exist on your installation and you will spend time refining your Gentoo skills instead of working on the actual problem.
Even if you persist and waste 2-3 days (first times are always hard) to get exactly same desktop and newer stack, you will end up with two incomplete distributions. Where you can spend 4-5 hours and learn to get newer stack on your existing system, adding to knowledge of platform you use. IMHO, choosing a distribution is based upon its philosophy, ways of doing things best matched to your own problems/ways.

If you know Gentoo or Arch, you can substitute their ways of installing/emerging in those guides with that from your distribution (apt-get, checkinstall) - getting exact same result. Thats what I meant when I referenced them.

[elTed]

I use Gentoo specifically for testing, while Arch is the daily-distribution and I prefer not going out of "official" tree because it is used from my family too: in case of problem, I could be finished : )
I've got sufficient base on both, I'll let you know.
Thanks again, i'll try

[curaga]

You didn't mention it, but are you testing with the same settings Michael did his tests with?

[duby229]

I am sure that would be unnecessary complicated.
Debian/Ubuntu allow one to build packaged kernel (make-kpkg),
upgrade initramfs easily (update-initramfs),
quickly (checkinstall) or correctly (debian-createpackage) create packages,
and pin those old standard packages to prevent them replacing yours.

After Ubuntu moves to similar newer versions, you can unpin those and force reinstall from ubuntu, overwriting those generated by you.

Chances are - with Gentoo, you will encounter more problems that didn't exist on your installation and you will spend time refining your Gentoo skills instead of working on the actual problem.
Even if you persist and waste 2-3 days (first times are always hard) to get exactly same desktop and newer stack, you will end up with two incomplete distributions. Where you can spend 4-5 hours and learn to get newer stack on your existing system, adding to knowledge of platform you use. IMHO, choosing a distribution is based upon its philosophy, ways of doing things best matched to your own problems/ways.

If you know Gentoo or Arch, you can substitute their ways of installing/emerging in those guides with that from your distribution (apt-get, checkinstall) - getting exact same result. Thats what I meant when I referenced them.

Refining ones gentoo foo isnt exactly a bad thing, there are many things that gentoo does better than debian.

[elTed]

Hello everyone,
Yesterday I saw the light! I emerged on gentoo the same kernel and mesa (3.11+9.2) I have on arch, 64 bit only. I've got a perfectly running sauerbraten and an unusable doom3. They I emerged the 32bit mesa lib and bang!, I've got a ~45fps doom3!
Then I returned on arch, got rid of 32bit libs and reinstalled them and now it's all fine. I clearly did some mess during the last update, but since I rarely use 32bit software I wasn't aware of it
Thanks again for your support and explanation

[kwahoo]

Your doom3 running slow is logically explainable: currently you use pre-OpenGL3 stack with somewhat buggy kernel.
3.12 and newer MESA+Radeon have near OpenGL3.x complete stack, with shader optimizer enabled, non-buggy UVD (video acceleration).
Doom 3 uses OpenGL3+; most parts of your stack run it in software, and without optimizer (SB).

Nope, Doom 3 uses GL2 or older APIs. It does not use GLSL but ARB programs. Doom 3 BFG uses GLSL and OpenGL 3.2 Compability Profile.