AMD RadeonSI Driver 2D Performance Is Getting Better

[bnolsen]

I just got a r7 240 with the intent of driving a 4k display. Put it inside an athlon2 x4 system with my current 19x12 monitor and x11 was well...worse than a slideshow. Probably 30s full screen updates for switching desktops. Running arch linux. Will continue to look around to find out how to get manageable desktop performance. I just want to run this new monitor so I can work (code) on it!

[bridgman]

I just got a r7 240 with the intent of driving a 4k display. Put it inside an athlon2 x4 system with my current 19x12 monitor and x11 was well...worse than a slideshow. Probably 30s full screen updates for switching desktops. Running arch linux. Will continue to look around to find out how to get manageable desktop performance. I just want to run this new monitor so I can work (code) on it!

Are you sure you have HW acceleration working at all, ie sufficiently new drivers etc... ? What you're describing doesn't sound right... sounds more like SW rendering via llvmpipe.

[bnolsen]

Are you sure you have HW acceleration working at all, ie sufficiently new drivers etc... ? What you're describing doesn't sound right... sounds more like SW rendering via llvmpipe.

can't say for certain. fortunately i saw that EXA could be forced so i did that and everything sped up to very usable levels. plugging the seiki 39" 4k monitor, well that didn't work so well. Considering backing out the xorg server to try catalyst...yuk that makes my head hurt.

[bridgman]

can't say for certain. fortunately i saw that EXA could be forced so i did that and everything sped up to very usable levels. plugging the seiki 39" 4k monitor, well that didn't work so well. Considering backing out the xorg server to try catalyst...yuk that makes my head hurt.

AFAIK if you force EXA then you are guaranteed to have software rendering. Can you see what the glxinfo render message says when running EXA ?

[bnolsen]

AFAIK if you force EXA then you are guaranteed to have software rendering. Can you see what the glxinfo render message says when running EXA ?

glxinfo and glxgears seems to run okay after it comes up.

Before going to EXA gtkperf tanked on line drawing. My dev box runs windowmaker which seems to use lots of line drawing.

For this I'm willing to wait for 3.13 to go stable and see what happens. Of course I do want to see that 4k monitor be usable. Its a shame all this new stuff is so hard.

[bridgman]

glxinfo and glxgears seems to run okay after it comes up.

They will both work with SW rendering. Can you check the render string in glxinfo -- "glxinfo | grep render" ? It's easier than picking through the Xorg log.

IIRC diagonal lines are not accelerated with glamor right now (so SW rendering would be faster) but there are some initial patches to accelerate them. I think you'll find you're running with SW rendering right now so you'll never be happy with the results -- suggest you go back to glamor but hunt down the patches to speed up line drawing. If I find the thread / bug ticket I'll post it back here.

[bnolsen]

Thanks. Here's where I got my info from.

http://web.archiveorange.com/archive/v/PjyyPjf6k2IS8kCYgBIg

For the time being I'm going to move the amd r7 240 card over to an idle dual xeon i7 nehalem based system I have here (one of the old build/testmachines), plug that into the seiki and play with it there. No reason to interfere with my real working hardware, eh?

[bridgman]

Thanks. Here's where I got my info from.

http://web.archiveorange.com/archive...f6k2IS8kCYgBIg

Yep, that looks like the same ticket I was thinking about. It seems likely that Windowmaker performance will come together before gtkperf (circles), but that seems like a reasonable sequence anyways

[bnolsen]

its a very sad day. I had to install a demo version of windows 8.1 and download the catalyst drivers to make sure the seiki monitor would work with the r7 240 card at 4k resolution. Man I can't believe how *bad* windows 8 (and 8.1) is, I mean REALLY BAD. People pay to get abused like this?

[zanny]

its a very sad day. I had to install a demo version of windows 8.1 and download the catalyst drivers to make sure the seiki monitor would work with the r7 240 card at 4k resolution. Man I can't believe how *bad* windows 8 (and 8.1) is, I mean REALLY BAD. People pay to get abused like this?

And then complain about how hard to use Linux is, yes.

Honestly, some of the Windows fan boys I talk to, I hear buyers remorse. They know their paid a huge chunk of change for this OS, and especially in the case of 8, it is a horrible mess. So they get into denial about how honestly bad it is, "but the start menu isn't that bad, I'm getting used to it, maybe I'll buy a touchscreen so it works as intended!"