2D performance on 'radeon' vs 'radeonhd'

[oibaf]

This is the performance I am getting with my MacBookPro 2.17 GHz, Ubuntu 8.04 and drivers from https://launchpad.net/~tormodvolden/+archive

ati driver git 20080510 with XAA

GtkEntry - time:  0,09
GtkComboBox - time:  6,56
GtkComboBoxEntry - time:  5,45
GtkSpinButton - time:  0,85
GtkProgressBar - time:  0,49
GtkToggleButton - time:  2,63
GtkCheckButton - time:  2,62
GtkRadioButton - time:  3,15
GtkTextView - Add text - time: 12,25
GtkTextView - Scroll - time:  7,87
GtkDrawingArea - Lines - time:  1,15
GtkDrawingArea - Circles - time:  5,35
GtkDrawingArea - Text - time: 28,90
GtkDrawingArea - Pixbufs - time:  3,52
 --- 
Total time: 80,85

ati driver git 20080510 with NoAccel

GtkEntry - time:  0,09
GtkComboBox - time:  6,43
GtkComboBoxEntry - time:  5,22
GtkSpinButton - time:  0,82
GtkProgressBar - time:  0,48
GtkToggleButton - time:  2,57
GtkCheckButton - time:  2,57
GtkRadioButton - time:  3,05
GtkTextView - Add text - time: 12,76
GtkTextView - Scroll - time: 51,05
GtkDrawingArea - Lines - time:  2,05
GtkDrawingArea - Circles - time:  7,77
GtkDrawingArea - Text - time: 28,43
GtkDrawingArea - Pixbufs - time:  3,51
 --- 
Total time: 126,79

radeonhd 1.2.1 driver with XAA

GtkEntry - time:  0,09
GtkComboBox - time: 25,78
GtkComboBoxEntry - time: 15,74
GtkSpinButton - time:  0,93
GtkProgressBar - time:  0,54
GtkToggleButton - time:  2,82
GtkCheckButton - time: 11,97
GtkRadioButton - time: 12,83
GtkTextView - Add text - time: 16,61
GtkTextView - Scroll - time:  7,70
GtkDrawingArea - Lines - time:  2,40
GtkDrawingArea - Circles - time: 25,24
GtkDrawingArea - Text - time: 28,60
GtkDrawingArea - Pixbufs - time:  3,54
 --- 
Total time: 154,79

radeonhd 1.2.1 driver with ShadowFB

GtkEntry - time:  0,09
GtkComboBox - time:  7,16
GtkComboBoxEntry - time:  5,90
GtkSpinButton - time:  0,83
GtkProgressBar - time:  0,48
GtkToggleButton - time:  2,66
GtkCheckButton - time:  2,84
GtkRadioButton - time:  3,55
GtkTextView - Add text - time: 12,34
GtkTextView - Scroll - time:  7,18
GtkDrawingArea - Lines - time:  1,35
GtkDrawingArea - Circles - time:  3,90
GtkDrawingArea - Text - time:  3,90
GtkDrawingArea - Pixbufs - time:  0,25
 --- 
Total time: 52,43

The best choice is radeonhd with ShadowFB.

A question: why not making ShadowFB the default on radeonhd?

[bridgman]

We either need to make the acceleration go faster or make shadowfb the default. The plan is to make acceleration go faster

That said, shadowfb does run pretty fast and is nice and simple. There are issues having it coexist with 3D though...

[surfer]

I noticed you haven't tried 'EXA' acceleration. It will blow your other test results out of the water.

[bridgman]

Yep. Radeonhd doesn't have the latest EXA code yet, but it will soon. Our testing has shown that you also need a very recent X server (to pick up some glyph cacheing improvements) in order to get the really good performance -- does that match what you are seeing ?

[oibaf]

I forgot to say I had also tried EXA acceleration (either with radeon and radeonhd) and it's really slow (I interrupted the test because it was too slow). Note that I only upgraded the display drivers; xserver, mesa, drm are all the defaults found in Ubuntu 8.04.

Also note I performed the tests with:

gtkperf -c 500 -a

[sundown]

radeonhd runs glxgears faster than radeon here. 800+ vs 300+ FPS. Of course DRI is not loaded when under radeon, not that it can detect my R500, actually.

I run a simple xorg.conf on radeonhd with only XAA turned on. When I replace "radeonhd" with "ati" and that's the result I get.

How about that for a comparison?
Or is it because it can't detect my chip?

[TechMage89]

Are you sure DRI isn't loaded for radeon? It ususally loads to support texturedvideo with CP. The DRI stuff may be the reason for the slowdown though, because it's there, but there's no acceleration.

[oibaf]

Update

I updated drm modules, libdrm, mesa to latest git and tried ati driver with EXA.

ati driver git 20080515 with EXA

$ gtkperf -a -c 500
GtkPerf 0.40 - Starting testing: Tue May 20 15:50:08 2008

GtkEntry - time:  0,09
GtkComboBox - time:  7,84
GtkComboBoxEntry - time:  5,97
GtkSpinButton - time:  1,06
GtkProgressBar - time:  0,60
GtkToggleButton - time:  3,30
GtkCheckButton - time:  3,25
GtkRadioButton - time:  3,42
GtkTextView - Add text - time: 12,55
GtkTextView - Scroll - time:  2,58
GtkDrawingArea - Lines - time:  2,48
GtkDrawingArea - Circles - time:  1,83
GtkDrawingArea - Text - time:  3,00
GtkDrawingArea - Pixbufs - time:  0,27
 --- 
Total time: 48,24

It's a lot faster now, comparable to radeonhd with ShadowFB. "GtkTextView - Scroll" is about 3x faster than radeonhd.

With glxgears I get this:

$ glxgears 
Warning, RV530 detected, 3D HAHAHAHAHA!!.
Mesa program:
-------------
# Fragment Program/Shader
  0: MOV OUTPUT[0], INPUT[1];
  1: END
9787 frames in 5.0 seconds = 1957.329 FPS
9890 frames in 5.0 seconds = 1977.899 FPS

[bridgman]

Ahh, now that's more like it

[sastraxi]

Now if only someone would create bleeding-edge git .deb files for those packages...

(hopeful)