Please write about NVidia's 2D performance problems

[energyman]

Well, let's see. They could just start supporting Nouveau with specs and manpower like AMD/ATi and Intel do for the respective openource driver projects.

but that would be reasonable. Oh noes!

[nanonyme]

Yes, well ATI and Intel cards have a very promising future. But what about nvidia? AFAIK the GPL nature of KMS/GEM/Gallium stuff doesn't allow them to implement it in their closed-source driver.

Well, let's see. They could just start supporting Nouveau with specs and manpower like AMD/ATi and Intel do for the respective openource driver projects.

[unimatrix]

Well, in that case this is not necessarily a problem with the nVidia drivers, it is something that has different causes. Discussing it in this thread is not really appropriate since it would make people blame one part of the system when others are responsible.

That's why I'd like to get to the core of this issue. To blame the right part.
The thing that bothers me is, many people claim they do not have this problem. Just today I spoke to somebody on IRC who uses similar software. He's using the 180 nvidia driver with default xorg.conf settings. That is what lead me to believe that it is a problem with nvidia. But on the other hand, my older computer (Celeron 2GHz) has an ATI card in it and the situation is even worse. So it's really confusing and I would love to get to the bottom of this.

Everyone has different expectations when it comes to using a computer, for some it's applications that matter, for others the eye candy, some value responsiveness while others place number crunching performance on top.

And I firmly believe that Linux has the potential of doing all of that

I never gave it much thought because I care more for using a free OS than snappy text-boxes, but it is a nagging problem and one that gives newcomers a feel of "slowness" that they associate with the whole OS...

Exactly. This has to be fixed. It is most likely one of the greatest obstacles in desktop Linux adoption.
It's why people claim Linux is slower than Windows, when in reality it's not - for example Mathematica on Linux calculates twice as fast than on Windows on my computer.

Perhaps this should be addressed more seriously by the X.Org/Qt/GTK/etc. devs, there are certainly ways of improving it without switching to a whole different display system like Wayland (which AFAIK does not work on nVidia yet). I'd start bugging them on mailing lists and bug trackers, but wait until the whole KMS/GEM/Gallium thing stabilizes, there's little hope of any kind of improvement until then.

Yes, well ATI and Intel cards have a very promising future. But what about nvidia? AFAIK the GPL nature of KMS/GEM/Gallium stuff doesn't allow them to implement it in their closed-source driver.

[mgc8]

I suspected Xorg was to blame. I have tried it with nv too, and it wasn't any better. Possibly even worse.

Well, in that case this is not necessarily a problem with the nVidia drivers, it is something that has different causes. Discussing it in this thread is not really appropriate since it would make people blame one part of the system when others are responsible.

So my question is, is there anything that can be done about it? If not, then I'm afraid Linux will never be a successful desktop OS

Everyone has different expectations when it comes to using a computer, for some it's applications that matter, for others the eye candy, some value responsiveness while others place number crunching performance on top.

Up to this stage, GNU/Linux as an OS was never seriously developed for the Desktop, there are only some attempts from distros like Ubuntu or Suse to improve performance, but that's it. The kernel was originally only optimized for server use, nowadays there is serious work going on to bring desktop features like KMS and better desktop-optimized scheduling into it, but it's a slow process... Likewise, X.Org as the only display option right now has a design based around client-server fuctionality, not lightning-fast desktop use. It can do things that are impossible in other OS'es, but at the same time it introduces difficult-to-solve performance problems. Furthermore, the whole driver stack is undergoing significant changes on the ATI and Intel sides, so there are plenty of bugs and regressions to be solved there.

That being said, as far back as I remember (and that's around 10 years), 2D acceleration was always poor in Linux and never on par with either *win or MacOSX. I never gave it much thought because I care more for using a free OS than snappy text-boxes, but it is a nagging problem and one that gives newcomers a feel of "slowness" that they associate with the whole OS... Perhaps this should be addressed more seriously by the X.Org/Qt/GTK/etc. devs, there are certainly ways of improving it without switching to a whole different display system like Wayland (which AFAIK does not work on nVidia yet). I'd start bugging them on mailing lists and bug trackers, but wait until the whole KMS/GEM/Gallium thing stabilizes, there's little hope of any kind of improvement until then.

[nanonyme]

No compiz in this video. Compiz hides this with its animations that not many of us want because they represent even larger delays.

It's different even without the animations though. If they're using double-buffering (which I'd assume they do), they can draw the window completely in backbuffer, then flip it into frontbuffer and user only sees it a) not drawn b) completely drawn.

[unimatrix]

I made a video of a messagebox appearing: http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/121855/pub/blip.avi
See how some parts of it appear with an annoying delay? It's not that bad, but it's annoying.

Here's the video in slow motion: http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/121855/pu...low_motion.avi
(If it doesn't work in VLC, thank Avidemux).

PS: No compiz in this video. Compiz hides this with its animations that not many of us want because they represent even larger delays.

[unimatrix]

Right. That'd be similar to what I've seen on a different card and drivers too so might be X itself. I found compositing helped a bit in some latency cases but made some others a bit slower.

Yes, same in my case. Compositing greatly reduces CPU usage in plenty of cases (in result things run smoother), but also reduces performance in other cases. See my GtkPerf test results: http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/show...2&postcount=26

EDIT: Since this is most likely a problem with X, I really wish I could try out Wayland. Anyone know if it works with nvidia drivers?

[nanonyme]

Right. That'd be similar to what I've seen on a different card and drivers too so might be X itself. I found compositing helped a bit in some latency cases but made some others a bit slower.

[unimatrix]

How long are they? Sub-second pauses or longer? Sub-second pauses are plenty frustrating too, just wondering if you're experiencing the same I am.

Yes, definitely sub-second.

A nice example would be unminimizing a window in Metacity. You can literally see how the window border appears with a delay, after the window content.
Or scrolling the music collection in Rhythmbox. Scroll clearly lags behind the mouse cursor.

[nanonyme]

It is just too frustrating to have all these tiny delays when minimizing/maximizind, opening/closing windows and especially the scrolling lag.

How long are they? Sub-second pauses or longer? Sub-second pauses are plenty frustrating too, just wondering if you're experiencing the same I am.