FGLRX Catalyst and Resizing with Desktop Effects

[zx2c4]

Many users, including myself, have experienced the following problem: resizing windows with desktop effects (kwin, compiz, compositing, etc) turned on is excruciatingly slow. But for the most part, other operations are snappy and ordinary. Resizing windows with desktop effects turned on is painful.

Many have simply said "oh this is an unfortunate driver bug and you'll just have to wait until ATI fixes it," but I am not satisfied with this lackluster response. Sure it's a driver bug, but it seems so dire that there must be some work around, some fix, some anything to make window resizing acceptable.

Many have "suggested" a few of the standard flags for xorg.conf that are generally used to speed things up, but these suggestions are just guesses and after reading through countless forum posts, it seems like the usual bag of tricks won't work to fix this horrid resizing bug. And assume that disabling desktop effects is out of the question.

So Phoronix forum members, I look to you for help: how can I have desktop effects and resizing with acceptable speed? I would like to both have my cake and eat it, so to speak. What shall I do?

Other failed forum attempts so that you don't repeat false solutions:

http://www.phoronix.com/forums/showthread.php?t=14848

http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=59315

http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=165011

Stats:
gentoo linux
x86-64
xorg 7.4
xorg server 1.5.3
fglrx 9.1
kde 4.2
qt 4.4.2

[grantek]

Do you know exactly what it affects? I've never noticed "excruciatingly slow" resizing on a 4850 with Ubuntu/Compiz, but constant resizing of a window will peg a cpu core at 100%

[zx2c4]

When resizing a window by dragging from point A to point B, I have to hold the mouse button down over point B for ~2 seconds before the resizing occurs.

[Melcar]

fglrx + HD3850 w/ Ubuntu 8.04 64bit 2.6.28; both manual and automatic resizing with Compiz on is fast. Have not tried with KDE4. Guess I'm just lucky. It's rather weird that many users report different things all the time (ex. mipmaps don't work on my card but no one seems to have that same problem). I guess that's the price of distro diversity.

[zx2c4]

Looks like ubuntu/compiz users are fine. Still many many many of us have this problem. Anyone know how to fix it?

[alec]

fglrx 8.12 + xfce compositing + HD3870 = slow window resize, alt-tab, desktop switch
Spent some 8 hours trying various xorg.conf options, nothing helped. Will try 9.1 when its packaged.
AFAIK the solution is open-source driver, but its not acceptable for me. I need GPU power management to keep PC quiet.

[parepidemos]

fglrx 8.12 + xfce compositing + HD3870 = slow window resize, alt-tab, desktop switch
Spent some 8 hours trying various xorg.conf options, nothing helped. Will try 9.1 when its packaged.
AFAIK the solution is open-source driver, but its not acceptable for me. I need GPU power management to keep PC quiet.

I can confirm the problem on kde 4.2 under Ubuntu (Kubuntu) 8.10.

Don't bother with the 9.1 driver, I just installed it and the issue persists. The interesting thing to me is that this did not occur with either kde 4.1 or the 4.2 RC.

Regards

[zx2c4]

This occurred in 4.1 and 4.2 rc for me.

[zx2c4]

http://ati.cchtml.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1426

[RealNC]

Same here. Users who report that it works for them usually don't have the window contents shown while resizing. With the window contents shown, resizing is slow as hell. Maximizing windows is also slow. This has been this way for as long as I can remember and with any compositing manager I ever tried.