Twaek r500 card with radeon driver...

[hirolau]

Hi. My friends wanted me to play a game so i rebooted into Windows for the first time in a year.

I got quite sad when i realised how smooth the 2d graphics in Windows are compared with my Kubuntu install. Also the card is making a high frequency pitch noise in Kubuntu that is not present during a Windows session.

So this is the current setup:

Latest kubuntu beta.
ATI Radeon Mobility FireGL v5200 (r500 or m56)

Thats it. I have not created any xorg.conf. I have not changed anything. The question now is:

For my card, how should I achieve the best 2d performance? Radeon or RadeonHD? Should I create a xorg.conf? or can you edit setting in any other way?

Thx
Harald

[EmbraceUnity]

Make sure you have the latest of everything,

Then try playing around with these xorg.conf settings:

Option "AccelMethod" "EXA"
Option "EnablePageFlip" "on"
Option "DynamicClocks" "1"
Option "AccelDFS" "1"
Option "DMAForXv" "1"
Option "MigrationHeuristic" "greedy"
Option "ColorTiling" "on"

[agd5f]

Make sure you have the latest of everything,

Then try playing around with these xorg.conf settings:

Unfortunately, KDE tends to use paths that are not well accelerated with open source drivers. You'll probably have better luck with the current stuff on GNOME. That said, KDE should perform much better with the latest xserver bits.

Option "AccelMethod" "EXA"

This should definitely help, especially with newer xservers.

Option "EnablePageFlip" "on"

Pageflipping is only implemented on r1xx-r3xx chips and only affects 3D.

Option "DynamicClocks" "1"

This may save a bit of power which may keep the card cooler and hence the fan quieter depending on how much clock gating stuff the bios enables by default.

Option "AccelDFS" "1"

This option is on by default on PCI/PCIE cards.

Option "DMAForXv" "1"

This option is on by default.

Option "MigrationHeuristic" "greedy"

You shouldn't need to mess with this option.

Option "ColorTiling" "on"

This is also on by default.

[einaudi]

I got quite sad when i realised how smooth the 2d graphics in Windows are compared with my Kubuntu install.

Same impression here
Conclusion is that X is far behind even against 6 years old windows XP, and sadly pace of development is quite relaxed. Hope in KMS/GEM/DRI2 but they are at least 7 mounth away (we'll see in kernel .31 and (k)ubuntu 9.10 if all go the right way).

[kraftman]

Same impression here
Conclusion is that X is far behind even against 6 years old windows XP, and sadly pace of development is quite relaxed. Hope in KMS/GEM/DRI2 but they are at least 7 mounth away (we'll see in kernel .31 and (k)ubuntu 9.10 if all go the right way).

Don't judge all X just, because 2D is slow

[rohcQaH]

Conclusion is that X is far behind even against 6 years old windows XP

yeah, you'd expect the more recent X Window System to be way more modern and surely faster. After all, it's only 25 years old.

[suokko]

Option "MigrationHeuristic" "smart"

In my experience this gives the best overall response times when using gnome. specially firefox scrolling and resize is improved. Also wine gets nice 2D performance boost.

Greedy takes less cpu time but as usually is case cpu isn't 100 % loaded then taking a bit extra cycles in cpu won't harm you.

[hirolau]

Thank you!

But i still need to clear up some small things here. I do not have any xorg.conf so all my settings right now are auto detected.

If I want to enable these options, do i have to create a xorg.conf or can i add them some place else. If I need to create a xorg.conf, do i need to setup all setting, or will it auto detect the missing ones?

[b15hop]

Option "MigrationHeuristic" "smart"

In my experience this gives the best overall response times when using gnome. specially firefox scrolling and resize is improved. Also wine gets nice 2D performance boost.

Greedy takes less cpu time but as usually is case cpu isn't 100 % loaded then taking a bit extra cycles in cpu won't harm you.

So are you saying "smart" is faster than "greedy"? Which one is faster?

[suokko]

sudo dpkg-reconfigure -phigh xserver-xorg

Then you will have xorg.conf in place

my xorg.conf looks like this:

#long comment explaining xorg.conf
Section "Device"
        Identifier      "Configured Video Device"
        Option          "MigrationHeuristic" "smart"
        Option          "DynamicClocks" "on"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
        Identifier      "Configured Monitor"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
        Identifier      "Default Screen"
        Monitor         "Configured Monitor"
        Device          "Configured Video Device"
EndSection

In jaunty EXA is enabled by default for radeon drivers so you don't need to set it.