Arch Linux

ChiefNX

Member

Registered: 2008-04-07

Posts: 4

xmonad performance

Yesterday I decided to switch from Gentoo back to Arch. Up until this point, all has gone swimmingly - Arch is even better than I remember it to be!

The Problem

After installing xorg, I got the catalyst ATI drivers working (surprisingly easy, for a change) and installed fluxbox (which I like to use as a "fallback" window manager) and shortly after, xmonad. After messing around copying over all my xmonad configs and scripts into my home directory and getting it all to work, I decided to start testing out the drivers to see how well everything was working.

On fluxbox, the drivers seem to be working excellently - I get ~3300 fps on glxgears.

On xmonad however, performance is really poor. I get ~300 fps (!) with my dzen scripts running in the background and about ~500 fps with a blank config. (Should there even be this discrepancy?)

Any ideas as to why this is the case?

A few details

Card: Radeon x550

I get this error when X closes, but I'm not sure that it's causing anything that bad to happen:

 
$ cat /var/log/Xorg.0.log.old | grep "^(EE)"
(EE) fglrx(0): [drm] failed to remove DRM signal handler

xorg.conf:

$ cat /etc/X11/xorg.conf | grep -iv "^#"
Section "ServerLayout"
    Identifier     "Simple Layout"
    Screen      0  "aticonfig-Screen[0]" 0 0
    InputDevice    "Mouse1" "CorePointer"
    InputDevice    "Keyboard1" "CoreKeyboard"
EndSection

Section "Files"

    RgbPath    "/usr/share/X11/rgb"
    FontPath   "/usr/share/fonts/TTF"
    FontPath    "/usr/share/fonts/local"
    FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/misc"
    FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/100dpi:unscaled"
    FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/75dpi:unscaled"
EndSection

Section "Module"

    Load  "dbe"      # Double buffer extension
    SubSection "extmod"
        Option        "omit xfree86-dga"   # don't initialise the DGA extension
    EndSubSection
    Load  "freetype"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
    Identifier  "Keyboard1"
    Driver      "kbd"
    Option        "AutoRepeat" "500 30"
    Option        "XkbRules" "xorg"
    Option        "XkbModel" "pc104"
    Option        "XkbLayout" "gb"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
    Identifier  "Mouse1"
    Driver      "mouse"
    Option        "Protocol" "Auto"    # Auto detect
    Option        "Device" "/dev/input/mice"
    Option        "ZAxisMapping" "4 5 6 7"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
    Identifier   "aticonfig-Monitor[0]"
    Option        "VendorName" "ATI Proprietary Driver"
    Option        "ModelName" "Generic Autodetecting Monitor"
    Option        "DPMS" "true"
EndSection

Section "Device"
        #VideoRam    131072
    Identifier  "default"
    Driver      "vesa"
EndSection

Section "Device"
    Identifier  "aticonfig-Device[0]"
    Driver      "fglrx"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
    Identifier "aticonfig-Screen[0]"
    Device     "aticonfig-Device[0]"
    Monitor    "aticonfig-Monitor[0]"
    DefaultDepth     24
    SubSection "Display"
        Viewport   0 0
        Depth     24
        Modes    "1280x1024" "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
    EndSubSection
EndSection

Any ideas?

choener

Member

Registered: 2008-01-10

Posts: 22

Re: xmonad performance

The bigger the glxgears window, the fewer the frames per second. And xmonad displays in fullscreen per default. Did you have the same windows size with both window managers?

ChiefNX

Member

Registered: 2008-04-07

Posts: 4

Re: xmonad performance

Oh good point!

What an idiot you've made me feel.

peets

Member

From: Montreal

Registered: 2007-01-11

Posts: 936

Website

Re: xmonad performance

choener, That's probably the most pertinent first post I've ever seen.

ChiefNX: for completeness, can you run the test in fluxbox at fullscreen?

Last edited by peets (2008-04-07 22:17:22)

ChiefNX

Member

Registered: 2008-04-07

Posts: 4

Re: xmonad performance

All is well, it appears.

Fluxbox: ~336
xmonad: ~336
twm: ~336

peets

Member

From: Montreal

Registered: 2007-01-11

Posts: 936

Website

Re: xmonad performance

I've been supposed to try xmonad for a few months, so this is reassuing! Thanks.

Last edited by peets (2008-04-08 12:12:02)

choener

Member

Registered: 2008-01-10

Posts: 22

Re: xmonad performance

To give some more assuring thoughts: a window manager should only become active if you manage a window (move, resize, ...) so it has no effect at all while playing a game or watching a film.

Edit:
And thanks, peets, for the comment!

Last edited by choener (2008-04-08 20:37:17)