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#1 2013-07-19 20:41:42

twistedcubic
Member
Registered: 2012-03-01
Posts: 22

Computer acting sluggish, I supsect it's a video driver issue

Granted, the computer I'm running is not too new, I realize major lags when switching tabs in a web browser (tried multiple browsers), or when switching apps via ctrl-tab, etc.

Running top in the background, I notice that when I do such a thing the cpu usage on X jumps to the first spot on the top list. I'm running the "xf86-video-ati" driver on a 

01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] RV280 [Radeon 9200 PRO] (rev 01)

Running a very light system (just openbox and a browser open, no compositing..)

If it's of any relevance I'm running a xrandr script in the autostart of openbox to set up dual monitors.


Any ideas...?

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#2 2013-07-20 02:01:48

stqn
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Registered: 2010-03-19
Posts: 1,191
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Re: Computer acting sluggish, I supsect it's a video driver issue

What about swap usage (free -m) and temperatures? If it’s summer where you live, maybe something is overheating.

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#3 2013-07-20 05:13:34

twistedcubic
Member
Registered: 2012-03-01
Posts: 22

Re: Computer acting sluggish, I supsect it's a video driver issue

stqn wrote:

What about swap usage (free -m) and temperatures? If it’s summer where you live, maybe something is overheating.

free -m has indicated that no swap space has been used, and it's always been this way. I don't think anything is overheating, sensors is showing normal temperatures.

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#4 2013-07-20 20:00:41

ConnorBehan
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From: Long Island NY
Registered: 2007-07-05
Posts: 1,359
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Re: Computer acting sluggish, I supsect it's a video driver issue

Are you using the PCI or AGP version? There are several entries for your card on http://free3d.org which also list options people used. So you can compare that to the glxgears framerate you are getting. Since the problems you are mentioning are 2D though, the more useful tests are probably part of "x11perf". I don't know if there's a site for comparing those.

To see if bus throughput is the issue, you can try booting with radeon.benchmark=1. It will print how many MB/s are being transferred to dmesg.


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#5 2013-07-24 01:59:40

twistedcubic
Member
Registered: 2012-03-01
Posts: 22

Re: Computer acting sluggish, I supsect it's a video driver issue

ConnorBehan wrote:

Are you using the PCI or AGP version? There are several entries for your card on http://free3d.org which also list options people used. So you can compare that to the glxgears framerate you are getting. Since the problems you are mentioning are 2D though, the more useful tests are probably part of "x11perf". I don't know if there's a site for comparing those.

To see if bus throughput is the issue, you can try booting with radeon.benchmark=1. It will print how many MB/s are being transferred to dmesg.

Thanks for your response. I'm using the AGP version. Adding some of the parameters to the conf file I was able to increase the FPS from ~830 to ~1130.

Using the benchmark in the kernel parameters, dmesg reports four numbers: 229 MB/s, 998 MB/s, 572 MB/s, 995 MB/s. Not sure why I'm getting 4 distinct numbers. Does this give you any useful information?

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