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#101 2009-04-17 14:31:49

eldragon
Member
From: Buenos Aires
Registered: 2008-11-18
Posts: 1,029

Re: Intel 945GM, Xorg, Kernel - performance

gborzi wrote:

I don't think DRI is really needed, I tried using the "bare" ubuntu xorg.conf and got similar results.

Section "Device"
      Identifier      "Configured Video Device"
      Driver      "intel"
EndSection

Take a look at /var/log/Xorg.0.log to see which option is really used.

ive been reading, and only options being used are the ones i proposed, it tries to use DRI2 and fails (normal)

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#102 2009-04-17 17:36:58

gborzi
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From: Sicilia
Registered: 2009-03-18
Posts: 102

Re: Intel 945GM, Xorg, Kernel - performance

I tried separately "MigrationHeuristic" "greedy" and "AccelMethod" "XAA". The former doesn't affect performance at all, the latter gives a worser performance for glxgears, 3D games are unaffected. Obviously using intel-legacy.


Giuseppe Borzi' - Registered Linux user #34028

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#103 2009-04-17 18:04:47

eldragon
Member
From: Buenos Aires
Registered: 2008-11-18
Posts: 1,029

Re: Intel 945GM, Xorg, Kernel - performance

gborzi wrote:

I tried separately "MigrationHeuristic" "greedy" and "AccelMethod" "XAA". The former doesn't affect performance at all, the latter gives a worser performance for glxgears, 3D games are unaffected. Obviously using intel-legacy.

one last thing i had to do in order go get descent 3d performance is include "intel_agp drm i915" to the list of MODULES in /etc/mkinitcpio.conf, i still dont know why i have to.

im using 2.7.0 from aur's xf86-video-intel-newest, give it a go, and reinstall kernel26 for it to take effect. oh, you will have to reboot wink

EDIT: and for accelmethod, im using EXA, not XAA, i havent tried with XAA.

Last edited by eldragon (2009-04-17 18:05:20)

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#104 2009-04-17 19:07:21

gborzi
Member
From: Sicilia
Registered: 2009-03-18
Posts: 102

Re: Intel 945GM, Xorg, Kernel - performance

eldragon wrote:

one last thing i had to do in order go get descent 3d performance is include "intel_agp drm i915" to the list of MODULES in /etc/mkinitcpio.conf, i still dont know why i have to.

I think it's needed for Kernel Mode Setting, see here. I've used the "late" activation. Did you put "options i915 modeset=1" in /etc/modprobe.conf ?

im using 2.7.0 from aur's xf86-video-intel-newest, give it a go, and reinstall kernel26 for it to take effect. oh, you will have to reboot wink

I've tried xf86-video-intel-newest when it used the release candidates, the latest is the same as the xf86-video-intel in testing, same source and no patches or different configure options.

EDIT: and for accelmethod, im using EXA, not XAA, i havent tried with XAA.

I'm not shure, but I think the old XAA acceleration isn't available with the new driver.


Giuseppe Borzi' - Registered Linux user #34028

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#105 2009-04-17 19:12:22

eldragon
Member
From: Buenos Aires
Registered: 2008-11-18
Posts: 1,029

Re: Intel 945GM, Xorg, Kernel - performance

gborzi wrote:
eldragon wrote:

one last thing i had to do in order go get descent 3d performance is include "intel_agp drm i915" to the list of MODULES in /etc/mkinitcpio.conf, i still dont know why i have to.

I think it's needed for Kernel Mode Setting, see here. I've used the "late" activation. Did you put "options i915 modeset=1" in /etc/modprobe.conf ?

im using 2.7.0 from aur's xf86-video-intel-newest, give it a go, and reinstall kernel26 for it to take effect. oh, you will have to reboot wink

I've tried xf86-video-intel-newest when it used the release candidates, the latest is the same as the xf86-video-intel in testing, same source and no patches or different configure options.

EDIT: and for accelmethod, im using EXA, not XAA, i havent tried with XAA.

I'm not shure, but I think the old XAA acceleration isn't available with the new driver.

yes, i know its used for KMS, but after an update, i had huge performance issues with EXA.. compiz would give a white cube, and lots of problems....adding those modules to the initial load fixed those issues for me. even if im not using KMS, i had to do it. no harm there though.

i suggest you do that and report back. maybe you are having the same issue.

about the aur package, i cannot find the i686 version in testing, so im using AUR's, its true its the same. when the i686 version reaches testing, i'll switch

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#106 2009-04-17 20:31:04

gborzi
Member
From: Sicilia
Registered: 2009-03-18
Posts: 102

Re: Intel 945GM, Xorg, Kernel - performance

eldragon wrote:

yes, i know its used for KMS, but after an update, i had huge performance issues with EXA.. compiz would give a white cube, and lots of problems....adding those modules to the initial load fixed those issues for me. even if im not using KMS, i had to do it. no harm there though.

i suggest you do that and report back. maybe you are having the same issue.

about the aur package, i cannot find the i686 version in testing, so im using AUR's, its true its the same. when the i686 version reaches testing, i'll switch

I tried your suggestion, i.e. to add intel_agp and i915 in mkinitcpio.conf and rebuild the images (I actually used "mkinitcpio -p kernel26" to rebuild the images, instead of reinstalling). The performance is still bad but I didn't see the slightly garbled menus.
glxgears gives 150-200 FPS, gtkperf -a takes 39s, assaultcube unplayable at ~8 FPS. I also retried KMS with the early activation, getting better performances (but still well below the intel-legacy driver) but garbled menus and strange behaviour for gtkperf (no visible ComboBox). So I have reverted to intel-legacy and disabled KMS, but left intel_agp and i915 in kernel images. Perhaps the difference is due to the different architecture we two are using, i.e. x86_64 and i686.


Giuseppe Borzi' - Registered Linux user #34028

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#107 2009-04-17 20:49:48

karabaja4
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From: Croatia
Registered: 2008-09-14
Posts: 997
Website

Re: Intel 945GM, Xorg, Kernel - performance

I wonder if intel cards will ever work properly again in 3D (compared to performance in Windows XP with the same card)?

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#108 2009-04-18 13:31:03

Llama
Banned
From: St.-Petersburg, Russia
Registered: 2008-03-03
Posts: 1,379

Re: Intel 945GM, Xorg, Kernel - performance

I did everythins as in Allan's howto; it works, but I have a couple of questions:

(1) The boot process looks quite ugly. First, it runs in a default vga resolution; then it changes somewhere about the loading of modules to native (1280x800), but runs on the left half of the screen; after entering runlevel 3 it runs normally, at last. BTW, I had to put intel_agp and i915 in MODULES=(...) (/etc/rc.conf) which isn't a part of Allan's howto. Does it ring a bell?

(2) After that, X doesn't start any faster. Yes, Ctrl-Alt-F1 becomes really snappy smile . Is it the much sought after benefit big_smile ?

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#109 2009-04-18 14:16:21

eldragon
Member
From: Buenos Aires
Registered: 2008-11-18
Posts: 1,029

Re: Intel 945GM, Xorg, Kernel - performance

karabaja4 wrote:

I wonder if intel cards will ever work properly again in 3D (compared to performance in Windows XP with the same card)?

im sure they will, we just have to wait a bit.... after all, there have been important changes to the driver these last monthes...

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#110 2009-04-18 14:33:21

Damnshock
Member
From: Barcelona
Registered: 2006-09-13
Posts: 414

Re: Intel 945GM, Xorg, Kernel - performance

karabaja4 wrote:

I wonder if intel cards will ever work properly again in 3D (compared to performance in Windows XP with the same card)?

Wanna know what? I do not know how my intel card worked on Windows 'cause never actually used it. First thing I did when I got this laptop was install archlinux on it!

Anyway, I just set up KMS and the performance has imprived quite a bit! KDE 4.2 with composite effects works almost perfectly.

Drawbacks? Screen is "cut" on my external monitor while I'm at the terminal, I mean it does not get to the bottom although the resolution seems to be correct (1920x1080).

Nothing else to say after 20minutes of using it, I'll be back if I find something worth to mention! smile


My blog: blog.marcdeop.com
Jabber ID: damnshock@jabber.org

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#111 2009-04-18 14:58:30

breakdown
Member
From: Italy
Registered: 2009-03-04
Posts: 14

Re: Intel 945GM, Xorg, Kernel - performance

Llama wrote:

(1) The boot process looks quite ugly. First, it runs in a default vga resolution; then it changes somewhere about the loading of modules to native (1280x800), but runs on the left half of the screen; after entering runlevel 3 it runs normally, at last. BTW, I had to put intel_agp and i915 in MODULES=(...) (/etc/rc.conf) which isn't a part of Allan's howto. Does it ring a bell?

Just compile intel_agp and i915 as built-in kernel options instead of modules, and should work.

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#112 2009-04-19 02:05:16

gborzi
Member
From: Sicilia
Registered: 2009-03-18
Posts: 102

Re: Intel 945GM, Xorg, Kernel - performance

Finally I got xf86-video-intel 2.6.3 working with good performance, better than xf86-video-intel-legacy. Without enabling KMS, I only added

Option      "Tiling" "false"

in xorg.conf. I decided to try this option after reading some error messages in /var/log/Xorg.0.log about the failure to allocate buffer for tiling. Googling I found some suggestions about disabling tiling.
My current benchmarks
glxgears ~700 FPS, gtkperf -a ~18 seconds, assaultcube ~50 FPS, torcs 15-20 FPS, tremulous ~60 FPS.
And compiz at 140+ FPS.

Hope this helps.


Giuseppe Borzi' - Registered Linux user #34028

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#113 2009-04-19 06:57:22

moljac024
Member
From: Serbia
Registered: 2008-01-29
Posts: 2,676

Re: Intel 945GM, Xorg, Kernel - performance

gborzi wrote:

Finally I got xf86-video-intel 2.6.3 working with good performance, better than xf86-video-intel-legacy. Without enabling KMS, I only added

Option      "Tiling" "false"

in xorg.conf. I decided to try this option after reading some error messages in /var/log/Xorg.0.log about the failure to allocate buffer for tiling. Googling I found some suggestions about disabling tiling.
My current benchmarks
glxgears ~700 FPS, gtkperf -a ~18 seconds, assaultcube ~50 FPS, torcs 15-20 FPS, tremulous ~60 FPS.
And compiz at 140+ FPS.

Hope this helps.

And what chipset ? 945G, GM965... something else ?


EDIT: Ok, that was a stupid question, considering the thread title....what happened to the option of deleting your post ? big_smile

Last edited by moljac024 (2009-04-19 07:34:07)


The day Microsoft makes a product that doesn't suck, is the day they make a vacuum cleaner.
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#114 2009-04-19 09:46:20

Dr4go
Member
Registered: 2008-08-24
Posts: 37

Re: Intel 945GM, Xorg, Kernel - performance

@ gborzi: Yes, there are a few bugs in the current drm-intel code inside the intel driver and the linux kernel. Just wanted to tell, that - as soon as v2.6.30-rc3 comes out - you should re-enable tiling on 945 and/or 965 again. Well... at least when you are using the Intel driver v2.7. wink

The combination of v2.6.30-rc3 and v2.7 should _finally_ work awesome. smile

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#115 2009-04-19 12:31:33

gborzi
Member
From: Sicilia
Registered: 2009-03-18
Posts: 102

Re: Intel 945GM, Xorg, Kernel - performance

@moljac024
It's not a stupid question, I've read some post in this thread by people with a different GPU. Mine is a 945GM.
@Dr4go
From what I've read on the net (mainly an ubuntu bug report and the following discussion) it's a bug in the i915 kernel module code. There is a kernel26 (2.6.29-4) in testing now and I've read that with kernel26-2.6.29-2 (it was in testing, never hit the core repo) things worked fine and broke with the current kernel26. I'll try this new kernel and the intel driver 2.7.0 and report the results.


Giuseppe Borzi' - Registered Linux user #34028

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#116 2009-04-19 13:50:09

Shapeshifter
Member
Registered: 2008-03-11
Posts: 230

Re: Intel 945GM, Xorg, Kernel - performance

Turning off tiling fixed the performance issues for me. Awesome!

Two things are still broken:
- Weird transparency issues when setting opacity <100% on a window
- Sub-pixel font smoothing on these transparency-broken windows.

This screenshot illustrates this quite well. The windows on the left have 95% transparency, the ones on the right have 100%. The left ones are broken, and font smoothing ain't working. I also miss font smoothing in urxvt, although there's no transparency-brokenness:

kmsfail3.png

Anyone else seeing this? Solutions?

Last edited by Shapeshifter (2009-04-19 14:01:18)

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#117 2009-04-19 15:20:47

gborzi
Member
From: Sicilia
Registered: 2009-03-18
Posts: 102

Re: Intel 945GM, Xorg, Kernel - performance

@Shapeshifter
I don't have this problem, but it may appear only for some theme/gtk engine/application. So, which theme, gtk engine and application did you use for the above screenshots? BTW, in the meantime I tried xf86-video-intel from testing with the current core kernel26 and disabled tiling. It works like 2.6.3 for gtkperf, compiz and glxgears, but the 3D games I mentioned previously are slower, expecially assaultcube.
Also, with intel-legacy I experienced some Xorg crash while playing with glest, now with intel 2.6.3 it doesn't crash anymore.


Giuseppe Borzi' - Registered Linux user #34028

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#118 2009-04-19 17:17:19

eldragon
Member
From: Buenos Aires
Registered: 2008-11-18
Posts: 1,029

Re: Intel 945GM, Xorg, Kernel - performance

Shapeshifter wrote:

Turning off tiling fixed the performance issues for me. Awesome!

Two things are still broken:
- Weird transparency issues when setting opacity <100% on a window
- Sub-pixel font smoothing on these transparency-broken windows.

This screenshot illustrates this quite well. The windows on the left have 95% transparency, the ones on the right have 100%. The left ones are broken, and font smoothing ain't working. I also miss font smoothing in urxvt, although there's no transparency-brokenness:

http://stuff.moritzg.ch/kmsfail3.png

Anyone else seeing this? Solutions?

thats a known bug when using UXA....the infamouse alpha channel gets lost somewhere, and then treated FF, which in turn when added to background saturates the image....i dont know if there is a fix for it yet.....live with it, or use EXA

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#119 2009-04-20 10:24:45

vinvin
Member
Registered: 2009-03-12
Posts: 24

Re: Intel 945GM, Xorg, Kernel - performance

It seems that putting the Tiling option to false is the answer to everything to me.
I have the better 3D performance ever with my 915GM.
Thanks a lot gborzi for this tip!

I also installed the intel driver 2.7 from testing, and i have no problem with it.

edit: Oh yeah, KMS + UXA is fine, excepts that I forgot that waking up from sleep didn't work with my chip.

Last edited by vinvin (2009-04-20 12:41:50)

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#120 2009-04-20 15:31:09

gborzi
Member
From: Sicilia
Registered: 2009-03-18
Posts: 102

Re: Intel 945GM, Xorg, Kernel - performance

Today I updated the kernel to 2.6.29-4, nothing seems to have changed for the intel driver on my system.


Giuseppe Borzi' - Registered Linux user #34028

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#121 2009-04-20 15:54:36

eldragon
Member
From: Buenos Aires
Registered: 2008-11-18
Posts: 1,029

Re: Intel 945GM, Xorg, Kernel - performance

gborzi wrote:

Today I updated the kernel to 2.6.29-4, nothing seems to have changed for the intel driver on my system.

i think that update has nothing to do with graphics.... wink

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#122 2009-04-20 16:19:22

Damnshock
Member
From: Barcelona
Registered: 2006-09-13
Posts: 414

Re: Intel 945GM, Xorg, Kernel - performance

eldragon wrote:
gborzi wrote:

Today I updated the kernel to 2.6.29-4, nothing seems to have changed for the intel driver on my system.

i think that update has nothing to do with graphics.... wink

Sometimes it might have something to do. Keep in mind that there have been some graphics related staff merged into ther kernel (GEM, if I'm not wrong is an example as well as KMS).


My blog: blog.marcdeop.com
Jabber ID: damnshock@jabber.org

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#123 2009-04-20 16:46:15

eldragon
Member
From: Buenos Aires
Registered: 2008-11-18
Posts: 1,029

Re: Intel 945GM, Xorg, Kernel - performance

Damnshock wrote:
eldragon wrote:
gborzi wrote:

Today I updated the kernel to 2.6.29-4, nothing seems to have changed for the intel driver on my system.

i think that update has nothing to do with graphics.... wink

Sometimes it might have something to do. Keep in mind that there have been some graphics related staff merged into ther kernel (GEM, if I'm not wrong is an example as well as KMS).

from 2.6.29.1-3 to 2.6.29.1-4: patches applied had nothing to do with graphics, thats what i meant.

in fact, straight from the horse's mouth: thats what that update was about.

> > http://bugs.archlinux.org/task/14263
> > http://bugs.archlinux.org/task/12992

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#124 2009-04-22 08:48:08

Dr4go
Member
Registered: 2008-08-24
Posts: 37

Re: Intel 945GM, Xorg, Kernel - performance

Dr4go wrote:

[...]
The combination of v2.6.30-rc3 and v2.7 should _finally_ work awesome. smile

Just to correct myself... I thought the drm kernel fix would make it into the rc3 of the kernel version 2.6.30, which indeed was a mistake, because it didn't happen. I guess we have to wait until rc4 then (or merging it on our own). wink

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#125 2009-04-22 12:38:24

bangkok_manouel
Member
From: indicates a starting point
Registered: 2005-02-07
Posts: 1,556

Re: Intel 945GM, Xorg, Kernel - performance

Dr4go wrote:
Dr4go wrote:

[...]
The combination of v2.6.30-rc3 and v2.7 should _finally_ work awesome. smile

Just to correct myself... I thought the drm kernel fix would make it into the rc3 of the kernel version 2.6.30, which indeed was a mistake, because it didn't happen. I guess we have to wait until rc4 then (or merging it on our own). wink

FTR, the patch is available here

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