Arch Linux

sjb933

Member

Registered: 2007-01-18

Posts: 113

Open source ATI driver, flash 10 slow

I'm running Arch on a Thinkpad T42:
- 1.7Ghz Pentium M
- ATI 9600 (open source driver)
- Xorg 1.6.3

Direct rendering works, and compiz works fine.  My problem is with Xorg CPU usage when playing any flash movie.  A youtube vid (not HD or HQ) will run in the mid to upper 90% range CPU usage resulting in some pretty choppy video. 

Does that imply that I'm not getting any GPU accel on flash?  If so, is there something I can do to change that?  I'm using swiftfox as well.

My xorg.conf file is fairly empty -- i just added a few video tweaks:

[shane@arch-laptop ~]$ cat /etc/X11/xorg.conf
Section "Module"
  Load  "glx"
  Load  "dri"
  Load  "drm"
EndSection

Section "Device"
 Identifier "ati_card"                     # your alias
 Driver "radeon"
   Option "AGPMode" "4"
       Option "ColorTiling" "on"
Option "AccelMethod" "EXA"
#Option "EnablePageFlip" "on" 
#Option "AGPFastWrite" "yes"

EndSection

Any ideas?

Last edited by sjb933 (2009-08-04 19:53:00)

flamelab

Member

From: Athens, Hellas (Greece)

Registered: 2007-12-26

Posts: 2,160

Re: Open source ATI driver, flash 10 slow

Try playing youtube videos without xorg.conf (just once). See if that works.

(PS.: I don't think Flash is GPU accelerated yet. It has generally very low performance in Linux and just low performance of Windows)

sjb933

Member

Registered: 2007-01-18

Posts: 113

Re: Open source ATI driver, flash 10 slow

^^ How can I play a flash video without xorg?  I need gui.. no?

Army

Member

Registered: 2007-12-07

Posts: 1,784

Re: Open source ATI driver, flash 10 slow

He said "without xorg.conf" xorg is able to run without its config file. I would suggest to run xorg without these options in your Section "Device" for testing, maybe they aren't as good for performance as you think (I honestly don't know, I run my ATI without any options)

sjb933

Member

Registered: 2007-01-18

Posts: 113

Re: Open source ATI driver, flash 10 slow

Oh whoops

I've run it without an xorg.conf for a while with the same problem.  I just recently added some of those options to speed up compiz a bit.

Let me put it this way:  I'm better off loading my Windows XP virtual machine (vbox) and playing flash in there than I am playing it on the native system, which is simply retarded.