[SOLVED] Very poor video frame rate after upgrade

edenyard · 2011-05-09 14:28:47

I'm relatively new to Arch, having been a Slackware user for many years (since Slack 3.5), so please treat me gently!!

I installed Arch about a month ago from the network and had everything running well, including Firefox 4.0. Today when I started the PC and ran Firefox, I received a message recommending that I install Firefox 4.0.1. I duly downloaded the Arch package for FF 4.0.1, but it wouldn't run, complaining that it couldn't load XPCOM. I searched through the Arch forums and found a suggestion to run Pacman -Syu to upgrade the system. This upgraded around 140 packages, including quite a few Xorg ones.

Now I find that watching any sort of video in Xorg (e.g., The BBC weather forecast in Firefox or BBC Iplayer, or even glxgears), the frame rate particularly at full-screen is abysmal, dropping as low as around 2 (two!) frames per second. Glxgears manages around 9 frames per second. Before today's system upgrade, glxgears achieved exactly 60 frames per second at any screen size and BBC video was smooth at full-screen.

I'm guessing that the problem is somewhere in an upgraded Xorg package, but I'm completely in the dark as to where to start looking. There are no obvious problems reported in /var/log/Xorg.0.log. I could post the content of this file if required, but it's huge and would make an extremely long post.

Please could someone offer me some guidance on where to start looking for the problem and how to fix it. The hardware I'm running on is Asrock 890FX deluxe 3 motherboard, Phenom-II 955 CPU, Asus 1Gb Radeon HD5570 video card. 'uname -a' reports that the kernel is 2.6.38-ARCH.

I hope I've posted this in the right forum. If not, please advise accordingly!

Thanks in advance for any clues!

Gerald.

Last edited by edenyard (2011-05-18 13:25:39)

Lone_Wolf · 2011-05-11 18:18:48

are you using the OSS radeon drivers xf86-video-ati ?

Last edited by Lone_Wolf (2011-05-11 18:19:36)

edenyard · 2011-05-12 11:28:35

Lone_Wolf wrote:

are you using the OSS radeon drivers xf86-video-ati ?

Yes - xf86-video-ati is installed. Looking in /var/lib/pacman/local, I see that the version is xf86-video-ati-6.14.1-1 following Monday's system update.

Looking at /var/log/pacman.log, I see that pacman reports 'upgraded xf86-video-ati (6.14.0-2 -> 6.14.1-1)'.

It all worked well before Monday's system update changed lots of things.

Lone_Wolf · 2011-05-12 22:12:27

You should now have ati-dri 7.10.2 installed.

Check in /var/cache/pacman/pkg what the PREVIOUS version is of ati-dri that you had installed before the update.

From 7.10 to 7.10.1 ati-dri changed the driver for the R600 ( Radeon HD 2xxx , 3xxx , 4xxxx , 5xxxx, & 6xxxx ) from classic to gallium.
For most people this was beneficial, for others (especially those with newer cards) it wasn't.

I have a HD 4890 myself and switched to a git version of mesa (aur)

edenyard · 2011-05-13 08:47:02

Lone_Wolf wrote:

You should now have ati-dri 7.10.2 installed.
Check in /var/cache/pacman/pkg what the PREVIOUS version is of ati-dri that you had installed before the update.
From 7.10 to 7.10.1 ati-dri changed the driver for the R600 ( Radeon HD 2xxx , 3xxx , 4xxxx , 5xxxx, & 6xxxx ) from classic to gallium.
For most people this was beneficial, for others (especially those with newer cards) it wasn't.
I have a HD 4890 myself and switched to a git version of mesa (aur)

Thanks for that info!

I do indeed have ati-dri-7.10.2-2 installed now and it looks like it was installed during Monday's update.

Before that, I had ati-dri-7.10.1-1 installed from new.

What should I do now? Do I remove ati-dri using 'pacman -R' and try and install the earlier version stored locally, or is there some other better way to go?

I'm sorry - I don't understand your reference to mesa. Is this something that I should be installing? I'm not very knowledgeable about this whole graphics card business.

Thanks,
Gerald.

Lone_Wolf · 2011-05-13 19:25:59

Mesa is an implementation of OpenGL for linux that has drivers for a lot of cards.
ati-dri is 1 of the drivers that comes with mesa. the mesa version and ati-dri version are always the same.

since you went from 7.10.1 to 7.10.2 the issues i referred to are not what caused the problem, so you have a different problem.

please post your /etc/X11/xorg.conf file (if it exists)
also post what files you have in the /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d folder.

having xorg.log would also help.

Note: for large files use a site like http://pastebin.com .

edenyard · 2011-05-14 09:17:01

Many thanks for your guidance!

Lone_Wolf wrote:

please post your /etc/X11/xorg.conf file (if it exists)
also post what files you have in the /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d folder.
having xorg.log would also help.

There is no xorg.conf file in /etc/X11/.

Here is my /var/log/xorg.0.log:

http://pastebin.com/8TcY0kDV

Here is the content of my /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d folder:

http://pastebin.com/NSSnH4pD

I hope you can see those alright - I've never used Pastebin before.

Lone_Wolf · 2011-05-14 10:07:32

The files in your /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d folder are the standard ones, so they should not be the problem.

I've looked in your xorg.log, and while the problem is not clear immediately, you got several (WW) and (EE) messages in it.

[    27.795] (WW) The directory "/usr/share/fonts/OTF/" does not exist.
[    27.795]    Entry deleted from font path.
[    27.836] (WW) `fonts.dir' not found (or not valid) in "/usr/share/fonts/75dpi/".
[    27.836]    Entry deleted from font path.
[    27.836]    (Run 'mkfontdir' on "/usr/share/fonts/75dpi/").

these are safe to ignore

[    27.837] (WW) Open ACPI failed (/var/run/acpid.socket) (No such file or directory)

without acpid installed, your monitor probably won't be blanked when you're system is inactive for a while, but otherwise this should not be a problems.

(EE) Failed to load module "vesa" (module does not exist, 0)
(EE) Failed to load module "fbdev" (module does not exist, 0)

vesa and fbdev are intended as fallback options, it's better to install them.

pacman -Syu xf86-video-fbdev xf86-video-vesa

[    27.935] (WW) xf86OpenConsole: setpgid failed: Operation not permitted
[    27.935] (WW) xf86OpenConsole: setsid failed: Operation not permitted

These lines may have to do with your problem, but i don't know what they mean.
we need more info.

run gxlinfo , and post the output from top until the line with OpenGL extensions:

Last edited by Lone_Wolf (2011-05-14 10:09:11)

edenyard · 2011-05-14 11:38:42

Lone_Wolf wrote:

vesa and fbdev are intended as fallback options, it's better to install them.
pacman -Syu xf86-video-fbdev xf86-video-vesa

I ran 'pacman -Syu xf86-video-fbdev xf86-video-vesa'. This caused 37 packages to be updated (including the kernel). I rebooted but the results are no better.

Lone_Wolf wrote:

run gxlinfo , and post the output from top until the line with OpenGL extensions:

Before rebooting, I ran 'glxinfo' (I assume that's what you intended to write!). Here's the output from that:

http://pastebin.com/5mtDXJ5m

Gusar · 2011-05-14 12:04:41

Your problem is here:

OpenGL vendor string: VMware, Inc.
OpenGL renderer string: Gallium 0.4 on softpipe
OpenGL version string: 2.1 Mesa 7.10.2

The software driver is being used. Are you in the video group? That's the only thing that comes to mind. Oh, and do you have the linux-firmware package installed?

Last edited by Gusar (2011-05-14 12:05:52)

edenyard · 2011-05-14 12:24:49

Gusar wrote:

Your problem is here:
OpenGL vendor string: VMware, Inc.
OpenGL renderer string: Gallium 0.4 on softpipe
OpenGL version string: 2.1 Mesa 7.10.2
The software driver is being used. Are you in the video group? That's the only thing that comes to mind. Oh, and do you have the linux-firmware package installed?

Bingo!!

I added myself to the video group and it's now all exactly right. Smooth video everywhere. I have no idea why it worked without my being a member of the video group before Monday's system update, but there you go!

And glxinfo now reports 'OpenGL renderer string: Gallium 0.4 on AMD REDWOOD'.

Very many thanks for solving this mystery for me - I'm most grateful.

Gerald.

Last edited by edenyard (2011-05-18 13:25:58)

Arch Linux

#1 2011-05-09 14:28:47

[SOLVED] Very poor video frame rate after upgrade

#2 2011-05-11 18:18:48

Re: [SOLVED] Very poor video frame rate after upgrade

#3 2011-05-12 11:28:35

Re: [SOLVED] Very poor video frame rate after upgrade

#4 2011-05-12 22:12:27

Re: [SOLVED] Very poor video frame rate after upgrade

#5 2011-05-13 08:47:02

Re: [SOLVED] Very poor video frame rate after upgrade

#6 2011-05-13 19:25:59

Re: [SOLVED] Very poor video frame rate after upgrade

#7 2011-05-14 09:17:01

Re: [SOLVED] Very poor video frame rate after upgrade

#8 2011-05-14 10:07:32

Re: [SOLVED] Very poor video frame rate after upgrade

#9 2011-05-14 11:38:42

Re: [SOLVED] Very poor video frame rate after upgrade

#10 2011-05-14 12:04:41

Re: [SOLVED] Very poor video frame rate after upgrade

#11 2011-05-14 12:24:49

Re: [SOLVED] Very poor video frame rate after upgrade

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