KDE 4.7 with OpenGL ES 2.0 KWin backend

mahen · 2011-09-01 10:23:11

Well, I agree, in general (been using them for 6 years) but... I cannot believe there is no way to get a better kwin experience :-/

laloch · 2011-09-01 10:24:48

@mahen: this thread is about GL ES 2.0 which does not work with nvidia driver and is disabled in 4.7.0 packages.

Did you try to turn off GL 2 shaders? Blur effect?

flamelab wrote:

You'll regret it if you buy a non-nvidia GPU for Linux desktop, they are only ones which will work the best on Linux.

Yes, if you don't need/want RandR, monitor hotplug, HDMI audio, gallium, GL ES, ... ;-)

Last edited by laloch (2011-09-01 10:55:47)

mahen · 2011-09-01 16:04:01

laloch : oops, you're right ; I was assuming this was related to some extent. Maybe I should start a new thread indeed !

Yep, I did try to modify tons of options, including the ones you mentioned. But it makes no difference : windows animations are *very* jerky, opengl apps & movies playback (with VDPAU, didn't try without) are clearly skipping frames.

Can you recommend a given piece of hardware that works perfectly ? (fanless preferable

Last edited by mahen (2011-09-01 16:08:13)

laloch · 2011-09-01 16:30:43

mahen wrote:

Can you recommend a given piece of hardware that works perfectly ?

I would prefer solving the problem with your current hardware ;-)

Did you try with new, clean user profile?
Did you try with compositing enabled and all effects disabled?
Did you try another window decoration and widget style? ...yes, it matters.
Does your graphics card share interrupt with other device(s)?
Do you have ASPM enabled?

mahen · 2011-09-01 16:44:28

laloch wrote:

mahen wrote:
Can you recommend a given piece of hardware that works perfectly ?
I would prefer solving the problem with your current hardware ;-)
Did you try with new, clean user profile?
Did you try with compositing enabled and all effects disabled?
Did you try another window decoration and widget style? ...yes, it matters.
Does your graphics card share interrupt with other device(s)?
Do you have ASPM enabled?

- Tried with a clean profile : yep, no difference
- Tried with all effects disabled : yep, no difference
- Tried with another window deco... : yep, no difference
- ASPM : hmm, the KDE power settings are in "performance" mode as well my nvidia power settings ; CPU is in performance mode too.
- interrupts shared : I'm not sure how to check this one ?

Thanks for being so helpful ! Cheers !

But as I think I mentioned earlier, the situation got a lot worse when upgrading from 4.6.5 to 4.7.0 (it was not perfect before though). I re-made a clean install yesterday.

Last edited by mahen (2011-09-01 16:46:27)

mahen · 2011-09-01 17:02:58

About the last question : indeed, there a shared IRQ:

16: 26524 26442 IO-APIC-fasteoi uhci_hcd:usb3, nvidia

Whole output of cat /proc/interrupts :

            CPU0       CPU1       
   0:         47          0   IO-APIC-edge      timer
   1:        291        276   IO-APIC-edge      i8042
   8:          0          0   IO-APIC-edge      rtc0
   9:          0          0   IO-APIC-fasteoi   acpi
  16:      26524      26442   IO-APIC-fasteoi   uhci_hcd:usb3, nvidia
  17:          0          0   IO-APIC-fasteoi   pata_via
  18:          0          0   IO-APIC-fasteoi   ehci_hcd:usb1, uhci_hcd:usb8
  19:      27604      27462   IO-APIC-fasteoi   ata_piix, ata_piix, uhci_hcd:usb5, uhci_hcd:usb7
  21:          0          0   IO-APIC-fasteoi   uhci_hcd:usb4
  22:      19577      19762   IO-APIC-fasteoi   ICE1712
  23:          2          1   IO-APIC-fasteoi   ehci_hcd:usb2, uhci_hcd:usb6
  40:          0          0   PCI-MSI-edge      PCIe PME
  41:          0          0   PCI-MSI-edge      PCIe PME
  42:          0          0   PCI-MSI-edge      PCIe PME
  43:          0          0   PCI-MSI-edge      PCIe PME
  44:      16448      16503   PCI-MSI-edge      eth0
 NMI:        241        237   Non-maskable interrupts
 LOC:     280636     272513   Local timer interrupts
 SPU:          0          0   Spurious interrupts
 PMI:        241        237   Performance monitoring interrupts
 IWI:          0          0   IRQ work interrupts
 RES:     362061     363203   Rescheduling interrupts
 CAL:      19515      18326   Function call interrupts
 TLB:       6538       9627   TLB shootdowns
 TRM:          0          0   Thermal event interrupts
 THR:          0          0   Threshold APIC interrupts
 MCE:          0          0   Machine check exceptions
 MCP:          3          3   Machine check polls
 ERR:          0
 MIS:          0

Last edited by mahen (2011-09-01 17:03:22)

laloch · 2011-09-01 17:04:16

mahen wrote:

- ASPM : hmm, the KDE power settings are in "performance" mode as well my nvidia power settings ; CPU is in performance mode too.

hmm, I don't think powerdevil controls PCI powersaving features. What do

dmesg | grep -i aspm

and

cat /sys/module/pcie_aspm/parameters/policy

show?

mahen wrote:

- interrupts shared : I'm not sure how to check this one ?

cat /proc/interrupts

Edit: ooops, you were faster

mahen wrote:

But as I think I mentioned earlier, the situation got a lot worse when upgrading from 4.6.5 to 4.7.0

That's why I asked about effects. Not all 4.6 effects and decorations are supported by 4.7 even though they work.

Last edited by laloch (2011-09-01 17:05:54)

mahen · 2011-09-01 17:07:13

Heh, we answered at the same time :-)

"dmesg | grep -i aspm" returns nothing
"cat /sys/module/pcie_aspm/parameters/policy" returns "[default] performance powersave"

Cheers

laloch · 2011-09-01 17:11:55

mahen wrote:

About the last question : indeed, there a shared IRQ:

16: 26524 26442 IO-APIC-fasteoi uhci_hcd:usb3, nvidia

Whole output of cat /proc/interrupts :

            CPU0       CPU1       
   0:         47          0   IO-APIC-edge      timer
   1:        291        276   IO-APIC-edge      i8042
   8:          0          0   IO-APIC-edge      rtc0
   9:          0          0   IO-APIC-fasteoi   acpi
  16:      26524      26442   IO-APIC-fasteoi   uhci_hcd:usb3, nvidia
  17:          0          0   IO-APIC-fasteoi   pata_via
  18:          0          0   IO-APIC-fasteoi   ehci_hcd:usb1, uhci_hcd:usb8
  19:      27604      27462   IO-APIC-fasteoi   ata_piix, ata_piix, uhci_hcd:usb5, uhci_hcd:usb7
  21:          0          0   IO-APIC-fasteoi   uhci_hcd:usb4
  22:      19577      19762   IO-APIC-fasteoi   ICE1712
  23:          2          1   IO-APIC-fasteoi   ehci_hcd:usb2, uhci_hcd:usb6
  40:          0          0   PCI-MSI-edge      PCIe PME
  41:          0          0   PCI-MSI-edge      PCIe PME
  42:          0          0   PCI-MSI-edge      PCIe PME
  43:          0          0   PCI-MSI-edge      PCIe PME
  44:      16448      16503   PCI-MSI-edge      eth0
 NMI:        241        237   Non-maskable interrupts
 LOC:     280636     272513   Local timer interrupts
 SPU:          0          0   Spurious interrupts
 PMI:        241        237   Performance monitoring interrupts
 IWI:          0          0   IRQ work interrupts
 RES:     362061     363203   Rescheduling interrupts
 CAL:      19515      18326   Function call interrupts
 TLB:       6538       9627   TLB shootdowns
 TRM:          0          0   Thermal event interrupts
 THR:          0          0   Threshold APIC interrupts
 MCE:          0          0   Machine check exceptions
 MCP:          3          3   Machine check polls
 ERR:          0
 MIS:          0

That's not as bad. Still, you can try to force the nvidia driver to use message signaled interrupts by adding

options nvidia NVreg_EnableMSI=1

to your /etc/modprobe.d/modprobe.conf

laloch · 2011-09-01 17:18:09

mahen wrote:

"cat /sys/module/pcie_aspm/parameters/policy" returns "[default] performance powersave"

That should mean "performance", but you can try to disable the ASPM altogether by placing

pcie_aspm=off

at your kernel command line.

mahen · 2011-09-01 17:19:04

OK, well, the IRQ is indeed not shared anymore ! Makes no difference though

Tried the other pcie performance setting too.

Thanks again for your efforts ! But I tend to think I don't have a specific configuration issue...

Last edited by mahen (2011-09-01 17:23:29)

laloch · 2011-09-01 17:24:08

I don't tend to believe all the 9800GTX users suffer this kind of problems

mahen · 2011-09-01 17:27:54

Actually, this is actually a special "green" version rather used in laptops I guess.

nvidia-settings says 9800M GTX (and the nvidia drivers doesn't even recognize the card in Windows -- they have to be patched !)

I also tried a G210, which gave the same results. (but this is a REALLY low end card
I will double check this ASAP, but the drivers may be pretty poor, as even playing a video (when I tried with Ubuntu / compiz or not) was not perfectly smooth (actually, it was very jerky with VDPAU enabled !)

Last edited by mahen (2011-09-01 17:36:03)

mahen · 2011-09-01 17:36:27

OK, indeed, this is even a little slower with the G210. But barely

laloch · 2011-09-01 17:45:39

mahen wrote:

OK, indeed, this is even a little slower with the G210. But barely

...which only supports the nvidia-is-not-the-culprit theory

mahen · 2011-09-01 17:48:29

laloch : out of curiosity, what is your GPU, and what kind of performance do you achieve with KDE 4.7.0 ?

...which only supports the nvidia-is-not-the-culprit theory

Well, I can't draw any conclusion, I'm completely lost, personally :-)

Last edited by mahen (2011-09-01 17:56:06)

laloch · 2011-09-01 18:04:20

mahen wrote:

laloch : out of curiosity, what is your GPU, and what kind of performance do you achieve with KDE 4.7.0 ?

It's nvidia GT218 (NVS 2100M) - quite a low end too. kwin 4.7 usually runs at ~60FPS (vsync enabled). It doesn't particularly like zooming animations in present windows and desktop grid though . No significant problems with VDPAU in mplayer, xbmc or vlc. It can keep pace even in 1920x1080 + 1600x900 TwinView configuration.

Edit: The worst problem is Xorg leaking memory badly.

Last edited by laloch (2011-09-01 18:07:31)

Cdh · 2011-09-20 08:32:31

It somehow still doesn't work well for me on HD 6550/5650 with Open Source drivers on the mid power profile.

OpenGL vendor string:                   X.Org
OpenGL renderer string:                 Gallium 0.4 on AMD REDWOOD
OpenGL version string:                  OpenGL ES 2.0 Mesa 7.12-devel
OpenGL shading language version string: OpenGL ES GLSL ES 1.0.16
Driver:                                 R600G
GPU class:                              EVERGREEN
OpenGL version:                         2.0
GLSL version:                           1.0.16
Mesa version:                           7.12
X server version:                       1.11
Linux kernel version:                   3.1
Direct rendering:                       yes
Requires strict binding:                yes
GLSL shaders:                           yes
Texture NPOT support:                   yes

Seems well enaugh and no errors are following, but nearly idling in X (just for example selecting or writing text in firefox) I have peaks of the CPU usage up to 30% and more on a 2.6 GHz i5 M480, moving a window, even most slowly makes kwin use 100% CPU.
Also there are some rendering issues, for example the panel is "pixelated" where it should be blurred.

Changing the Options for Direct Rendering, GL2 shaders or vsync doesn't change anything.

With normal OpenGL effects the CPU usage is more normal with 10% X, 8% kwin while moving a window (still pretty high for just moving a window (with transparency and wobbling) though) (the panel still has those pixels though).
Also scrolling feels a little slow both with OpenGL and GLES.

However with XRender (which is supposed to have worse performance and to be more unstable) everything works extremely well. Some effects are not working, but those that do are much more fluent and scrolling feels much smoother too...

Last edited by Cdh (2011-09-20 08:33:35)

Arch Linux

#51 2011-09-01 10:23:11

Re: KDE 4.7 with OpenGL ES 2.0 KWin backend

#52 2011-09-01 10:24:48

Re: KDE 4.7 with OpenGL ES 2.0 KWin backend

#53 2011-09-01 16:04:01

Re: KDE 4.7 with OpenGL ES 2.0 KWin backend

#54 2011-09-01 16:30:43

Re: KDE 4.7 with OpenGL ES 2.0 KWin backend

#55 2011-09-01 16:44:28

Re: KDE 4.7 with OpenGL ES 2.0 KWin backend

#56 2011-09-01 17:02:58

Re: KDE 4.7 with OpenGL ES 2.0 KWin backend

#57 2011-09-01 17:04:16

Re: KDE 4.7 with OpenGL ES 2.0 KWin backend

#58 2011-09-01 17:07:13

Re: KDE 4.7 with OpenGL ES 2.0 KWin backend

#59 2011-09-01 17:11:55

Re: KDE 4.7 with OpenGL ES 2.0 KWin backend

#60 2011-09-01 17:18:09

Re: KDE 4.7 with OpenGL ES 2.0 KWin backend

#61 2011-09-01 17:19:04

Re: KDE 4.7 with OpenGL ES 2.0 KWin backend

#62 2011-09-01 17:24:08

Re: KDE 4.7 with OpenGL ES 2.0 KWin backend

#63 2011-09-01 17:27:54

Re: KDE 4.7 with OpenGL ES 2.0 KWin backend

#64 2011-09-01 17:36:27

Re: KDE 4.7 with OpenGL ES 2.0 KWin backend

#65 2011-09-01 17:45:39

Re: KDE 4.7 with OpenGL ES 2.0 KWin backend

#66 2011-09-01 17:48:29

Re: KDE 4.7 with OpenGL ES 2.0 KWin backend

#67 2011-09-01 18:04:20

Re: KDE 4.7 with OpenGL ES 2.0 KWin backend

#68 2011-09-20 08:32:31

Re: KDE 4.7 with OpenGL ES 2.0 KWin backend

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