performance problems with ATI Radeon r300

[Andrew Mason]

Yes it is really annoying, unfortunately its mostly a case of the free
drivers not really being up to the task (yet, they are improving ) ,
and AMD not caring about older models in their binary drivers.

Basically xorg is in a bit of a flux and even the Intel cards are only
now getting back to the sort of performance they previously were, AMD
cards will follow but it's harder for them as the guys working on the
Intel cards are actually from Intel. The guys working on the AMD cards
are working for red hat, so they have to go on the documentation
provided by ATI, and do their other work  at the same time.

It's awesome that KDE are taking a no hacks approach. It just sucks
that the time that KDE became stable was when Xorg was also in flux.



On 7/2/09, Wolfgang Jeltsch <fmp0d6sw at acme.softbase.org> wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I use Debian GNU/Linux lenny on an AMD64 laptop (about 5 years old) with an
> ATI Radeon Mobility XPress 200M card (should use an r300). The problem is
> that KDE’s desktop effects are not smooth.
>
> If I use the proprietary fglrx driver, some effects like wandering through
> windows with Alt + TAB are acceptable at times, but not if more than about
> eight window are open. Others, like moving a window around the screen with
> transparency enabled, are never smooth. If I use the opensource radeon
> driver, it’s even worse.
>
> The interesting thing is that performing exactly the same animation twice
> often helps (but is, of course, not what you do in ordinary work). For
> example, it can happen that showing all windows isn’t performed smoothely.
> If
> I press ESC and then show all windows again, it might happen that it’s
> smooth
> now.
>
> I understand that my laptop is not the newest model. On the other hand, Macs
> had desktop effects before my laptop was built. So I’d assume that my
> hardware should be able to handle desktop effects well. So what is the
> problem then? Is it that KDE’s effect code is not optimized enough, is it
> that drivers are in a bad state, or is it something else?
>
> I’d really like to hear hints for solutions since these problems are getting
> more and more annoying. :-(
>
> Best wishes,
> Wolfgang
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