Poor composting performance in KDE 4.3

[James Tyrer]

Dotan Cohen wrote:
> The wife's desktop is running KDE 4.3 on a fairly decent homebuilt
> machine: 2 gHz dual-core processor, 2 GB RAM, ATI graphics:
> $ lspci | grep ati
> 00:18.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8
> [Athlon64/Opteron] HyperTransport Technology Configuration
> 01:05.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc Radeon HD 3200 Graphics
> 
> The composting effects are terribly slow, and many effects (Wobby
> Windows, Cover Switch) refuse to start. I have tried googling KDE4
> composting problems, but all I find are complaints and no solutions.
> Where can I start troubleshooting? The distro is Kubuntu 9.04, same as
> I run on my daily driver laptop with inferior hardware and no
> problems.
> 
Do I understand correctly that you have the same versions of the various 
X packages on both systems?

If so, it is probably a configuration issue.

But, you might wind to check as see which version of Xorg-Server and XCB 
you have installed.  XCB should be 1.4; servers less than 1.6.2 don't 
seem to do effects too well.

Then make sure that the correct driver is specified.  The HD 3200 is 
listed on the "radeon" man page so that would be the driver to use 
unless you want to experiment with the new "radeonhd" driver.

How do you, or do you need to set the amount of memory used for the 
frame buffer?  I think that there is a default.

I find that there are recent updates to libdrm (2.4.15) and 
xf86-video-ati (6.12.4) that might be a bug fix for your problem.

And be sure that your xorg.conf file has:

     Option		"AccelMethod" "EXA"

in the Device section since according to the fine man page, XXA will not 
work with an RS780 chip.

-- 
James Tyrer

Linux (mostly) From Scratch
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