Poor composting performance in KDE 4.3

[Nikos Chantziaras]

On 10/16/2009 09:53 PM, James Tyrer wrote:
> Nikos Chantziaras wrote:
>> On 10/16/2009 07:14 AM, James Tyrer wrote:
>>> Nikos Chantziaras wrote:
>>>> On 10/16/2009 02:01 AM, Dotan Cohen wrote:
>>>>>> Which drivers are you using?  If you use AMD Catalyst (Ubuntu calls them
>>>>>> "restricted"), you need to make sure you run the latest version, 9.10
>>>>>> Ubuntu beta:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>      http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NzUxNA
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Old version have plenty of bugs with compositing.
>>>>>>
>>>>> Interesting, thanks. I recently saw an article on Phoronix where the
>>>>> FOSS driver beat the proprietary driver in almost every benchmark.
>>>> For 2D.  3D with FOSS drivers is a few light-years behind Catalyst right
>>>> now, unfortunately.
>>>>
>>> Well, yes and no.  There is still a strange issue with the "radeon"
>>> driver (as of the date [unknown] of the man page I have); the 3D
>>> acceleration only works with the older chips.  So, it works fine on my
>>> old RV280 based board (Radeon 9200) but there isn't/wasn't any 3D
>>> acceleration for the  RS780 chip (HD 3200).  I don't know if this is
>>> going to be ported to the newer chips now that the documentation is
>>> available or if the work will be only on the somewhat experimental
>>> "radeonhd" driver which doesn't have 3D acceleration yet.
>>
>> I was referring to performance, not whether it works at all or not.  3D
>> apps with FOSS drivers run with less than half the speed of the binary
>> driver (I'd say about 20% to 30%).  Power management is also bad.  But
>> if you're not interested in 3D performance, they're just fine and will
>> get better over time (give them another year or so.)
>>
> Do you have a citation for this "information".  The part of the driver
> (including 3D) which is based on (pre-AMD) ATI documentation has been
> around for several years so what you stated does not make much sense.

It is based on my assumption that it will take approximately a year 
(maybe give or take 2 months or such) until X.Org's restructuring is 
complete, meaning fully functional DRI2 and Gallium3D, but also well 
performing (after you finish something, you then usually go on with 
optimization.)  The maturing of the FOSS drivers will happen in parallel.

Also, I'm pretty much talking about modern cards here.  Pre-HD Radeons 
are quite well supported by the FOSS drivers already.  My X1950XT runs 
like a charm.  My HD4870 does not (far from it.)  Specs for HD cards are 
very recent and definitely not "around for several years."

All of this is based on me following various discussion threads by the 
driver developers, users and other interested parties for about a year 
now.  I believe that in about a year, we will have FOSS drivers that are 
very well performing will all stated goals reached and optimized.  The 
point where they actually become "usable enough" for modern cards might 
of course happen much sooner.

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