[kde] Re: kwin performance gets worse and worse with every release

2011-07-01 Thread Nikos Chantziaras
On 06/29/2011 02:44 PM, Nikos Chantziaras wrote:
 I just installed KDE RC1.  The trend of kwin becoming slower and slower
 continues with this release.

I found yet another, uhm, let's say tweak that results in a speed-up. 
  /usr/bin/startkde (this script is used also for KDM logins) sets 
MALLOC_CHECK_=3.  Argh!?  No wonder I had crashes with programs that 
were previously working.  And the system seemed so much slower.

I deleted the offending lines from startkde and restarted KDE.  The 
machine seems to be back to about the same performance as with KDE 4.6 
now.  I can't imagine what a negative impression this will leave on 
people trying 4.7 RC1 :-/

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[kde] Re: kwin performance gets worse and worse with every release

2011-06-30 Thread Nikos Chantziaras
On 06/30/2011 06:28 AM, Duncan wrote:
 Nikos Chantziaras posted on Wed, 29 Jun 2011 23:22:36 +0300 as excerpted:

 (I'm using a Radeon HD4870 with the open source drivers.)

 I was able to find a tweak that makes kwin usable again though.  I had
 to create a ~/.drirc file and put this in there:

 driconf
   device screen=0 driver=dri2
   application name=Default
   option name=vblank_mode value=0 /
   /application
   /device
 /driconf

 The driconf utility doesn't work; the above has to be created by hand.

 Also, the VSync option in System Settings must be unchecked.  Both of
 these things must be performed; if only the .drirc file is created, or
 only the VSync checkbox is unchecked, then kwin will keep being slow.

 It should be noted that the desktop is still tear-free after doing the
 above.

 [...]
 Meanwhile, I'd be interested in your locked and unlocked glxgears
 framerate stats.  If you're seeing  60 Hz even maximized (assuming
 you're not running dual 2560x1600 monitors or some such), then there's
 gotta be something wrong with your effects chain, somewhere, because as I
 said, AFAIK, your hd4870/rv780 should in theory be getting better stats
 than my hd4650/rv730.

I'm getting about 7000 FPS windowed, and 4000FPS maximized (yes, that's 
thousands, not hundreds.)  But I think glxgears is not pretty good as a 
benchmark these days.


 Next thing to try is OpenGL video playback.  I wonder if the unlocked
 framerate will affect it any...

If you have SwapbuffersWait disabled, then the effect will be ugly 
tearing and higher GPU temps.

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[kde] Re: kwin performance gets worse and worse with every release

2011-06-30 Thread Georg C. F. Greve
On Thursday 30 June 2011 12.49:28 Nikos Chantziaras wrote:
 I keep seeing this s/\/\g stuff around, but I still don't any idea 
 what it means, lol

man sed

:)

-- 
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http://www.linkedin.com/in/GeorgGreve
http://blogs.fsfe.org/greve/
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[kde] Re: kwin performance gets worse and worse with every release

2011-06-30 Thread Kevin Krammer
On Thursday, 2011-06-30, Georg C. F. Greve wrote:
 On Thursday 30 June 2011 12.49:28 Nikos Chantziaras wrote:
  I keep seeing this s/\/\g stuff around, but I still don't any idea
  what it means, lol
 
 man sed
 
 :)

What Georg tries to tell you here in a geeky [1] way is that this is a way to 
specify searchreplace procedures based on a quite powerful system called 
regular expressions [2].

The s/dri\.conf/drirc/g quoted earlier basically boils down to

Search for dri.conf and replace with drirc everwhere it is encountered in the 
input

Cheers,
Kevin

[1] Having become a CEO means he needs to actively remind people that he's 
actually a geek and knows stuff ;)
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regular_expression

-- 
Kevin Krammer, KDE developer, xdg-utils developer
KDE user support, developer mentoring


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[kde] Re: kwin performance gets worse and worse with every release

2011-06-30 Thread Georg C. F. Greve
On Thursday 30 June 2011 12.38:02 Kevin Krammer wrote:
 [1] Having become a CEO means he needs to actively remind people that he's 
 actually a geek and knows stuff

So you're saying CEO does not stand for Chief Entertainment Officer? Damn. ;)

Best regards,
Georg


-- 
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http://www.linkedin.com/in/GeorgGreve
http://blogs.fsfe.org/greve/
http://identi.ca/greve

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[kde] Re: kwin performance gets worse and worse with every release

2011-06-30 Thread Duncan
Nikos Chantziaras posted on Thu, 30 Jun 2011 12:45:54 +0300 as excerpted:

 On 06/30/2011 06:28 AM, Duncan wrote:
 Nikos Chantziaras posted on Wed, 29 Jun 2011 23:22:36 +0300 as
 excerpted:

 (I'm using a Radeon HD4870 with the open source drivers.)

 I was able to find a tweak that makes kwin usable again though.  I had
 to create a ~/.drirc file

 Also, the VSync option in System Settings must be unchecked.  Both
 of these things must be performed

 It should be noted that the desktop is still tear-free after doing the
 above.

 I'd be interested in your locked and unlocked glxgears framerate
 stats.  [Y]our hd4870/rv780 should in theory be getting better
 stats than my hd4650/rv730.
 
 I'm getting about 7000 FPS windowed, and 4000FPS maximized (yes, that's
 thousands, not hundreds.)  But I think glxgears is not pretty good as a
 benchmark these days.

You are correct, but it's still useful at an extremely basic opengl 
functionality level (besides being interesting eye candy, like the cube, 
flip-windows effect, etc), and can be useful for comparisons within the 
same family (r7xx Radeon chips, in our case).

And yes, your results DO show it as being vastly better than mine.  Part 
of that may be that the chip is better, but I believe part of it is the 
bus, as well.  AGP bus simply can't compare to 16x PCIE, no matter HOW 
you slice it!

But I've long suspected that like a purebred race horse, the really top 
performing graphics hardware is more finicky and requires more careful 
handling than ordinary stock.  So it may be that your card, being tuned 
for higher performance, was having trouble with a force-refresh-locked 
de-tuned configuration.  (Caveat: My way of simplifying a subject that 
in detail is certainly well above my head.)

 Next thing to try is OpenGL video playback.  I wonder if the unlocked
 framerate will affect it any...
 
 If you have SwapbuffersWait disabled, then the effect will be ugly
 tearing and higher GPU temps.

I do, and I believe I saw some corruption on playback as a result (hard 
to tell without going back and playing the same video without 
swapbufferswait and/or without refresh-unlocking), but it wasn't as bad 
as I suspected it might be.

Part of that, however, was probably because of the low-quality video I 
was testing with.  Youtube higher (but not highest, generally only 
available on a few videos, often paid or at least interstitial-ad-
supported, which I have trouble with as I won't do proprietary flash) 
quality, which might almost match SD, but is still a LONG way from 
hardware-challenging HD, even 720p.

I'll have to try it with a DVD image or the like...

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master.  Richard Stallman

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[kde] Re: kwin performance gets worse and worse with every release

2011-06-30 Thread Duncan
Kevin Krammer posted on Thu, 30 Jun 2011 12:38:02 +0200 as excerpted:

 The s/dri\.conf/drirc/g quoted earlier basically boils down to
 
 Search for dri.conf and replace with drirc everwhere it is encountered
 in the input

Yes.  And (I can say this since it's myself I'm putting down) to some 
extent, choosing to use the sed substitute, for dri.conf, drirc, 
globally (literal left-to-right translation of the clauses), instead of 
the plain English, Oops, make that drirc instead of dri.conf, is a way 
of saying Yes, I made this mistake, but I'm not /really/ as foolish as 
it makes me look, because see, I can use '133+ regex'! =:^P

Of course, s/dri\.conf/drirc/g is also much shorter and cooler looking 
than a whole plain English sentence to the same effect, so it's not 
/entirely/ the above, there's a practical aspect to the conciseness as 
well (something regulars I'm sure will agree I can usually use more of, 
but that's the problem, when I try, it ends up /too/ much so and there's 
inevitably a subthread having to explain it!), so it's really a bit of 
both.

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master.  Richard Stallman

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[kde] Re: kwin performance gets worse and worse with every release

2011-06-29 Thread phanisvara das
On Wed, 29 Jun 2011 17:14:33 +0530, Nikos Chantziaras rea...@arcor.de wrote:

 I just installed KDE RC1.  The trend of kwin becoming slower and slower
 continues with this release.  I remember KDE 4.3 (or maybe 4.2) where
 kwin was fast and nice.  After every release, it would become slower.
 It reached a negative peak with 4.6.  Now with 4.7 RC1, kwin has become
 even more slow.  It's extremely annoying to use.

 What is happening to kwin?  It's becoming the definition of sluggish
 GUI.  Out of every window manager I have tried, kwin is now the slowest
 of them all.


hm, perhaps other factors, like distribution, version of kernel and/or Xorg 
have something to do with that, as well as compiz and video card/driver. i'm 
running openSUSE, and at some stage i experienced very sluggish behavior, but 
could solve that by switching to a newer kernel  Xorg release. now, on 
openSUSE 11.4 with KDE 4.5 (K:D:F) i don't experience any sluggishness or 
exorbitant resource consumption.

-- 
phani.
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[kde] Re: kwin performance gets worse and worse with every release

2011-06-29 Thread Alex Schuster
Nikos Chantziaras writes:

 I just installed KDE RC1.  The trend of kwin becoming slower and slower
 continues with this release.  I remember KDE 4.3 (or maybe 4.2) where
 kwin was fast and nice.  After every release, it would become slower.
 It reached a negative peak with 4.6.  Now with 4.7 RC1, kwin has become
 even more slow.  It's extremely annoying to use.
 
 What is happening to kwin?  It's becoming the definition of sluggish
 GUI.  Out of every window manager I have tried, kwin is now the slowest
 of them all.

Is it also slow with compositing turned off (Alt-Shift-F12 to toggle)? With 
compositing turned on, moving windows is awfully slow here, while switching 
desktops is faster. But I guess this is an X / OpenGL problem on my side, 
other things are also slow. It's okay to use, but every time I log into 
another environment, I realize how fast window movements can be.

Does performance degrade over time? kwin has a memory leak, it starts with 
around 35M, but after some days it uses more than 1G. Weird things start to 
happen then, like title bars not being drawn any more. It's time for a 
logout then.

I'm using KDE 4.6.4 on Gentoo Linux.

Wonko
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[kde] Re: kwin performance gets worse and worse with every release

2011-06-29 Thread Nikos Chantziaras
On 06/29/2011 03:45 PM, phanisvara das wrote:
 On Wed, 29 Jun 2011 17:14:33 +0530, Nikos Chantziarasrea...@arcor.de  wrote:

 I just installed KDE RC1.  The trend of kwin becoming slower and slower
 continues with this release.  I remember KDE 4.3 (or maybe 4.2) where
 kwin was fast and nice.  After every release, it would become slower.
 It reached a negative peak with 4.6.  Now with 4.7 RC1, kwin has become
 even more slow.  It's extremely annoying to use.

 What is happening to kwin?  It's becoming the definition of sluggish
 GUI.  Out of every window manager I have tried, kwin is now the slowest
 of them all.


 hm, perhaps other factors, like distribution, version of kernel and/or Xorg 
 have something to do with that, as well as compiz and video card/driver.

Nothing else changed.  The only thing was the KDE update.

I'm using a Radeon HD4870, kernel 2.6.39.2, xf86-video-radeon/xorg/mesa 
latest versions, KMS.  Gentoo Linux AMD64.


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[kde] Re: kwin performance gets worse and worse with every release

2011-06-29 Thread Nikos Chantziaras
On 06/29/2011 04:07 PM, Alex Schuster wrote:
 Nikos Chantziaras writes:

 I just installed KDE RC1.  The trend of kwin becoming slower and slower
 continues with this release. [...]

 Is it also slow with compositing turned off (Alt-Shift-F12 to toggle)?

There are no effects (minimizing, present windows, etc) with compositing 
turned off, so there can be no comparison.

Moving windows around is fast and smooth in both cases.  It's 
compositing animations that have become very slow.  When I enable the 
Show FPS effect, the FPS goes down to 40 when I trigger an animation.



 Does performance degrade over time?

Nope.  It's slow right after booting the machine.

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[kde] Re: kwin performance gets worse and worse with every release

2011-06-29 Thread Kim Leyendecker
Am 29.06.2011 15:19, schrieb Nikos Chantziaras:
 There are no effects (minimizing, present windows, etc) with compositing
 turned off, so there can be no comparison.

 Moving windows around is fast and smooth in both cases.  It's
 compositing animations that have become very slow.  When I enable the
 Show FPS effect, the FPS goes down to 40 when I trigger an animation.

I haven´t read the whole thread yet, but from my recent point of 
knowledge, I would encourage you to have a look at the driver you use 
for your hardware. Check them and please post it here, maybe this helps.

thanks

PS: Do you really want KWin, or could you also accept another window 
manager like sawfish? This could be a slim alternative.

-- 
Kim Leyendecker (k...@k-dl.de.vu)
openSUSE Ambassador, openSUSE Wiki Team DE
HAVE A LOT OF FUN!
http://www.opensuse.org
Have you tried SUSE Studio? Need to create a Live CD, an app you want
to package and distribute or create your own Linux distro. Give SUSE
Studio a try. http://www.susestudio.com

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[kde] Re: kwin performance gets worse and worse with every release

2011-06-29 Thread Nikos Chantziaras
On 06/29/2011 10:47 PM, Kim Leyendecker wrote:
 Am 29.06.2011 15:19, schrieb Nikos Chantziaras:
 There are no effects (minimizing, present windows, etc) with compositing
 turned off, so there can be no comparison.

 Moving windows around is fast and smooth in both cases.  It's
 compositing animations that have become very slow.  When I enable the
 Show FPS effect, the FPS goes down to 40 when I trigger an animation.

 I haven´t read the whole thread yet, but from my recent point of
 knowledge, I would encourage you to have a look at the driver you use
 for your hardware. Check them and please post it here, maybe this helps.

Did so in another post (I'm using a Radeon HD4870 with the open source 
drivers.)

I was able to find a tweak that makes kwin usable again though.  I had 
to create a ~/.drirc file and put this in there:

   driconf
 device screen=0 driver=dri2
 application name=Default
 option name=vblank_mode value=0 /
 /application
 /device
   /driconf

The driconf utility doesn't work; the above has to be created by hand.

Also, the VSync option in System Settings must be unchecked.  Both of 
these things must be performed; if only the .drirc file is created, or 
only the VSync checkbox is unchecked, then kwin will keep being slow.

It should be noted that the desktop is still tear-free after doing the 
above.

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[kde] Re: kwin performance gets worse and worse with every release

2011-06-29 Thread phanisvara das
On Thu, 30 Jun 2011 02:50:34 +0530, Duncan 1i5t5.dun...@cox.net wrote:

 K:D:F ??  I've never seen that notation before.  Is it simply indicating
 KDE, version 4 (d) dot 6 (f), or something else?  Where'd the idea come
 from?  Is it OpenSuSE or your own idea or from elsewhere, and what's the
 meaning/implication?  (If it wasn't the intent, certainly, that kde 4.6
 matches k:d:f is an interesting coincidence.)



sorry, it's openSUSE jargon i'm afraid, refering to the KDE:/Distro:/Factory 
repo at http://download.opensuse.org/repositories. it's a development version, 
somewhere between stable KDE 4.6 release and trunk, with kdelibs4-4.6.4-398.10 
at the moment, and kdepim4-4.4.11.1-282.5, i.e., not yet kmail2.

i'm subscribing to different forums (NNTP)  mailing lists (IMAP) together in 
opera mail, and sometimes forget who i'm talking to.

-- 
phani.
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[kde] Re: kwin performance gets worse and worse with every release

2011-06-29 Thread Duncan
Nikos Chantziaras posted on Wed, 29 Jun 2011 16:15:54 +0300 as excerpted:

 On 06/29/2011 03:45 PM, phanisvara das wrote:
 On Wed, 29 Jun 2011 17:14:33 +0530, Nikos Chantziarasrea...@arcor.de 
 wrote:

 I just installed KDE RC1.  The trend of kwin becoming slower and
 slower continues with this release.  I remember KDE 4.3 (or maybe 4.2)
 where kwin was fast and nice.  After every release, it would become
 slower. It reached a negative peak with 4.6.  Now with 4.7 RC1, kwin
 has become even more slow.  It's extremely annoying to use.

 What is happening to kwin?  It's becoming the definition of sluggish
 GUI.  Out of every window manager I have tried, kwin is now the
 slowest of them all.


 hm, perhaps other factors, like distribution, version of kernel and/or
 Xorg have something to do with that, as well as compiz and video
 card/driver.
 
 Nothing else changed.  The only thing was the KDE update.
 
 I'm using a Radeon HD4870, kernel 2.6.39.2, xf86-video-radeon/xorg/mesa
 latest versions, KMS.  Gentoo Linux AMD64.

That's very interesting.  Because my experience running Gentoo ~amd64 
with a Radeon hd4650 (rv730 chip, AGP bridged as my workstation is 2003 
vintage, pre-PCIE), native/freedomware xorg/kernel/mesa drivers, etc, has 
been quite good.  And I /believe/ the hd4870 (rv770 chip according to the 
radeon manpage shipped with xf86-video-ati) is supposed to be a higher 
grade chip within the same GPU class. shrug

When I first switched to kde4, back with 4.2.4, I was using an old Radeon 
9250 (rv280 chip).  kde4 performance was /bad/, because at the desktop 
resolutions I was running, that chip couldn't do OpenGL, so it was 
limited to xrender/composite.  But I bought the hd4650 upgrade almost 
entirely for kde4 and I've not been disappointed in the least, tho at 
first I had to run live-git versions of various components to get OpenGL 
support for it, as nothing released supported OpenGL for it at the time.  
But that hasn't been the case for quite some time, now (tho I did run 
live-git xf86-video-ati in ordered to run a newer xorg-server early in 
the xorg-server-1.10 series, but that wasn't a hardware issue, only 
because I wanted to run the newer xorg-server and there wasn't a released 
xf86-video-ati driver for it yet).

So either there's some quirk in the specific hardware you have, or it's 
down to the software versions of something or other.

FWIW, I do NOT have a dri.conf as you mention helped for you, later in 
the thread, so that's not it, and what few non-default xorg.conf.d device 
section option tweaks I have don't seem to seriously affect kwin speed at 
all.

I *DO* tend to run as leading edge releases of xorg/kernel etc as I can 
possibly get ahold of, indeed, as mentioned, occasionally running live-
git, tho that's not routine except for the kernel, as I DO regularly run 
Linux mainline git kernels, testing and reporting bugs upstream as 
necessary.

FWIW current installed versions are: xorg-server-1.10.2, xf86-video-
ati-6.14.2, mesa-7.10.3, libdrm-2.4.26.  As mentioned I run git kernels, 
and am currently running 3.0-rc5 (I happened to git-pull right at the rc-5 
tag, apparently).  kde 4.6.4, of course.

I'm running kms, classic-non-gallium (gallium freezes here, I suspect due 
to an agp incompatibility they've not caught).

But obviously I've upgraded both kde and the kernel/xorg/mesa set in 
parallel with kde, and since I switched to the hd4650 (and to kms at very 
nearly the same time), I've had no performance complaints about kwin at 
all.  In fact, I deliberately set the effect speed at slow on the 
general tab of desktop effects, so they'd actually last long enough to 
enjoy a bit! =:^)

The dri.conf setting you mention further downthread suggests that your 
problem may be vertical-blanking-sync related.  I don't know, as I've 
experimented with that checkbox on the advanced tab of kde's desktop 
effects settings, but as you mention, it doesn't appear to make a 
difference by itself.  I have the following three settings in the file 
containing the device section in my xorg.conf.d, but again, they don't 
/appear/ to make that much difference.

Option  ColorTiling   On
Option  SwapbuffersWait   Off
Option  EXAVSync  Off

FWIW, glxgears always times at ~60fps, the refresh rate on my monitors, 
so as you before the dri.conf setting you mentioned, I do seem to be vert-
refresh-locked, but that does NOT appear to seriously affect kwin 
performance.

The one setting that I HAVE noticed makes a BIT of difference, but only 
in which effects work, NOT in overall performance, at least noticeably, 
is AIGLX.  The setting in question (the desktop effects checkbox doesn't 
seem to matter) is an environmental variable.  I have it in my .bashrc (I 
login at the CLI, then use startx to start kde, so .bashrc set variables 
apply).

#export LIBGL_ALWAYS_INDIRECT=1

With that commented (thus direct), kwin's blur and invert 

[kde] Re: kwin performance gets worse and worse with every release

2011-06-29 Thread Duncan
phanisvara das posted on Thu, 30 Jun 2011 03:13:52 +0530 as excerpted:

 On Thu, 30 Jun 2011 02:50:34 +0530, Duncan 1i5t5.dun...@cox.net wrote:
 
 K:D:F ??  I've never seen that notation before.  Is it simply
 indicating KDE, version 4 (d) dot 6 (f), or something else?  Where'd
 the idea come from?  Is it OpenSuSE or your own idea or from elsewhere,
 and what's the meaning/implication?  (If it wasn't the intent,
 certainly, that kde 4.6 matches k:d:f is an interesting coincidence.)

 sorry, it's openSUSE jargon i'm afraid, refering to the
 KDE:/Distro:/Factory repo at http://download.opensuse.org/repositories.
 it's a development version, somewhere between stable KDE 4.6 release and
 trunk, with kdelibs4-4.6.4-398.10 at the moment, and
 kdepim4-4.4.11.1-282.5, i.e., not yet kmail2.
 
 i'm subscribing to different forums (NNTP)  mailing lists (IMAP)
 together in opera mail, and sometimes forget who i'm talking to.

OK, that explains...

I /thought/ my association converting kde 4.6 into k:d:f was a bit far 
fetched, but couldn't for the life of me come up with anything more 
plausible, so I had to ask or it would have been bothering me for a week! 
=:^)

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master.  Richard Stallman

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[kde] Re: kwin performance gets worse and worse with every release

2011-06-29 Thread Duncan
Nikos Chantziaras posted on Wed, 29 Jun 2011 23:22:36 +0300 as excerpted:

 (I'm using a Radeon HD4870 with the open source drivers.)
 
 I was able to find a tweak that makes kwin usable again though.  I had
 to create a ~/.drirc file and put this in there:
 
driconf
  device screen=0 driver=dri2
  application name=Default
  option name=vblank_mode value=0 /
  /application
  /device
/driconf
 
 The driconf utility doesn't work; the above has to be created by hand.
 
 Also, the VSync option in System Settings must be unchecked.  Both of
 these things must be performed; if only the .drirc file is created, or
 only the VSync checkbox is unchecked, then kwin will keep being slow.
 
 It should be noted that the desktop is still tear-free after doing the
 above.

Followup here, now that I've had a chance to test this.  As I had hoped 
in the earlier reply elsewhere on-thread, this did finally let glxgears 
run freely, so I could get some idea how much composite and window size 
affect opengl on this thing.

glxgears @ default size:

612-ish Hz (fps) with compositing disabled, or with it enabled but with 
the glxgears window on top at 100% opacity.

580-ish Hz with something else focused so the glxgears window gets 
opacity reduced and composited.  The same when the konsole window's on 
top but the glxgears window is active (so viewing the glxgears window at 
100% opacity thru the konsole window at less than 100% opacity, thus 
triggering compositing of the glxgears window).

AT full maximized across both monitors (save for the the systray and 
superkaramba panels at the top of my top monitor), 1912x1965 client 
window resolution, according to kwin:

80-ish Hz w/o compositing.

70-ish Hz with compositing.

That 70-ish Hz is getting pretty close to the screen-refresh (60 Hz), but 
still remains slightly above it, which is nice.

Since I don't seem to notice any performance issues when refresh-rate 
locked, however, I'll probably eventually switch back to that, after 
playing around with unlocked for awhile longer, just to see what other 
effects it might have.

Meanwhile, I'd be interested in your locked and unlocked glxgears 
framerate stats.  If you're seeing  60 Hz even maximized (assuming 
you're not running dual 2560x1600 monitors or some such), then there's 
gotta be something wrong with your effects chain, somewhere, because as I 
said, AFAIK, your hd4870/rv780 should in theory be getting better stats 
than my hd4650/rv730.

Next thing to try is OpenGL video playback.  I wonder if the unlocked 
framerate will affect it any...

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master.  Richard Stallman

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