Bug 616418

Summary: Radeon driver bad performance when moving windows or scrolling
Product: [openSUSE] openSUSE 11.3 Reporter: Oscar Tiderman <maltese-falcon>
Component: KernelAssignee: E-mail List <kernel-maintainers>
Status: RESOLVED NORESPONSE QA Contact: E-mail List <qa-bugs>
Severity: Major    
Priority: P2 - High CC: fakepost, fred.nadeau, jdelvare, jeffm, mail, pmarques, tonyj, vastolag, wclark80
Version: Final   
Target Milestone: ---   
Hardware: x86-64   
OS: openSUSE 11.3   
Whiteboard:
Found By: --- Services Priority:
Business Priority: Blocker: ---
Marketing QA Status: --- IT Deployment: ---

Description Oscar Tiderman 2010-06-22 19:30:24 UTC
User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux x86_64; en-US; rv:1.9.2.3) Gecko/20100401 SUSE/3.6.3-1.2 Firefox/3.6.3

Hardware: ATI RS690M [Radeon X1200 Series] Driver: Radeon
In 11.2 it works great with Radeon driver for this hardware while in 11.3 performance is really lousy. When moving windows or scrolling in i.e. Firefox redrawing is really really slow, almost unusable. I've also tried radeonhd which doesn't work at all. I've tried glxgears with a fps of abt 200, which is the same as I have in 11.2. I do not use desktop effects.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Fresh install and the problem is there
2.
3.
Actual Results:  
The problem is obvious immediately when I open any window and try to drag it or scroll.

Expected Results:  
I expect to be able to scroll smoothly in Firefox and move around my windows without slow redrawing.

AMD Athlon(tm) 64 X2 Dual-Core Processor TK-57, 3GB RAM
Comment 1 Paulo Marques 2010-07-09 14:18:05 UTC
I just wanted to add that the same thing happens to me on a Radeon HD 5670 (evergreen, redwood).

I added a more comprehensive description of my problem on the forums at http://forums.opensuse.org/english/get-help-here/pre-release-beta/441659-radeon-hd-5670-evergreen-redwood-very-slow.html#post2186554 before realizing that someone had already filled a bug report.
Comment 2 Warren Clark 2010-07-12 03:33:26 UTC
I'm also having this problem. I have an ATI Radeon HD 4200 graphics card and scrolling is terrible in openSuse.
Comment 3 Guglielmo Vastola 2010-07-23 22:53:42 UTC
The same problem happened to me with a Mobility Radeon HD3400 (M82) and radeonhd driver. On opensuse 11.2 everything just worked fine, but with 11.3 every window is extremely slow to move, pop up or even resize. I set the nomode option in the kernel at boot, otherwise X even does not start.
Comment 4 Michael Werner 2010-08-16 19:47:27 UTC
Me too. openSUSE 11.3
Radeon HD 1600. 
Everything is moving slow but there is no high CPU usage.
I changed to Kernel 2.6.35 but it did not helped.
Comment 5 Jean Delvare 2010-09-06 14:10:35 UTC
It's kind of a blind shot as I didn't even install openSUSE 11.3 yet, but this reminds me of bug #411587. You may want to try disabling the Composite module and see if it makes any difference.
Comment 6 Jeff Mahoney 2010-09-22 20:32:57 UTC
Yes, that can cause it to be ridiculously slow when acceleration isn't enabled. Another option is that radeonhd isn't claiming your device. I had similar issues with an M56 chip in my T60p. Disabling modeset (radeon.modeset=0) and removing the radeonhd package worked for me.

Can you see if that makes an impact?
Comment 7 Tony Jones 2010-09-22 22:44:51 UTC
If you are running gnome, try as-a-workaround disabling "desktop effects" in the "look and feel" menu.
Comment 8 Frédéric Nadeau 2010-10-21 21:28:39 UTC
Hi,

I have the same issue and simply wanted to share my setup.

OpenSUSE 11.3 x86-64
Catalyst 10.9
Kernel 2.6.34.7-0.4

ATI Radeon HD 4800 Series
AMD Phenom 9550 Quad-Core Processor
4GB RAM

Firefox is almost unusable
Chormium works fine
Moving windows is extremely choppy

As a side note:
 glxgears outputs:
X Error of failed request:  BadRequest (invalid request code or no such peration)
  Major opcode of failed request:  136 (GLX)
  Minor opcode of failed request:  19 (X_GLXQueryServerString)
  Serial number of failed request:  15
  Current serial number in output stream:  15
Comment 9 Jiri Slaby 2011-03-02 21:12:33 UTC
Any updates here?
Comment 10 Paulo Marques 2011-03-11 17:19:17 UTC
This has become harder for me to test because this happens on my son's computer and he is usually asleep when I could do the tests.

I can confirm that it still happens with the latest updates installed and that it doesn't have "desktop effects" enabled. IIRC it doesn't even allow me to turn it on.

Did you look at:
http://forums.opensuse.org/english/get-help-here/pre-release-beta/441659-radeon-hd-5670-evergreen-redwood-very-slow.html

I posted a lot of information there that I can reproduce here if it's more convenient.
Comment 11 Paulo Marques 2011-03-11 17:22:04 UTC
By the way, my setup is a Pentium4 2.8GHz, so it's x86-32, not x86-64.
Comment 12 Jean Delvare 2011-03-11 17:49:35 UTC
Paulo, I don't think your problem is the same as what was reported originally by Oscar, Guglielmo and others. They reported a regression, while you presumably did never had a running setup. As a matter of fact, the Radeon HD5000 series (Evergreen) is NOT supported by the radeonhd driver on openSUSE 11.3, so the slow video performance is totally expected. You have to use the binary driver from ATI or build the radeonhd from upstream yourself (which I am doing).
Comment 13 Jean Delvare 2011-03-11 18:02:30 UTC
Err, sorry, in the previous comment I really meant the radeon driver, not radeonhd.
Comment 14 Paulo Marques 2011-03-11 18:04:22 UTC
Thanks for the info, Jean. Do you happen to know if the radeon driver in
OpenSuse 11.4 supports evergreen?
If it does, I guess I'll just upgrade. If not, I might try building it all
myself. I was really trying to avoid using the binary driver.
Comment 15 Jean Delvare 2011-03-11 18:53:11 UTC
Yes, as far as I can see openSUSE 11.4 has at least partial support for Evergreen, although I did not try it myself yet.
Comment 16 Greg Kroah-Hartman 2011-08-30 19:32:29 UTC
Closing due to lack of response.  If this is still an issue, please reopen with the requested information.