Bug 8476 - Slow scrolling with aiglx/beryl
Summary: Slow scrolling with aiglx/beryl
Status: RESOLVED FIXED
Alias: None
Product: xorg
Classification: Unclassified
Component: Driver/Radeon (show other bugs)
Version: 7.1 (2006.05)
Hardware: x86 (IA32) Linux (All)
: high normal
Assignee: Xorg Project Team
QA Contact: Xorg Project Team
URL:
Whiteboard:
Keywords:
: 9676 (view as bug list)
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
Reported: 2006-10-01 15:51 UTC by Nick Tsagkas
Modified: 2007-06-01 10:33 UTC (History)
3 users (show)

See Also:
i915 platform:
i915 features:


Attachments

Description Nick Tsagkas 2006-10-01 15:51:21 UTC
Scrolling in many applications (eg Firefox) is very slow if aiglx/beryl is
enabled. In Beryl bugtracker wiki they claim that this is not a problem with
their software.
Comment 1 Nick Tsagkas 2006-10-04 04:07:05 UTC
I found this conversation that explains the problem a bit better:
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2006-September/msg00392.html

ons, 13 09 2006 kl. 15:49 -0400, skrev Kristian Høgsberg:
> David Nielsen wrote:
> ...
> >>> Did you solve the Firefox scrolling issue with compiz on an r300 based 
> >>> card? Firefox becomes unusably slow over here (Radeon 9500pro) when I 
> >>> switch to compiz but the effects themselves work smoothly.
> >>>
> >>> Regards,
> >>>    Dennis
> >>>
> >> I see the same thing with the R100. Firefox scrolling is unbearable and
> >> so is gnome-terminal scrolling, especially full screen.
> > 
> > Admittedly that one is rather bad but it only happens if you scroll
> > using the mouse wheel not if you grap the scrollbar - I'm thinking
> > pango?
> 
> I know everybody likes to kick pango, but this is not pango's fault.  The 
> problem is that when we run compiz on AIGLX, we kick out all pixmaps to host 
> memory.  This means that XCopyArea (which is what drives most scrolling) is no 
> longer accelerated and furthermore, for each line you scroll, we have to copy 
> the pixmap contents back out to the card.  This is the big bottleneck in the 
> compiz+AIGLX architecture, we're hoping to fix it post-fc6.
> 
> Kristian

Damn you Kristian for ruining a perfectly good pango bashing with things
like an informed opinion and the truth on your side.. :)

but I'm glad to see that the problem is being worked on.

- David
Comment 2 Cyrill Helg 2006-12-19 11:41:55 UTC
This is fixed for me with svn version of xorg/mesa.

Although my display randomly locks up  when running beryl a longer time and I
have to reboot.
Comment 3 Michel Dänzer 2007-01-18 02:38:17 UTC
*** Bug 9676 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 4 Nicolò Chieffo 2007-01-18 07:18:23 UTC
This bug happens not only when scrolling, but also when
-) using the scale plugin 
-) viewing animated things like flash or animated gifs (tested in firefox)
-) using vim in a maximized gnome-terminal
-) using the blur effect
-) using the animation plugin

I own a 9700 mobility
Comment 5 Nicolò Chieffo 2007-01-19 02:34:48 UTC
To tell the truth I've discovered that with normal metacity scrolling and
resizing are very cpu-intensive operations! So the problem might not be compiz.
Or if it is normal that those operations are cpu-intensive, compiz adds lots of
weight to the cpu, so everything becomes choppy!
Comment 6 Jacek Poplawski 2007-02-07 08:15:36 UTC
Please try to use option --use-copy in beryl.
Comment 7 Nicolò Chieffo 2007-02-07 09:01:02 UTC
is it the same as rendering path -> copy?

if so I enabled it but it seems slower... (maybe) is there a way to absolutely test it?
Comment 8 Nicolò Chieffo 2007-02-19 04:50:24 UTC
this problem is quite fixed with xorg 7.2 mesa 6.5.2. the performance is now acceptable but still not metacity-like
Comment 9 Daniel Stone 2007-02-27 01:33:47 UTC
Sorry about the phenomenal bug spam, guys.  Adding xorg-team@ to the QA contact so bugs don't get lost in future.
Comment 10 Michel Dänzer 2007-05-15 08:41:42 UTC
The patches I put up at http://people.freedesktop.org/~daenzer/aiglx-zero-copy-tfp/ fix this IME, I'm hoping to clean them up and push them soon. Porting to other 3D drivers than r300 welcome.
Comment 11 Michel Dänzer 2007-06-01 10:33:24 UTC
Pushed my patches to the GIT master branches of xserver, mesa (r300 and i915tex drivers), xf86-video-ati and xf86-video-intel.


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