Fedora ATi driver performs much worse than the vanilla code

[Joshua C.]

2009/3/1 Dave Airlie <airlied at redhat.com>:
> On Fri, 2009-02-27 at 20:25 -0500, Joshua C. wrote:
>> I was testing the latest xf86-video-radeon with f11 and the latest
>> xorg-x11-server. And to my surprise the fedora version performs much
>> worse than the vanilla code here:
>> http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/xorg-announce/2009-February/000771.html.
>> Installed are:
>> mesa-libGLU-7.3-5.fc11.x86_64
>> mesa-libGL-7.3-5.fc11.x86_64
>> mesa-dri-drivers-7.3-5.fc11.x86_64
>> libdrm-2.4.5-0.fc11.x86_64
>> xorg-x11-server-utils-7.4-5.fc11.x86_64
>> xorg-x11-server-common-1.6.0-2.fc11.x86_64
>> xorg-x11-server-Xorg-1.6.0-2.fc11.x86_64
>> xorg-x11-drv-ati-6.11.0-1.1.fc11.x86_64 (from vanilla source without
>> extra patches)
>> kernel-2.6.29-0.172.rc6.git4.fc11.x86_64
>> With the fedora version (with all the patches) I cannot do basic
>> things like watch flash files and video (almost no hardware
>> acceleration). This results in 100% cpu usage, screen distortions. At
>> the same time the vanilla code playes the video files smoothly and
>> everything is fine. Even the kms works! With the fedora code I need to
>> pass radeon.gartsize=128 at startup in order to make it start the
>> xserver. And in terms of speed it's far behind the vanilla code.
>>
>> I saw that some patches date back to before  6.10.0. Are they still
>> needed? Has someone else tried this?
>>
>
> So if you run this vanilla driver please disable KMS, you are running
> two drivers in direct conflict, and it might work sometimes, it might
> also corrupt memory or oops randomly. So its not on the advised list.
>
> However can you check if the driver you installed from upstream is
> running XAA or EXA acceleration? We enable EXA acceleration by default
> under KMS and non-kms, and it may be the case that XAA is faster for
> some situations that we haven't identified yet. However EXA provides
> support for more features going forward so we have to try and squash any
> regressions at some point.
>
> I think we will switch upstream to EXA quite soon, which sorta means you
> just put off the inevitable at the moment.
>
> Dave.
>
>
> --
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> fedora-devel-list at redhat.com
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>

I did some test and here are the results:

"These results are not representative for all the fedora community.
They just show how the free radeon driver performs on my pc"

1. F9 with the the lastest (for f9) radeon driver, mesa, libdrm and
xorg packages in koji.

-exa enabled
-performs pretty good. glxgears gives me about 800 fps
-video and flash work flawlessly
-moderate cpu usage (~ 30%)
-f9 has the 6.8.0-19 driver and the xserver is 1.5.2-3

2. F10 with 2.6.29.rc kernel and kms enabled

-defaults to xaa
-watchable flash and video, glxgears: 200
-above 50% cpu usage
-radeon 6.11.0 and xserver-1.5.3-13

3. F10 with 2.6.29.rc kernel and no kms, exa

-nomodeset
-after manually switching to exa, glxgears. 400
-cpu usage above 50%
-flash and video files are "watchable"
-same radeon and xserver as above

4. F10 with 2.6.29.rc kernel and no kms, xaa

-nomodeset
-defaults to xaa
-glxgears: 200
-flash and videos are ok
-cpu usage about 50%

5. F11 2.6.29-172 kernel, kms exa

-kms anabled
-manually switching to exa
-cpu usage 100%
-glxgears: 290
-very slow
-cannot watch flash and video, no sound
-totally useless
-random errors
-As Dave Airlie said, these combination is no go for me
-radeon 6.11.0 without patches, xserver-1.6.0-2

6. F11 2.6.29-172 kernel, kms xaa

-kms enabled
-default to xaa
-watchable flash and video with sound
-glxgears:320
-high (~85%) cpu usage
-same driver/xserver/mesa/drm as above

7. F11 2.6.29-172 kernel, no kms exa

-nomodeset
-manually switching to exa
-cannot watch flsh and video
-glxgears gives errors. (~320 according to total package number)
-high cpu usage
-same packages as above

8. F11 2.6.29-172 kernel, no kms, xaa

-nomdeset
-default to xaa
-no flash and no video
-glxgears gives errors (~220 accordning to total package number)
-85% cpu usage
-same packges as above.

These results represent a regression in my case. And I can say that
the f10 with nokms, exa or kms, xaa represent the best combination at
the moment. F9 is even better but the packges are rather old. Here are
the xorg logs from all the tests
http://filebin.ca/jwaswo/Xorg.logs.tar.gz. As for f11: right now the
radeon performace cannot satisfy me and with the default fedora driver
I cannot even start the computer. Maybe this will change in the
future.