Fedora ATi driver performs much worse than the vanilla code

[planetf1]

On 04/03/09 23:50, Joshua C. wrote:
> 2009/3/4 Roberto Ragusa<mail at robertoragusa.it>:
>> Joshua C. wrote:
>>
>>> I did some test and here are the results:

On the subject of performance...
   I'm running Fedora rawhide right up to date with
xorg-x11-drv-ati-6.11.0-3.fc11.i586
kernel-PAE-2.6.29-0.203.rc7.fc11.i686
xorg-x11-server-Xorg-1.6.0-7.fc11.i586

Under regular desktop usage I'm noticing
   * With compiz running, various special effects like wobbly windows
have a relatively low CPU impact -- good acceleration. This has been 
fixed in the last few weeks (thanks Dave)
   * glxgears is ok (getting 1800 ish on a V5200/X1400) - could be a bit
better but just fine.
   * Some seemingly minor activity like firefox's rotating circle that
appears in a tab whilst loading a page hit the CPU hard (up to 40% + on
Xorg)
   * Another app "Personal Brain" which is relatively visual has a
similar huge impact
   * The latest flash player takes lots of cpu, getting up to 50% (ie 1 
cpu maxed out) at < 1/4 size (default BBC iPlayer desktop size) at 
fullscreen it struggles -- with jerky video
   * mplayer/wmv appears to work significacantly better

So it's a real mix of working & not so working ... and not clear whether 
the app or driver (or mesa, X etc) is to blame...

The system is a core duo " 2.16Ghz, 3Gb ram, V5200 FireGL ie R500 series
with 256Mb, 3200x1600 virtual (large desktop across 2 screens)
EXA acceleration is enabled
  From log I note - page flipping disabled, dma 4 xv enabled, color
tiling enabled

I have a few questions

* Apart from glxgears are there any good "benchmark" apps that can be
used to help check for any regressions between updates? glxgears gives a 
very basic working/not working, but something that's more typical of how 
firefox etc drives X

* Is there any good way of concisely capturing the X/ati workload
pattern that may assist in identifying specific impacts of that workload 
type as it might relate to various config parameters

* Are there some obvious settings I may have missed.

* Is anyone else seeing this...

Given the above I might have enough to raise a bug... but currently am
not sure if it's working as designed. Even if not I realise the info is
far too vague.

Regards
Nigel.
bugs at cherrybyte.me.uk