nvidia 256.52 xorg-server 1.9.0 performance regression

[ioni]

Hi,
i was using nvidia 256.44 which doesn't have xorg 1.9 support with IgnoreABI true and i've noticed performance regressions when scaling windows, when text is scrolling in gnome-terminal.

I was thinking that's because 256.44 didn't had proper support and now that 256.52 is out and has xorg-server 1.9 support, it has the same issues(ignoreabi was removed).

i'm attaching the current xorg.0.log.

using gnome with compositing on in metacity

[gradinaruvasile]

Metacity uses software compositing that is very slow (compiz uses opengl that is fast).

[ioni]

Originally Posted by gradinaruvasile

Metacity uses software compositing that is very slow (compiz uses opengl that is fast).

not very helpful.
my thread should be consider as a bug report.

the point is that 256.44 with xorg-server 1.8.1.902 works with my current setup and 256.52 with xorg-server 1.9.0 has huge performance regressions even when i disable compositing

[gradinaruvasile]

Have you tried disabling the compositing extension from xorg.conf? Does that make a difference?

Just add

Section "Extensions"
Option "Composite" "Disable"
EndSection

to the end of xorg.conf then restart x.

[noclaf]

+1 for this. Most applications are okay, but ncurses apps (which I use heavily) are very slow to redraw. There's a noticeable top to bottom screen wipe. Plain terminal sessions (I use urxvt) appear to be unaffected. glxgears shows no choppiness and gtk applications such as Chromium seem to be functioning normally as well.

I use xcompmgr for transparency effects only. Disabling it and/or the compositing extensions has no noticeable effect.

I've attached a full bug report log.

[gqman69]

+1

Same.

[adamk75]

Originally Posted by gradinaruvasile

Metacity uses software compositing that is very slow (compiz uses opengl that is fast).

That is not true... Metacity uses RENDER compositing, which can certainly be hardware accelerated and quite fast depending on the driver. .

Adam

[gradinaruvasile]

Originally Posted by adamk75

That is not true... Metacity uses RENDER compositing, which can certainly be hardware accelerated and quite fast depending on the driver. .

Adam

Which driver? I use only nvidia cards and whenevr i tried the metacity compositing, moving around a single little window spiked the CPU to 50-60%...

[ShiningArcanine]

I have KDE 4.4.5 and CPU usage spikes to about 20% from 2% when I move a window around.

This is with xorg-server 1.8 and nvidia-drivers 256.52.

[Licaon]

Originally Posted by ShiningArcanine

I have KDE 4.4.5 and CPU usage spikes to about 20% from 2% when I move a window around.

This is with xorg-server 1.8 and nvidia-drivers 256.52.

with composition enabled in Kwin a window move yields 10% CPU usage on my sistem: 5% kwin and 5% Xorg
it's not the end of the world but eh...

[zacbarton]

im seeing the exactly same thing

using GtkPerf the 2 text tests go so slow i can see the text being drawn

GtkEntry - time: 0.05
GtkComboBox - time: 0.86
GtkComboBoxEntry - time: 0.68
GtkSpinButton - time: 0.14
GtkProgressBar - time: 0.25
GtkToggleButton - time: 0.29
GtkCheckButton - time: 0.13
GtkRadioButton - time: 0.33
GtkTextView - Add text - time: 3.36
GtkTextView - Scroll - time: 2.86
GtkDrawingArea - Lines - time: 0.50
GtkDrawingArea - Circles - time: 0.58
GtkDrawingArea - Text - time: 11.59
GtkDrawingArea - Pixbufs - time: 0.61

[dae]

I'm also seeing a noticable slowdown in text rendering with xorg-server 1.9.0 (using nvidia 256.52). Gtkperf output:

GtkEntry - time: 0.24
GtkComboBox - time: 1.06
GtkComboBoxEntry - time: 1.11
GtkSpinButton - time: 0.56
GtkProgressBar - time: 0.74
GtkToggleButton - time: 0.58
GtkCheckButton - time: 0.33
GtkRadioButton - time: 0.43
GtkTextView - Add text - time: 3.16
GtkTextView - Scroll - time: 1.57
GtkDrawingArea - Lines - time: 0.35
GtkDrawingArea - Circles - time: 0.52
GtkDrawingArea - Text - time: 12.89
GtkDrawingArea - Pixbufs - time: 0.58

It appears to be related to anti-aliasing; if I turn off anti-aliasing the performance problem is gone:

GtkEntry - time: 0.22
GtkComboBox - time: 0.87
GtkComboBoxEntry - time: 1.16
GtkSpinButton - time: 0.64
GtkProgressBar - time: 0.37
GtkToggleButton - time: 0.29
GtkCheckButton - time: 0.16
GtkRadioButton - time: 0.15
GtkTextView - Add text - time: 0.46
GtkTextView - Scroll - time: 0.58
GtkDrawingArea - Lines - time: 0.36
GtkDrawingArea - Circles - time: 0.52
GtkDrawingArea - Text - time: 0.18
GtkDrawingArea - Pixbufs - time: 0.16

This is quite interresting since the reason I turned on anti-aliasing a couple of QT and nvidia releases back, was due to non-anti-aliased text being slow...