Bug#523467: xserver-xorg-video-radeon: All draws are very slow after update to 1:6.12.2-1

[Michel Dänzer]

On Fri, 2009-04-10 at 15:38 +0200, Alex Dănilă wrote:
> Package: xserver-xorg-video-radeon
> Version: 1:6.12.2-1
> Severity: important
> 
> *** Please type your report below this line ***
> Since today's update to unstable of the radeon driver drawing is very 
> slow for everything:
> -scrolling
> -selecting text
> -video
> -show window from background, move, resize, change virtual desktop and 
> even the KDM login menu takes a second to draw.
> 
> Every redraw is visible, from the upper part of the screen to the lower 
> part, except for games, where it appears only on portions of the window.
> 
> The exact same thing happens when loading radeonhd.

[...]

> VGA-compatible devices on PCI bus:
> 01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc Mobility Radeon 
> HD 3400 Series

[...]

> (EE) RADEON(0): [dri] RADEONDRIGetVersion failed to open the DRM
> [dri] Disabling DRI.
> (II) RADEON(0): using shadow framebuffer

[...]

> (WW) RADEON(0): Direct rendering disabled
> (EE) RADEON(0): Acceleration initialization failed

My guess is that the driver versions you were using previously didn't
support acceleration for R600 cards at all, and you were using a shadow
framebuffer. It looks like the new driver is still trying to fall back
to that, but maybe the attempt to initialize acceleration prevents the
shadow layer from working or something along those lines.

In the meantime you managed to enable EXA acceleration, which should be
the best solution, but the fallback behaviour should probably be
improved anyway in the driver(s).


-- 
Earthling Michel Dänzer           |                http://www.vmware.com
Libre software enthusiast         |          Debian, X and DRI developer