[Xorg] really slow X performance with Radeon 7200

[Anthony DiSante]

Anthony DiSante wrote:
> The problem is that my video performance is really slow.  For example:
> 
> [0116][~]$ x11perf -shmput500
>     800 reps @  12.1687 msec (    82.2/sec): ShmPutImage 500x500 square
> 
> A little googling reveals that most people are getting >200/sec and some 
>  >1000/sec... I'm getting 85.
> 
> glxinfo reports that I do have direct rendering; I get ~900 fps with
> glxgears at the default window size.
> 
> So basically I've had this crappy performance for a long time, across
> multiple kernels, multiple X servers, and multiple video cards.  I'd really
> like to find out what the problem is and how to fix it.

Another thing is that if I set AGPMode to 4 in my X config file, the system
locks up after startx, as soon as it draws my wallpaper.  The highest I can
safely use is mode 2, which doesn't improve my glxgears rate, but adds 20 to
my x11perf rate -- it's now ~100/sec.

Both my bios and my video card are supposedly AGP4x compatible.  In the
bios, I have two related options:

AGP4x: enable/disable (I have it enabled)

AGP aperture size:
	8MB
	16MB
	32MB
	64MB (the default)
	...
	AGP4x mode

The aperture size setting has a bunch of MB sizes, and then a "AGP4x mode"
option, which seems a little weird.  If I set it to that, then when I
startx, I have no direct rendering, and in my X log, I have the error
"RADEON: could not bind."

Would AGP4x be likely to increase my performance by much?

-Anthony
http://nodivisions.com/