Some benchmarks with Radeon and Xorg7.1

[Paulo J. Matos]

I own a Laptop Fujitsu-Siemens E7110 which, by the way, has never (in
the last 3 years) gave me any headache. But I've always been trying to
optimize stuff running on it. This time I got latest Xorg7.1 and have
taken some benchmarks which might be interesting to other people. So
here you have it:

Specs: Pentium M4, Radeon Mobility 7500, 512 Mgs RAM

Detailed /proc/cpuinfo:

    # cat /proc/cpuinfo
    processor : 0
    vendor_id : GenuineIntel
    cpu family : 15
    model : 2
    model name : Mobile Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 - M CPU 2.20GHz
    stepping : 7
    cpu MHz : 2193.102
    cache size : 512 KB
    fdiv_bug : no
    hlt_bug : no
    f00f_bug : no
    coma_bug : no
    fpu : yes
    fpu_exception : yes
    cpuid level : 2
    wp : yes
    flags : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 sep mtrr pge mca cmov
pat pse36 clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm pbe up cid
    bogomips : 4390.94

Runs Gentoo Linux, ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="~x86″.

I've tested X against three options: AGPFastWrite, EnablePageFlip and
AccelMethod. Both of these have 2 possible values, True/False for the
first two and XAA/EXA for the last one. I start fluxbox, 54 processes
are running with an average of 0% CPU, 138112 used RAM and 377896 free
RAM. The benchmarks table is as follows (CPU is average during
glxgears runtime and FPS are given by glxgears):
Method 	EnablePageFlip 	AGPFastWrite 	FPS 	CPU
XAA 	False 	False 	702 	10%
XAA 	False 	True 	702 	10%
XAA 	True 	False 	978 	14%
XAA 	True 	True 	978 	14%
EXA 	False 	False 	661 	10%
EXA 	False 	True 	661 	10%
EXA 	True 	False 	661 	10%
EXA 	True 	True 	661 	10%

I should add that in all EXA configurations, the screen sometimes
would generated distorted images on the top, disallowing a confortable
use even if it happened to be better, which is not. So, currently I'm
using XAA with only EnablePageFlip enabled.

In fact, it is understandable that AGPFastWrite changes nothing since
by closely analysing lspci I notice that my motherboard as FW+ and
video card as not, so video card doesn't support FastWrite which is
unfortunate.

Hopefully, EXA gets better in later releases and performes better than
XAA and without the distortion.

So, my fully functional, best performance configuration is as follows:

    Section "ServerLayout"
    Identifier "X.org Configured"
    Screen 0 "Screen0″ 0 0
    InputDevice "Touchpad"
    InputDevice "Mouse0″ "CorePointer"
    InputDevice "Keyboard0″ "CoreKeyboard"
    EndSection

    Section "Files"
    FontPath "/usr/share/fonts/misc:unscaled"
    FontPath "/usr/share/fonts/Type1″
    FontPath "/usr/share/fonts/TTF"
    FontPath "/usr/share/fonts/corefonts"
    FontPath "/usr/share/fonts/freefont"
    FontPath "/usr/share/fonts/sharefonts"
    FontPath "/usr/share/fonts/terminus"
    FontPath "/usr/share/fonts/ttf-bitstream-vera"
    FontPath "/usr/share/fonts/unifont"
    FontPath "/usr/share/fonts/75dpi:unscaled"
    FontPath "/usr/share/fonts/100dpi:unscaled"
    FontPath "/usr/share/fonts/artwiz"
    EndSection

    Section "Module"
    Load "record"
    Load "extmod"
    Load "dbe"
    Load "dri"
    Load "glx"
    Load "xtrap"
    Load "freetype"
    Load "type1″

    # Touchpad
    Load "synaptics"
    EndSection

    Section "InputDevice"
    Identifier "Keyboard0″
    Driver "kbd"
    Option "XkbModel" "pc105″
    Option "XkbLayout" "pt"
    EndSection

    Section "InputDevice"
    Identifier "Mouse0″
    Driver "mouse"
    Option "Protocol" "IMPS/2″
    Option "Device" "/dev/input/mice"
    Option "Buttons" "5″
    Option "ZAxisMapping" "4 5″
    EndSection

    Section "InputDevice"
    Identifier "Touchpad"
    Driver "synaptics"
    Option "Protocol" "auto-dev"
    Option "Device" "/dev/input/event2″
    Option "SendCoreEvents" "yes"
    Option "LeftEdge" "120″
    Option "RightEdge" "830″
    Option "TopEdge" "120″
    Option "BottomEdge" "650″
    Option "FingerLow" "14″
    Option "FingerHigh" "15″
    Option "MaxTapTime" "130″
    Option "MaxTapMove" "5″
    Option "EmulateMidButtonTime" "75″
    Option "VertScrollDelta" "20″
    Option "HorizScrollDelta" "40″
    Option "MinSpeed" "0.4″
    Option "MaxSpeed" "0.95″
    Option "AccelFactor" "0.035″
    Option "EdgeMotionMinSpeed" "200″
    Option "EdgeMotionMaxSpeed" "200″
    Option "UpDownScrolling" "1″
    Option "CircularScrolling" "1″
    Option "CircScrollDelta" "0.1″
    Option "CircScrollTrigger" "7″
    Option "TapButton1″ "1″
    Option "TapButton2″ "2″
    Option "TapButton3″ "3″
    Option "LockedDrops" "1″
    Option "CircularScrolling" "1″
    EndSection

    Section "Monitor"
    Identifier "Monitor0″
    VendorName "Monitor Vendor"
    ModelName "Monitor Model"
    DisplaySize 340 270
    HorizSync 30-90
    VertRefresh 60
    Option "DPMS"
    EndSection

    Section "Device"
    Identifier "Card0″
    Driver "radeon"
    VendorName "ATI Technologies Inc"
    BoardName "Radeon Mobility M7 LW [Radeon Mobility 7500]"
    Option "AGPMode" "4″
    Option "EnablePageFlip" "True"
    EndSection

    Section "Screen"
    Identifier "Screen0″
    Device "Card0″
    Monitor "Monitor0″
    DefaultDepth 24
    SubSection "Display"
    Modes "1400×1050″ "1280×1024″ "1024×768″ "800×600″ "640×480″
    Depth 32
    EndSubSection
    SubSection "Display"
    Modes "1400×1050″ "1280×1024″ "1024×768″ "800×600″ "640×480″
    Depth 24
    EndSubSection
    SubSection "Display"
    Modes "1400×1050″ "1280×1024″ "1024×768″ "800×600″ "640×480″
    Depth 16
    EndSubSection
    SubSection "Display"
    Modes "1400×1050″ "1280×1024″ "1024×768″ "800×600″ "640×480″
    Depth 8
    EndSubSection
    SubSection "Display"
    Modes "1400×1050″ "1280×1024″ "1024×768″ "800×600″ "640×480″
    Depth 4
    EndSubSection
    EndSection

    Section "DRI"
    Mode 0666
    EndSection

    Section "Extensions"
    Option "Composite" "Enable"
    Option "RENDER" "Enable"
    EndSection

-- 
Paulo Jorge Matos - pocm at sat inesc-id pt
Web: http://sat.inesc-id.pt/~pocm
Computer and Software Engineering
INESC-ID - SAT Group