Powerbook RV350 Performance

[Daniel Kasak]

Andrew J. Barr wrote:

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> I'll spare you all a long description of my frustrations trying to get
> decent 2D and (hopefully, eventually) 3D performance out of the Radeon
> Mobility in my Powerbook. Instead, I'll just ask what I am supposed to
> expect out of the radeon/r300 drivers at this time (xf86-video-ati
> 6.6.191; mesa 6.5.2; xorg-server 1.2.99.903) and what options are
> recommended in xorg.conf for this configuration.
>
> I'd love to be able to run a compositing window manager but when I try
> that the scrolling speed in Firefox makes me want to throw things.
>   


The r300 driver doesn't ( currently ) have accelerated compositing via 
EXA like the r200 driver. You'd be better off with my previous 
Powerbook, with a Radeon 9250! Late xorg-server builds, such as the one 
you're using ( I think ... anyway stick to the latest ... ) have 
exa-damagetracking, which *just* makes compositing usable on my r300, 
but it does push the CPU usage up lots ( and therefore the temperature 
... I'm on a notebook as well ). Anyway, it's not *quite* ready for me 
for normal desktop usage.

But beryl runs quite well with AIGLX. Surprisingly, it's not as fluid as 
on my Intel i845G at work ( clearly the Radeon has much better fill 
rate, but it stutters a bit when beryl activates various effects ). But 
anyway, it's still quite good.

> As a final question I'd like to know what is in store for the r3xx open
> driver in the future, to the extent that is known.
>   

See my previous post about funding Radeon driver development. A couple 
of the developers listed their own list of features they'd like to work 
on. This gives you some idea.

-- 
Daniel Kasak
IT Developer
NUS Consulting Group
Level 5, 77 Pacific Highway
North Sydney, NSW, Australia 2060
T: (+61) 2 9922-7676 / F: (+61) 2 9922 7989
email: dkasak at nusconsulting.com.au
website: http://www.nusconsulting.com.au