[xorg] X3100 OpenGL incredibly slow and buggy on 2.2.0

[Alan W. Irwin]

On 2007-12-30 17:25+0100 Fabio Corazza wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> The title is quite meaningful: running xf86-video-intel 2.2.0, Mesa
> 7.0.1, not running compiz or any other sort of composite window
> manager, have Composite extension and AIGLX turned off (but it doesn't
> make any difference), I find OpenGL applications to be very slow.
> glxgears shows an average of 1100fps (this is what a GMA950 usually
> achieves).
[...]
> If I move the glxgears window while the gears are running, the motion
> inside the window gets corrupted and fps suddenly fall down to
> 300/400. Sometimes, it even freezes X and corrupt the whole screen
> (solution: reboot).
>
> Practically 3D acceleration is unusable. DRI is enabled, glxinfo shows
> nothing strange. I don't really don't know what to try anymore. The
> previous driver (2.1.1) showed the same issues. I'm forced to use XAA
> instead of the default EXA otherwise I couldn't see the fonts (guess
> this is an antialiasing related bug?).

Hi Fabio:

I also bought Intel recently motivated by reports and articles about how
they are putting support into their x.org drivers.  In contrast with your
initial bad experience, my experience has been pretty good.  I want to give
some details here to (a) show the Intel story is not all bad, and (b) let
you know there is probably hope for you since if support for my modern Intel
hardware is good, then it substantially narrows down what might be wrong for
your combination of hardware, software, and configuration.

(1) Hardware: ASUS P5K-V, g33 chipset with no ADD2 card.  According to 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_GMA the g33 chipset includes the GMA 3100.

What exact hardware do you have?  Probably the GMA X3100 you have mentioned
is all the information that is needed, but I am curious about the rest of
your hardware information (MB, chipset, and any ADD2 cards).

(2) Software: Both Debian testing (x.org 7.2, mesa 7.0.2, and
xf86-video-intel 2.1.0) and Debian unstable (x.org 7.3, mesa 7.0.2, and
patched xf86-video-intel 2.2.0) work well.  The patch (the "Let PLLs settle
longer" patch from https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=13196) 
for xf86-video-intel 2.2.0 is necessary to keep X from immediately freezing for
me.  My impression from comments made here is that xf86-video-intel 2.2.0
has been problematic for a number of users with different hardware,
and Jesse Barnes has said they are planning release of an improved
2.2.1 within weeks.  It's possible that new version might sort out the
troubles for your own hardware.

(3) Configuration: I use XAA, and haven't yet tried EXA.  I had a lot of
trouble with mode setting (since a lot of that is done differently now with
randr-enabled drivers) until I found a combination that worked in my
xorg.conf file. My working xorg.conf file and other detailed results are
given at https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=13399.

(4) Results: glxgears gives 2500 FPS.  I tried moving and resizing it this
morning after I saw your report above.  There were absolutely no troubles
with those operations.  I haven't bothered with any 3D desktop eye-candy
yet, and I don't run any high-level 3D games, but ppracer (aka tuxracer) and
foobillard are absolutely reliable and give far superior 3D performance
compared to the low-level video card (Matrox G200, does anybody still
remember those?) I had on my previous box.

Alan
__________________________
Alan W. Irwin

Astronomical research affiliation with Department of Physics and Astronomy,
University of Victoria (astrowww.phys.uvic.ca).

Programming affiliations with the FreeEOS equation-of-state implementation
for stellar interiors (freeeos.sf.net); PLplot scientific plotting software
package (plplot.org); the libLASi project (unifont.org/lasi); the Loads of
Linux Links project (loll.sf.net); and the Linux Brochure Project
(lbproject.sf.net).
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