EXA distorts windows

[Paulo J. Matos]

On 6/21/07, Michel Dänzer <michel at tungstengraphics.com> wrote:
>
> It doesn't matter whan you start it, the point is that when it's
> running, things should generally be faster with EXA than with XAA.
>

Here's my very simple benchmarks done with gtkperf, the first run
after starting 'xcompmgr' at the command line, the other one after
killing the xcompmgr that was running.
GtkEntry - time:  0.13
GtkComboBox - time:  9.81
GtkComboBoxEntry - time: 12.81
GtkSpinButton - time:  2.16
GtkProgressBar - time:  1.31
GtkToggleButton - time:  3.09
GtkCheckButton - time: 13.16
GtkRadioButton - time:  6.32
GtkTextView - Add text - time:  2.71
GtkTextView - Scroll - time:  1.64
GtkDrawingArea - Lines - time: 16.27
GtkDrawingArea - Circles - time: 21.05
GtkDrawingArea - Text - time:  2.59
GtkDrawingArea - Pixbufs - time:  2.17
 ---
Total time: 95.24


GtkEntry - time:  0.11
GtkComboBox - time:  5.18
GtkComboBoxEntry - time:  3.95
GtkSpinButton - time:  0.72
GtkProgressBar - time:  0.56
GtkToggleButton - time:  4.03
GtkCheckButton - time:  9.52
GtkRadioButton - time:  6.44
GtkTextView - Add text - time:  1.49
GtkTextView - Scroll - time:  0.94
GtkDrawingArea - Lines - time:  1.46
GtkDrawingArea - Circles - time:  0.95
GtkDrawingArea - Text - time:  1.70
GtkDrawingArea - Pixbufs - time:  2.80
 ---
Total time: 39.88

With xcompmgr running is at least twice as slow. :-(

Here are the important parts of my xorg.conf if you wish to check them out:
Section "Module"
        Load  "record"
        Load  "extmod"
        Load  "dbe"
        Load  "dri"
        Load  "glx"
        Load  "xtrap"
        Load  "freetype"
        Load  "type1"
# Touchpad
        Load "synaptics"
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"
        Option      "AccelMethod"    "EXA"
        Option      "AccelDFS"       "True"
        Option      "ColorTiling"    "True"
EndSection

Section "DRI"
        Mode 0666
EndSection

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

I think I'm going back to XAA... Even if I don't start the xcompmgr I
still feel X eats a lot more CPU with EXA option.

If I can do anything to help, let me know.

Cheers,

Paulo Matos


-- 
Paulo Jorge Matos - pocm at soton.ac.uk
http://www.personal.soton.ac.uk/pocm
PhD Student @ ECS
University of Southampton, UK