Poor X Performance in Jaunty

[Avatar] [info]dannipenguin
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Dear Lazyweb,

Since upgrading to Ubuntu Jaunty, the 2D performance of the "Integrated Graphics Chipset: Intel(R) Mobile Intel® GM45 Express Chipset" in my laptop has been atrocious. This is really beginning to bug me. It was good in Intrepid. Running Metacity 2.26 with compositing enabled.

Xorg.log (if it helps).

Thoughts greatly appreciated. I enjoyed being able to change window focus without my music skipping.

Update: from this page (thanks, Xan) it looks like my choices are: switch to UXA; switch to the greedy migration heuristic; or downgrade my driver. If no one has any recommendation for the GM45/Lenovo X200s, I suppose I'll try them and see what happens.

Update 2: I have updated the Intel driver to 2.7.99 (see this comment) and enabled UXA and things so far look good on the regular Jaunty kernel. Need to test if it's still nice and snappy with the second monitor plugged in. Also if it stays this way over a couple of days.

Update 3: So, it turns out that after a couple of good suspend/resume cycles, the latest drivers seem to blow up on every chvt (which includes suspend/resume), both in UXA and EXA modes. I wonder if it's related to kernel modesetting, but I couldn't be bothered poking around (yeah, I'm slack). I have downgraded to the 2.4 driver, to see how things work out.
Posted 8/5/09 16:05 — 34 comments

Comments

From:[info]David Adam <zanchey> [typekey.com]
Date:2009-05-08 08:21 (UTC)
(Link)
http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/releasenotes/904#Performance%20regressions%20on%20Intel%20graphics%20cards
From:[info]dannipenguin
Date:2009-05-08 08:36 (UTC)
(Link)
Did you try any of these?
From:[info]David Adam <zanchey> [typekey.com]
Date:2009-05-08 09:14 (UTC)
(Link)
You're asking the lazyweb! I didn't ask you if you read the release notes! :-)
From:[info]dannipenguin
Date:2009-05-08 09:15 (UTC)
(Link)
I did not, no.

I was wondering if you'd tried any of them with any success.
From:[info]mgedmin
Date:2009-05-08 10:32 (UTC)
(Link)
I've got an Intel GM965 (Thinkpad T61) and EXA was painful, so I switched to UXA.

It works fine, except for two things:

(1) a slow memory leak that eventually fills all my RAM with the page cache, causing a thrashing death, unless point (2) happens

(2) X crashes on suspend/resume, kicking me out to the GDM login screen, and incidentally freeing all the leaked memory so I don't suffer from (1).

Once or twice I got what felt like a GPU lockup: the picture on the screen stopped updating (except for the still-moving mouse cursor), yet the machine was alive otherwise. The only way to get out of that was to reboot. I hear such lockups are more frequent if you use EXA, though.
From:[info]anothersysadmin.wordpress.com
Date:2009-05-09 18:02 (UTC)

Fscking memory leak

(Link)
Yeah I can confirm a slow but inesorable memory leak with UXA (which otherwise works very well, effects are so smooth!) which brings the system down to its knees after some random usage. Definitely is not a leak trigged by a screensaver cause i can leave for days the screensaver on and no crash)
From:[info]David Adam <zanchey> [typekey.com]
Date:2009-05-08 16:00 (UTC)
(Link)
I haven't actually noticed any degradation - my gratuitous cube effects are as performant as always - but I don't think the R200 has a GMA chip.
From:[info]dannipenguin
Date:2009-05-09 03:03 (UTC)
(Link)
It does not. But people have also been complaining of issues with the i945 and i965 chips.
From:(Anonymous)
Date:2009-05-08 08:29 (UTC)
(Link)
Yeah it was kind of stupid for Ubuntu to move to the new driver and not go with kernel 2.6.29. The stack Ubuntu ships is kind of broken. See Fedora 11 for a working stack... for now, downgrading the intel driver would be your best bet I think.
From:(Anonymous)
Date:2009-05-08 17:10 (UTC)
(Link)
If you consider Fedora 11 a working stack for intel gma users, you might have a different definition of working than I. I have bunch of different gma chipsets and all suffer of some kind of brokenness under F11: random GPU crashes, random X crashes, completely broken 3D (GPU crashes just after a few seconds on any 3D heavy app, of after a few minutes/hours of compiz enabled), ...

Just take a tour around redhat's bugzilla, it's full of reports about gma brokenness ... recent intel drivers just suck on one way or another for a big chunk of intel cards.
From:(Anonymous)
Date:2009-05-08 08:45 (UTC)

MTRR issue

(Link)
Hi,

This might help you:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/xserver-xorg-video-intel/+bug/314928

Best regards,
Yannick
From:(Anonymous)
Date:2009-05-08 14:42 (UTC)

Re: MTRR issue

(Link)
This was the fix for me. I run the second attached script (2009-04-30) whenever I reboot, and Flash videos are watchable again. I also installed a newer kernel and X packages after that, but they made no difference. The fix in the linked bug is simple and it works. Try it.
From:[info]grillbar.org
Date:2009-05-08 08:54 (UTC)
(Link)
The comment of Directrix1 on https://bugs.edge.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/xserver-xorg-video-intel/+bug/303011 should solve the problem i hear...
From:[info]dannipenguin
Date:2009-05-08 08:56 (UTC)
(Link)
I checked the permissions on the DRI device. That does not seem to be the issue.
From:(Anonymous)
Date:2009-05-08 10:00 (UTC)

When all else fails? Blindly venturing into the dark...

(Link)
If you've tried everything in this page:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/X/Troubleshooting/IntelPerformance

...and it still doesn't work? This you might be able to make it run faster by using this version of the XServer:
https://edge.launchpad.net/~ubuntu-x-swat/+archive/xserver-no-backfill

The drawback of the no-backfill hack is that you will reintroduce bug 254468 on your system (you will get momentary noise / graphics corruption on certain new windows):
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/xorg-server/+bug/254468

Honestly I'm not sure this will work at all (I never tried it) but some ATI users have reported that their systems ran A LOT faster with this change and there is something ATI specific about this change in the code. Would be interesting if someone ran some sort of benchmark to find out if this does indeed make a difference (using the phoronix-test-suite package maybe).
From:(Anonymous)
Date:2009-05-08 10:42 (UTC)

karmic kernel worth a try

(Link)
Try install the current karmic kernel on jaunty:

http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/main/l/linux/linux-image-2.6.30-2-generic_2.6.30-2.3_amd64.deb

http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/main/l/linux/linux-image-2.6.30-2-generic_2.6.30-2.3_i386.deb


(you also need kernel headers etc if you need to recompile modules like virtualbox or proprietary drivers etc. Also there might be a more recent karmic kernel that works by the time you read this, I dunno).
From:(Anonymous)
Date:2009-05-08 11:20 (UTC)

Re: karmic kernel worth a try

(Link)
It won't help http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=ubuntu_intel_shape&num=1
They've also benchmarked 9.04 regression http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=ubuntu_904_intel&num=1
I didn't upgrade one of my PC just because of this regresion(rest of them have Nvidia GPU,and they work great)
Maybe you could look also on their comment and discussion if someone gave a solution.
From:[info]shirro.com
Date:2009-05-08 11:28 (UTC)
(Link)
I use the most recent kernel from http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/

Seems to work for me.
From:[info]shirro.com
Date:2009-05-08 11:32 (UTC)
(Link)
Oh, and I also have this ppa
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/ubuntu-x-swat/x-updates/ubuntu jaunty main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/ubuntu-x-swat/x-updates/ubuntu jaunty main

Yeah, can't wait for 9.10
From:[info]https://login.launchpad.net/+id/bcf6fLz
Date:2009-05-08 15:01 (UTC)
(Link)
Hi Davyd,

I have an X200 and went through all of these options. The best working one for me was the stuff in the xorg-edgers PPA with Jaunty with UXA enabled. Unfortunately it's not great, it just sucks least.

Downgrading the driver didn't help.
The greedy thing didn't help.
Karmic with 2.6.30 didn't help.
From:(Anonymous)
Date:2009-05-08 15:11 (UTC)

Dread Knight

(Link)
Jaunty is just a piece of crap/epic phail for intel gma users.

I might downgrade to intrepid or just go with another distro after all..... meh (i even heard about users going back to windows).

Sorry i have to be such a lame troll... :\
From:[info]treitter
Date:2009-05-08 15:59 (UTC)

Please update us

(Link)
If you do figure it out, please update this entry or add another one. I've got a 965 card, and this sort of thing is kind of a blocker for me upgrading to Jaunty...
From:(Anonymous)
Date:2009-05-08 19:16 (UTC)

no nice solution

(Link)
I'm running 'Intel Corporation Mobile 945GM/GMS, 943/940GML Express Integrated Graphics Controller'.

* Out of the box I'm getting awful performance. Especially if enabling effects
* UXA solves the above problems but freezes my laptop at random and for no reason
* downgrading driver gets me back all the old bugs... but things kind of work
* now I've upgraded the video driver to to 2.7.0... still not sure if it's working or not (repo - https://launchpad.net/~ubuntu-x-swat/+archive/x-updates) (instructions - http://www.red91.com/2009/05/08/intel-270-driver-on-ubuntu)
* if 2.7.0 fails I'll consider moving to Fedora. It's not a nice thing reformatting partitions, but so far I haven't heard Fedora shipping a broken distro... and Ubuntu gets into that bad habit - intel video driver, intel wireless, hibernation...
From:(Anonymous)
Date:2009-05-08 21:43 (UTC)

Re: no nice solution

(Link)
2.7.0 still has some UXA hang bugs for certain chipsets but those bugs are fixed in 2.7.99 for sure. Carl Worth is also assembling cherry picks for a 2.7.1 release which is coming very soon. The 2.7.1 release is likely go into into x-updates PPA and make UXA more stable for the last chipsets as well.
From:(Anonymous)
Date:2009-05-08 21:48 (UTC)

Dread Knight

(Link)
I've moved to Linux Mint 7 RC1 (Gloria i think). It's damn awesome and it will reach number 2 on distrowatch.com soon, right after ubuntu.... it's just a matter of time...
From:(Anonymous)
Date:2009-05-08 23:37 (UTC)

Intel 4500 performance

(Link)
I just upgraded xserver-xorg-video-intel to 2.7.99.1-1 in Debian Sid installation on my X200 and suddenly the fps in QuakeWorld doubled!
From:(Anonymous)
Date:2009-05-09 02:13 (UTC)

re: Poor X Performance in Jaunty

(Link)
Hope this helps a little:

Add this ppa's:
http://ppa.launchpad.net/ubuntu-x-swat/x-updates/ubuntu jaunty main
http://ppa.launchpad.net/xorg-edgers/ppa/ubuntu jaunty main

This will give you newer versions of Xorg and Intel drivers

There is also recommendation to try kernel 2.9.30rc2 from http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/v2.6.30-rc2/.
There is also 2.9.30-rc4 now but both have some weird issues after 10 hours of work without restarting - swap file gets full and firefox starts drawing fonts in weird way. Kernel 2.9.30rc2 fixes some problems with a small (noticeable for some, unnoticeable for other) rendering problem during video playback and gives best overall performance, but you can live without it.



From:[info]dannipenguin
Date:2009-05-09 02:59 (UTC)

Re: Poor X Performance in Jaunty

(Link)
I've upgraded to 2.7.99 on the regular Jaunty kernel and enabled UXA and things are so far looking good.
From:[info]dannipenguin
Date:2009-05-09 14:41 (UTC)

Re: Poor X Performance in Jaunty

(Link)
I take that back. After a couple of suspend/resumes any chvt crashes the X server.

Possibly because I wasn't using a kernel that supported kernel modesetting? I didn't look.
From:[info]beranger_org
Date:2009-05-11 08:03 (UTC)

Re: Poor X Performance in Jaunty

(Link)
You people simply fail to understand that UXA isn't ready. UXA isn't stable. UXA doesn't exist. Not for Intel, anyway.

And, obviously, regardless of the crappiness of the Intel video driver, Jaunty's major problem is the kernel.

Using the kernel from here: http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/ with the official Jaunty Intel driver (2.6.3) and EXA(!) raised my 945's performance from 177 FPS to 1276 FPS!
(see http://beranger.org/v3/wordpress/2009/05/04/jaunty-kernel-2630-fixes-the-intel-video/)

Also, using Karmic's latest kernel raised my Intel's (EXA, driver 2.6.3) performance to 1537 FPS!
(see http://beranger.org/v3/wordpress/2009/05/10/karmic-kernel-in-jaunty-with-intel-945/)
From:[info]beranger_org
Date:2009-05-11 09:52 (UTC)

Re: Poor X Performance in Jaunty

(Link)
P.S. The version 2.4 of the driver works fine, except that once in 3 days you might encounter a fatal Error in I830WaitLpRing():

http://beranger.org/v3/wordpress/2009/05/06/error-in-i830waitlpring/
From:(Anonymous)
Date:2009-05-11 18:12 (UTC)

Re: Poor X Performance in Jaunty

(Link)
UPDATE/FIX HIBERNATION: The 2.6.30 kernel line in GRUB needs to have added resume=/dev/sda2 or whatever your swap partition is, like in the good old times!
From:(Anonymous)
Date:2009-05-17 03:58 (UTC)

Intel Driver Development

(Link)
http://keithp.com/blogs/Sharpening_the_Intel_Driver_Focus/
From:[info]tlbdk
Date:2009-05-17 17:34 (UTC)

UXA + KMS + 2.6.30-rc5 = Stable driver(maybe)

(Link)
Hi, read your blog post a couple of days ago and I had pretty much the same experience with the Intel driver in Jaunty. But after some testing and compiling my own kernel with mode setting enabled, everything thing seems to be fast and stable. And as an added bonus console output is now hires and on VGA output from bootup and not first from X start as before. The VT switch problem also seems to be gone with KMS enabled.

So I can recommend to get KMS(Kernel Mode Setting) working first before playing with XServer and the driver settings.

The Ubuntu kernel should also be able to do it, so if you are not up for compiling your own:

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/X/KernelModeSetting
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