scrolling problem with ATI drivers (Radeon X1650)

[cinamax]

Hello all,

I'm having scrolling problems with my ATI video card in ubuntu compiz. Scrolling becomes very sluggish. I read somewhere this is due to 2d acceleration being disabled. I don't have this problem with the same ubuntu installation using NVIDIA graphics card (with nvidia drivers).

I also don't have this problem when I reverted to fail safe MESA drivers on this card (ATI X1650), but I can't seem to get compiz running with MESA. (if you know how it would be great to know.)

Here is an attachment of my glxinfo output. What can I do to fix this problem(s)?

The funny thing is when I scroll using this forum's posting script scroll bar there is no problem whatsoever, but the firefox one is very laggy.

-----------------------------------------------

name of display: :0.0
display: :0 screen: 0
direct rendering: Yes
server glx vendor string: SGI
server glx version string: 1.2
server glx extensions:
GLX_ARB_multisample, GLX_EXT_import_context, GLX_EXT_texture_from_pixmap,
GLX_EXT_visual_info, GLX_EXT_visual_rating, GLX_OML_swap_method,
GLX_SGIS_multisample, GLX_SGIX_fbconfig, GLX_SGIX_visual_select_group
client glx vendor string: SGI
client glx version string: 1.4
client glx extensions:
GLX_ARB_get_proc_address, GLX_ARB_multisample, GLX_EXT_import_context,
GLX_EXT_visual_info, GLX_EXT_visual_rating, GLX_MESA_allocate_memory,
GLX_MESA_copy_sub_buffer, GLX_MESA_swap_control,
GLX_MESA_swap_frame_usage, GLX_OML_swap_method, GLX_OML_sync_control,
GLX_SGI_make_current_read, GLX_SGI_swap_control, GLX_SGI_video_sync,
GLX_SGIS_multisample, GLX_SGIX_fbconfig, GLX_SGIX_pbuffer,
GLX_SGIX_visual_select_group, GLX_EXT_texture_from_pixmap
GLX version: 1.2
GLX extensions:
GLX_ARB_get_proc_address, GLX_ARB_multisample, GLX_EXT_import_context,
GLX_EXT_visual_info, GLX_EXT_visual_rating, GLX_OML_swap_method,
GLX_SGIS_multisample, GLX_SGIX_fbconfig, GLX_SGIX_visual_select_group
OpenGL vendor string: ATI Technologies Inc.
OpenGL renderer string: Radeon X1650 Series
OpenGL version string: 2.1.7059 Release
OpenGL extensions:
GL_AMD_performance_monitor, GL_ARB_depth_texture, GL_ARB_draw_buffers,
GL_ARB_fragment_program, GL_ARB_fragment_shader, GL_ARB_multisample,
GL_ARB_multitexture, GL_ARB_occlusion_query, GL_ARB_pixel_buffer_object,
GL_ARB_point_parameters, GL_ARB_point_sprite, GL_ARB_shader_objects,
GL_ARB_shading_language_100, GL_ARB_shadow, GL_ARB_shadow_ambient,
GL_ARB_texture_border_clamp, GL_ARB_texture_compression,
GL_ARB_texture_cube_map, GL_ARB_texture_env_add,
GL_ARB_texture_env_combine, GL_ARB_texture_env_crossbar,
GL_ARB_texture_env_dot3, GL_ARB_texture_float,
GL_ARB_texture_mirrored_repeat, GL_ARB_texture_rectangle,
GL_ARB_transpose_matrix, GL_ARB_vertex_buffer_object,
GL_ARB_vertex_program, GL_ARB_vertex_shader, GL_ARB_window_pos,
GL_ATI_draw_buffers, GL_ATI_envmap_bumpmap, GL_ATI_fragment_shader,
GL_ATI_meminfo, GL_ATI_separate_stencil, GL_ATI_texture_compression_3dc,
GL_ATI_texture_env_combine3, GL_ATI_texture_float, GL_EXT_bgra,
GL_EXT_blend_color, GL_EXT_blend_func_separate, GL_EXT_blend_minmax,
GL_EXT_blend_subtract, GL_EXT_compiled_vertex_array, GL_EXT_copy_texture,
GL_EXT_draw_range_elements, GL_EXT_fog_coord, GL_EXT_framebuffer_object,
GL_EXT_gpu_program_parameters, GL_EXT_multi_draw_arrays,
GL_EXT_packed_depth_stencil, GL_EXT_packed_pixels,
GL_EXT_point_parameters, GL_EXT_rescale_normal, GL_EXT_secondary_color,
GL_EXT_separate_specular_color, GL_EXT_shadow_funcs, GL_EXT_stencil_wrap,
GL_EXT_subtexture, GL_EXT_texgen_reflection, GL_EXT_texture3D,
GL_EXT_texture_compression_s3tc, GL_EXT_texture_cube_map,
GL_EXT_texture_edge_clamp, GL_EXT_texture_env_add,
GL_EXT_texture_env_combine, GL_EXT_texture_env_dot3,
GL_EXT_texture_filter_anisotropic, GL_EXT_texture_lod_bias,
GL_EXT_texture_mirror_clamp, GL_EXT_texture_object,
GL_EXT_texture_rectangle, GL_EXT_texture_sRGB, GL_EXT_vertex_array,
GL_KTX_buffer_region, GL_NV_blend_square, GL_NV_texgen_reflection,
GL_SGIS_generate_mipmap, GL_SGIS_texture_edge_clamp, GL_SGIS_texture_lod,
GL_WIN_swap_hint, WGL_EXT_swap_control

[cinamax]

Here's my xorg.conf file

Section "ServerLayout"
Identifier "Default Layout"
screen "Default Screen" 0 0
Inputdevice "Generic Keyboard"
Inputdevice "Configured Mouse"
EndSection

Section "Files"
EndSection

Section "Module"
Load "bitmap"
Load "dri"
Load "glx"
Load "extmod"
Load "GLcore"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Generic Keyboard"
Driver "kbd"
Option "CoreKeyboard"
Option "XkbRules" "xorg"
Option "XkbModel" "pc101"
Option "XkbLayout" "us"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Configured Mouse"
Driver "mouse"
Option "CorePointer"
Option "Device" "/dev/input/mice"
Option "Protocol" "ImPS/2"
Option "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
Identifier "Default Monitor"
Option "DPMS"
EndSection

Section "Device"
Identifier "ATI Technologies Inc ATI Default Card"
Driver "fglrx"
Option "AddARGBGLXVisuals" "true"
Option "EXANoOffscreenPixmaps" "true"
Option "XAANoOffscreenPixmaps" "true"
Option "RenderAccel" "true"
Option "AccelMethod" "XAA" # XAA / EXA
Option "XAANoOffscreenPixmaps" "true"
Busid "PCI:1:0:0"
Option "VideoOverlay" "on"
Option "OpenGLOverlay" "off"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
Identifier "Default Screen"
Device "ATI Technologies Inc ATI Default Card"
Monitor "Default Monitor"
Defaultdepth 24
SubSection "Display"
Modes "1680x1050" "1600x1200" "1440x1440" "1400x1050" "1360x850" "1280x1024" "1280x960" "1152x864" "1024x768" "832x624" "800x600" "720x400" "640x480"
EndSubSection
EndSection

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

[cinamax]

I have an AGP8x ATI Radeon X1650 Pro 512MB card.

[cinamax]

doesnt seem like anyone cares but here's an update anyways.

I removed compiz and went back to metacity as composite manager in ubuntu 7.10. Firefox scrolling and video playback went back to normal. so I guess this is compatibility problem between compiz and ATI graphics card drivers.

I didn't have any problems like this with old NVIDIA card, Geforce FX5600.

From reading around forums this seems to be an issue with 2D acceleration not handled by the graphics card when an OpenGL 3D composite manager like compiz is enabled.

So I guess the bottom line is don't use ATI graphics card with compiz if you have an old CPU like mine (athlon XP 2.2Ghz). Maybe a CPU with SSE2 support will do better, anybody know?

Anyway, I hope someone or ATI has a fix for this.

[legume]

doesnt seem like anyone cares but here's an update anyways.

I removed compiz and went back to metacity as composite manager in ubuntu 7.10. Firefox scrolling and video playback went back to normal. so I guess this is compatibility problem between compiz and ATI graphics card drivers.

I didn't have any problems like this with old NVIDIA card, Geforce FX5600.

From reading around forums this seems to be an issue with 2D acceleration not handled by the graphics card when an OpenGL 3D composite manager like compiz is enabled.

So I guess the bottom line is don't use ATI graphics card with compiz if you have an old CPU like mine (athlon XP 2.2Ghz). Maybe a CPU with SSE2 support will do better, anybody know?

Anyway, I hope someone or ATI has a fix for this.

AGP X1600 pro XP @ 2GHz tested compiz fusion and don't notice any scrolling poblems.

Did have some hassle getting h/w accel because of AGP, but now it's sorted compiz seems OK (I don't have any destop installed yet)

Andy.

[cinamax]

AGP X1600 pro XP @ 2GHz tested compiz fusion and don't notice any scrolling poblems.

Did have some hassle getting h/w accel because of AGP, but now it's sorted compiz seems OK (I don't have any destop installed yet)

Andy.

Could you post your xorg.conf file ? I've been trying for a couple of days to get this to work. Did you install latest ATI drivers or the radeonhd ones that came with distro?

[legume]

Could you post your xorg.conf file ? I've been trying for a couple of days to get this to work. Did you install latest ATI drivers or the radeonhd ones that came with distro?

I am using fglrx 8-3.

This conf may not be ideal as I've been playing around trying things I've read. I seem to have managed to mess up etqw (not with compiz) so when 8-4 comes out I will likely uninstall fglrx and rm -r /etc/ati/ and start with a clean config.

I am using seamonkey and a recentish git build of compiz-fusion against xorg 7.2 alone on a lfs partition which may one day get finished - for now just testing. Scrolling, while not laggy does eat some CPU running 1280x1024. Cube is lagless and fast.

I don't know how distros start compiz and you would probably be best not to mess with it - but I do it with a .xinitrc as below. Note the export maybe that helps - maybe not.

.xinitrc

xgamma -gamma 1.4
export LIBGL_ALWAYS_INDIRECT=1
xterm -sb -rightbar -g 80x40+0+0 &
xterm -sb -rightbar -g 80x40+1290+0 &
dbus-launch --exit-with-session compiz --replace --indirect-rendering --sm-disable ccp &
emerald --replace

xorg.conf


Section "ServerLayout"
Identifier "X.org Configured"
Screen 0 "aticonfig-Screen[0]" 0 0
InputDevice "Mouse0" "CorePointer"
InputDevice "Keyboard0" "CoreKeyboard"
EndSection

Section "Files"
RgbPath "/usr/share/X11/rgb"
ModulePath "/usr/lib/X11/modules"
FontPath "/usr/lib/X11/fonts/misc/"
FontPath "/usr/lib/X11/fonts/TTF/"
FontPath "/usr/lib/X11/fonts/OTF"
FontPath "/usr/lib/X11/fonts/Type1/"
FontPath "/usr/lib/X11/fonts/100dpi/"
FontPath "/usr/lib/X11/fonts/75dpi/"
EndSection

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

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Keyboard0"
Driver "kbd"
Option "XkbLayout" "gb"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Mouse0"
Driver "mouse"
Option "Protocol" "auto"
Option "Device" "/dev/mouse"
Option "ZAxisMapping" "4 5 6 7"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
Identifier "aticonfig-Monitor[0]"
Option "VendorName" "ATI Proprietary Driver"
Option "ModelName" "Generic Autodetecting Monitor"
Option "DPMS" "true"
EndSection

Section "Device"
Identifier "aticonfig-Device[0]"
Driver "fglrx"
Option "XAANoOffscreenPixmaps" "true"
Option "TexturedVideo" "on"
Option "TexturedVideoSync" "on"
Option "VideoOverlay" "off"
Option "OpenGLOverlay" "off"
Option "Textured2D" "on"
Option "TexturedXrender" "on"
Option "BackingStore" "on"
Option "UseFastTLS" "0"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
Identifier "aticonfig-Screen[0]"
Device "aticonfig-Device[0]"
Monitor "aticonfig-Monitor[0]"
DefaultDepth 24
SubSection "Display"

# Modes "1024x768"
# Modes "1920x1200"
Viewport 0 0
Depth 24
Modes "1280x1024"
EndSubSection
EndSection

Section "DRI"
Group "video"
Mode 0660
EndSection

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

[cinamax]

Compiz 3D runs without any problem for me, it was the 2D rendering and video playback that doesnt seem to be accelerated. I used VLC and set output to X11 display but still video is choppy when the bit rate is high or when I use a bigger resolution. Firefox scrolling is jumpy and almost un usable. I don't have these problems when using metacity and ATI drivers but of course that means no 3D fancy desktop stuff, which I really like.

I'm using gnome desktop and ubuntu so compiz is started by gnome's window manager script. I've made sure /usr/bin/compiz's indiret_rendering=yes.

I'm going to try some of your options under "Device" and see if it helps. I'm also using fglrx 8-3.

What's the advantage of using dbus-launch instead of letting gnome's window manager use compiz as default composite manager?

[bridgman]

Cinamax, for the video out can you try :

TexturedVideo on
VideoOverlay off
outputting to xv, not x11 ?

Video on the X11 output will definitely be choppy, but going out through TexturedVideo should be a lot smoother.

Disclaimer -- I know that tvtime doesn't work with any of the Xv formats we support under TexturedVideo - I *think* VLC is OK but don't remember for sure.

I was under the impression that most of the scrolling problems were resolved -- can you pls check that the "Smooth Scroll" option is turned off on your Firefox options ?

[legume]

Compiz 3D runs without any problem for me, it was the 2D rendering and video playback that doesnt seem to be accelerated. I used VLC and set output to X11 display but still video is choppy when the bit rate is high or when I use a bigger resolution. Firefox scrolling is jumpy and almost un usable. I don't have these problems when using metacity and ATI drivers but of course that means no 3D fancy desktop stuff, which I really like.

I'm using gnome desktop and ubuntu so compiz is started by gnome's window manager script. I've made sure /usr/bin/compiz's indiret_rendering=yes.

I'm going to try some of your options under "Device" and see if it helps. I'm also using fglrx 8-3.

What's the advantage of using dbus-launch instead of letting gnome's window manager use compiz as default composite manager?

I don't have much gnome stuff installed I just compiled the things that were on the list of dependencies for fusion. I don't use graphical logons it's easier to test various things using different startxs and xinitrcs and using dbus like that seemed cleaner so it disappeared when I kill X.

I am just using metacity now and I suppose it is a bit snappier scrolling than with fusion loaded - but it's not that noticable.

xv doesn't work windowed with compiz, but with mplayer it works OK full screen for me. There is a compiz ccsm setting to let apps direct render when fullscreen which I have checked.

x11 is software rendering so I would expect it to get choppy at higher bit rates if you are running out of CPU.

Flash player doesn't use xv and I can get a quite hq stream of formula 1 practice in the UK. I found I could use the zoom plugin to scale it nicely (there is a ccsm option somewhere that I had already set for quality maybe that helped) with no extra cpu usage. If I used the player to double size it I ran out of CPU.

[Maxhysteria]

I was under the impression that most of the scrolling problems were resolved -- can you pls check that the "Smooth Scroll" option is turned off on your Firefox options ?

I don't think they are resolved...

Sometimes, when I'm scrolling too fast, my music freeze until firefox stop scrolling. Same issue when I'm reading PDF. I've seen that xorg cpu load is about 80-90% and more when I'm scrolling. It is not only for firefox or pdf, when I'm scrolling in a terminal, or in a big text file.

And it doesn't occurs when I'm using metacity.

Xorg device section:

Section "Device"
Identifier "Configured Video Device"
Driver "fglrx"
Option "XAANoOffscreenPixmaps" "on"
Option "TexturedVideo" "on"
Option "TexturedVideoSync" "on"
Option "VideoOverlay" "off"
Option "OpenGLOverlay" "off"
Option "Textured2D" "on"
Option "TexturedXrender" "on"
Option "UseFastTLS" "1"
Option "BackingStore" "on"
EndSection



I have tried some other configurations without changes.

And for video, xv works with some players in full screen only if I use compiz.

[bridgman]

Can you try turning off XAANoOffscreenPixmaps, Textured2D and TexturedXrender ? The use of XAANoOffscreenPixmaps option was a workaround for a screen corruption issue, and I believe the other two options are work-in-progress and not released for production yet.

I don't have high confidence that these changes will improve performance but at least this gets it closer to the configuration we normally use (AFAIK).

EDIT - if you don't use aticonfig to change the settings, please also check in amdpcsdb to make sure that you don't still have "ons" there after you put "offs" in xorg.conf. In the event of a conflict between the files, amdpcsdb wins.

[Maxhysteria]

Can you try turning off XAANoOffscreenPixmaps, Textured2D and TexturedXrender ? The use of XAANoOffscreenPixmaps option was a workaround for a screen corruption issue, and I believe the other two options are work-in-progress and not released for production yet.

I don't have high confidence that these changes will improve performance but at least this gets it closer to the configuration we normally use (AFAIK).

EDIT - if you don't use aticonfig to change the settings, please also check in amdpcsdb to make sure that you don't still have "ons" there after you put "offs" in xorg.conf. In the event of a conflict between the files, amdpcsdb wins.

Ok I've tested this, changes takes effect in amdpcsdb.
Opening windows seems to be a bit more reactive, but there is always a freeze when I'm scrolling.

[cinamax]

Cinamax, for the video out can you try :

TexturedVideo on
VideoOverlay off
outputting to xv, not x11 ?

Video on the X11 output will definitely be choppy, but going out through TexturedVideo should be a lot smoother.

I was under the impression that most of the scrolling problems were resolved -- can you pls check that the "Smooth Scroll" option is turned off on your Firefox options ?

I have smooth scroll and spell check off in firefox. Scrolling is still very "choppy" but when I have those turned on it is pretty much un-usable because it scrolls even slower.

I have used the Xv option in aticonfig which sets up those two options. I used X11 because its the only one that does not flicker when I played video under VLC. X11 output in VLC runs fine but only when the output is very small resolution/low bit rates. I had flickering problems with xv.

I'm going to check if these options help and check amdpcsdb. Thx-

[bridgman]

There is a Compiz option which will help with the flicker when your video is playing back full screen, but that won't help with windowed video. The option is something like "unredirect full screen", or "don't unredirect...", or something equally confusing ;)

[cinamax]

Hello,

I tried with those suggested settings under Device options, but my xserver booted into a fail safe mode. What did I miss?

[Maxhysteria]

Hi,

The scrolling problem is not solved with catalyst 8.4 when using compiz, and there is no improvements for scolling in this release.

bridgman, do you think that it will be solved in catalyst 8.5 ?

[d@ten]

Same problem (the annoying scrolling-issue) with intel-graphics-hardware :/

[deanjo]

Same problem (the annoying scrolling-issue) with intel-graphics-hardware :/

Ok so this happens on intel's, ati's, and nvidia's but does not seem to appear on the qt4 build of FF.

[d@ten]

workaround:

adding lines:

Option "AccelMethod" "XAA"
Option "XAANoOffscreenPixmaps" "true"

to Section "Device"

works for me so far.

But no xv-playback possible now.