2D performance on 'radeon' vs 'radeonhd'

Hi,
I built the current repository versions of 'radeon' and 'radeonhd' and compared the 2D performance on my X1800.

As you can see, 'radeonhd' blows 'radeon' away on the GtkDrawingArea-Text test, where 'radeonhd' is about 3X faster. I believe there is a serious problem with this aspect of the 'radeon' driver. Conversely, for the GtkDrawingArea-Circles test, 'radeon' is about 3X faster.

A couple months ago I remember running the same type of comparison and 'radeon' performed better on the same text drawing test, but I don't know when/how the reduced performance started.

Does anybody have any thoughts or explanation on this?

EDIT: These were the only options I used...

Code:

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Option "AccelMethod" "EXA"
Option "MigrationHeuristic" "greedy"

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Yes, current repository version of DRM.

Code:

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X.Org X Server 1.5.99.1
Release Date: 5 September 2007
X Protocol Version 11, Revision 0
Build Operating System: Linux 2.6.25-zen0 i686
Current Operating System: Linux shocked 2.6.25-zen0 #1 SMP PREEMPT Thu May 1 20:29:16 PDT 2008 i686
Build Date: 01 May 2008  09:21:00PM

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Radeon:

http://www.webaccel.net/surfer/radeon.jpg

RadeonHD:

http://www.webaccel.net/surfer/radeonhd.jpg

Which acceleration options were you using for each driver ? You should be able to see in the logs.

Were you running radeon with a current DRM (ie from git) ? The code in radeon (which will be the code in radeonhd pretty soon) runs a lot faster when it can use the Command Processor (CP) via DRM.

Shadowfb (no acceleration) is faster than basic XAA hw acceleration. If you turn on EXA and are using radeon and drm from git, you should see a nice performance boost. For an apples to apples comparison, turn on XAA in both drivers (Option "AccelMethod" "XAA").

For a really nice performance boost, try grabbing the latest xserver with otayler's glyph patches.

The only options I used were "EXA" and "MigrationHeuristic". Latest DRM, mesa, xorg-server from GIT.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by surfer

The only options I used were "EXA" and "MigrationHeuristic". Latest DRM, mesa, xorg-server from GIT.

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Can you post your xorg logs? Also, try removing the migrationheuristic option.

Wow! Holy shit! I removed the MigrationHeuristic "greedy" option. I didn't expect that to help, then voila. Here are the new results! Very impressive. I guess I wasn't getting much text acceleration before, so I'm going to see if things feel snappier and report later. Also, that ghosting effect when dragging windows across other windows that don't redraw fast enough... that problem seems to have disappeared. Also, textured video is working again! Weird! I guess I missed the memo telling people to stop using this option. :9

http://www.webaccel.net/surfer/radeon2.jpg

you should be happy..you are probably getting 10 times the 2d performance of us with nvidia 8800, lol

Quote:

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Originally Posted by surfer

Wow! Holy shit! I removed the MigrationHeuristic "greedy" option. I didn't expect that to help, then voila. Here are the new results! Very impressive. I guess I wasn't getting much text acceleration before, so I'm going to see if things feel snappier and report later. Also, that ghosting effect when dragging windows across other windows that don't redraw fast enough... that problem seems to have disappeared. Also, textured video is working again! Weird! I guess I missed the memo telling people to stop using this option. :9

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That option more or less disables acceleration since it avoids migrating pixmaps. It's useful when the driver does not provide an EXA composite hook, since there is less pixmap migration (to/from vram), but it also avoid cases that could be accelerated. The latest radeon exa code offers pretty thorough acceleration, so there's no need for it.

You'll get another nice aa text boost if you grab the latest xserver with otayler's exa glyph updates. You may already have them depending on when you last updated your xserver from git.

Here are my results from the current X related tools and the radeon driver as of today. 5/15/2008
All the test results are either steady or improving... :-)

http://www.webaccel.net/surfer/radeon4.jpg

Quote:

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You'll get another nice aa text boost if you grab the latest xserver with otayler's exa glyph updates. You may already have them depending on when you last updated your xserver from git.

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How do we build the xserver form git? The same way as mesa, 2D driver and so? I ask because out of the freedesktop wiki it seems to be a bit more complicated than just 'autogen.sh;configure;make install...or am I totally wrong?