RadeonHD 3650 AGP on Arch Linux

[Darkfire Fox]

---n00b help hotline!---

Hello! I just finished installing and (somewhat) configuring the latest batch of Arch Linux on a primary partition.

Trouble is, both KDE 4.2 and XFCE 4.6 are slower than frozen molasses at rendering anything, so I know my xorg.conf needs tweaking

I used "Xorg -configure" as root to generate a sample xorg.conf file after installing X, and this is what it produced:

Section "ServerLayout"
Identifier "X.org Configured"
Screen 0 "Screen0" 0 0
InputDevice "Mouse0" "CorePointer"
InputDevice "Keyboard0" "CoreKeyboard"
EndSection

Section "Files"
ModulePath "/usr/lib/xorg/modules"
FontPath "/usr/share/fonts/misc"
FontPath "/usr/share/fonts/100dpi:unscaled"
FontPath "/usr/share/fonts/75dpi:unscaled"
FontPath "/usr/share/fonts/TTF"
FontPath "/usr/share/fonts/Type1"
EndSection

Section "Module"
Load "record"
Load "glx"
Load "dri"
Load "dbe"
Load "extmod"
Load "dri2"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Keyboard0"
Driver "kbd"
EndSection

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

Section "Monitor"
#DisplaySize 320 240 # mm
Identifier "Monitor0"
VendorName "GWY"
ModelName "8b1b"
HorizSync 30.0 - 70.0
VertRefresh 50.0 - 160.0
Option "DPMS"
EndSection

Section "Device"
### Available Driver options are:-
### Values: <i>: integer, <f>: float, <bool>: "True"/"False",
### <string>: "String", <freq>: "<f> Hz/kHz/MHz"
### [arg]: arg optional
#Option "NoAccel" # [<bool>]
#Option "SWcursor" # [<bool>]
#Option "Dac6Bit" # [<bool>]
#Option "Dac8Bit" # [<bool>]
#Option "BusType" # [<str>]
#Option "CPPIOMode" # [<bool>]
#Option "CPusecTimeout" # <i>
#Option "AGPMode" # <i>
#Option "AGPFastWrite" # [<bool>]
#Option "AGPSize" # <i>
#Option "GARTSize" # <i>
#Option "RingSize" # <i>
#Option "BufferSize" # <i>
#Option "EnableDepthMoves" # [<bool>]
#Option "EnablePageFlip" # [<bool>]
#Option "NoBackBuffer" # [<bool>]
#Option "DMAForXv" # [<bool>]
#Option "FBTexPercent" # <i>
#Option "DepthBits" # <i>
#Option "PCIAPERSize" # <i>
#Option "AccelDFS" # [<bool>]
#Option "IgnoreEDID" # [<bool>]
#Option "DisplayPriority" # [<str>]
#Option "PanelSize" # [<str>]
#Option "ForceMinDotClock" # <freq>
#Option "ColorTiling" # [<bool>]
#Option "VideoKey" # <i>
#Option "RageTheatreCrystal" # <i>
#Option "RageTheatreTunerPort" # <i>
#Option "RageTheatreCompositePort" # <i>
#Option "RageTheatreSVideoPort" # <i>
#Option "TunerType" # <i>
#Option "RageTheatreMicrocPath" # <str>
#Option "RageTheatreMicrocType" # <str>
#Option "ScalerWidth" # <i>
#Option "RenderAccel" # [<bool>]
#Option "SubPixelOrder" # [<str>]
#Option "ShowCache" # [<bool>]
#Option "DynamicClocks" # [<bool>]
#Option "VGAAccess" # [<bool>]
#Option "ReverseDDC" # [<bool>]
#Option "LVDSProbePLL" # [<bool>]
#Option "AccelMethod" # <str>
#Option "DRI" # [<bool>]
#Option "ConnectorTable" # <str>
#Option "DefaultConnectorTable" # [<bool>]
#Option "DefaultTMDSPLL" # [<bool>]
#Option "TVDACLoadDetect" # [<bool>]
#Option "ForceTVOut" # [<bool>]
#Option "TVStandard" # <str>
#Option "IgnoreLidStatus" # [<bool>]
#Option "DefaultTVDACAdj" # [<bool>]
#Option "Int10" # [<bool>]
#Option "EXAVSync" # [<bool>]
#Option "ATOMTVOut" # [<bool>]
#Option "R4xxATOM" # [<bool>]
Identifier "Card0"
Driver "radeon"
VendorName "ATI Technologies Inc"
BoardName "RV635 PRO AGP [Radeon HD 3650]"
BusID "PCI:1:0:0"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
Identifier "Screen0"
Device "Card0"
Monitor "Monitor0"
SubSection "Display"
Viewport 0 0
Depth 1
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Viewport 0 0
Depth 4
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Viewport 0 0
Depth 8
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Viewport 0 0
Depth 15
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Viewport 0 0
Depth 16
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Viewport 0 0
Depth 24
EndSubSection
EndSection

There are a lot of options under the "Device" section! Basically, all I'm interested in is full-speed EXA and Xv acceleration and decent powersaving. What would be my best course of action?

I'm running Arch Linux with AMD64 kernel 2.6.30, xorg 1.6.2 RC1, and xf86-video-ati 6.12.2-2

EDIT: If needed, here's a pastebin of my most recent Xorg.0.log: http://pastebin.com/f22ffef7b

[forum1793]

(EE) AIGLX error: Calling driver entry point failed(EE) AIGLX: reverting to software rendering

That probably says it all. Can you get by with the proprietary drivers (fglrx)?

[Darkfire Fox]

(EE) AIGLX error: Calling driver entry point failed(EE) AIGLX: reverting to software rendering

That probably says it all. Can you get by with the proprietary drivers (fglrx)?

Fglrx!?

I FORBID IT !!!

Next idea!

[bridgman]

I didn't see anything obviously wrong in your xorg log. Are the textured video ports showing up when you run xvinfo ?

It seems to take a bit of careful negotiation to get KDE to use XREender for compositing (rather than GL); are you pretty sure that it is really using XRender ?

I thought XFCE only used XRender but I haven't looked at it for a while...

[Darkfire Fox]

I didn't see anything obviously wrong in your xorg log. Are the textured video ports showing up when you run xvinfo ?

It seems to take a bit of careful negotiation to get KDE to use XREender for compositing (rather than GL); are you pretty sure that it is really using XRender ?

I thought XFCE only used XRender but I haven't looked at it for a while...

Erm, I think we're on two different pages, Bridgman. I haven't tried any form of compositing yet. I was simply saying that my Arch desktops are unbearably slow at drawing anything. But my Ubuntu partition is pretty snappy.

This is why I'm asking about my xorg.conf file and the "Device" options. Do I need to manually activate EXA/DRI?

[bridgman]

Sorry; most of the time I hear XFCE mentioned the users have compositing and eye candy turned on. Naturally I assumed...

Your log seems to indicate that acceleration is working OK :

(II) EXA(0): Driver registered support for the following operations:
(II) Solid
(II) Copy
(II) Composite (RENDER acceleration)
(II) RADEON(0): Acceleration enabled

It might be worth turning on compositing; once the first round of performance optimizations were made you didn't *have* to enable compositing to get decent 2D performance but my recollection was that it did help on some OSes.

[Darkfire Fox]

Update: I just now manually edited xorg.conf

Option "AccelMethod" "EXA"
Option "DRI" "True"

XFCE 4.6 on Arch Linux now draws like lightning. I'll test more stuff tomorrow. Good night.

[bridgman]

Interesting... I wouldn't have expected those settings to make a difference, since they are the default values and the log seemed to indicate everything was hooked up and running already. Maybe something AGP-related ?

Anyways, glad it's working for you... and now we have a nice little puzzle for agd5f