compiz consuming a lot of cpu

Bug #803943 reported by Marco Biscaro
This bug affects 311 people
Affects Status Importance Assigned to Milestone
Compiz
Fix Released
Medium
Unassigned
Compiz Core
Fix Released
Medium
Unassigned
Unity
Fix Released
Medium
Unassigned
compiz (Ubuntu)
Fix Released
Medium
Unassigned
unity (Ubuntu)
Fix Released
Medium
GMPH

Bug Description

This problem is exclusive to unity (when running compiz with gnome-panel, this doesn't happen).

1. Close all windows opened, if any
2. Open a terminal and run 'top'
3. Notice that compiz is consuming a lot of CPU time (although there is nothing special running). In my case, it's consuming about 13% when idle.
4. Unmaximize the terminal window, if maximized, and start moving the window slowly
5. Notice that compiz is now consuming much more CPU than before (in my case, arround 50%).
6. Open a video.
7. Notice that compiz consume much more CPU than idle (about 25% in my case), although I'm not doing anything related to window management.
8. (optional) Install the gnome-panel package and choose "GNOME classic" in login screen. Start compiz with "compiz --replace" and follow the steps from 1 to 7. Notice that the CPU consuming is much lower (in my case, 1% when idle, 25% when moving the window and 9% with the video).

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 11.10
Package: unity 4.0.1-0ubuntu2 [modified: usr/bin/unity-preferences usr/share/applications/unity-preferences.desktop]
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.0-2.3-generic 3.0.0-rc4
Uname: Linux 3.0-2-generic i686
Architecture: i386
CompizPlugins: [core,bailer,detection,composite,opengl,compiztoolbox,decor,vpswitch,imgpng,resize,snap,grid,regex,move,gnomecompat,mousepoll,animation,unitydialog,wall,workarounds,place,expo,ezoom,session,staticswitcher,fade,scale]
Date: Thu Jun 30 11:54:20 2011
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 11.10 "Oneiric Ocelot" - Alpha i386 (20110610)
ProcEnviron:
 LANGUAGE=pt_BR:en
 LANG=pt_BR.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: unity
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)

Revision history for this message
Marco Biscaro (marcobiscaro2112) wrote :
Revision history for this message
Marco Biscaro (marcobiscaro2112) wrote :

Could someone confirm this bug? If it really happens with every system, it's a big regression from natty.

Revision history for this message
Jason Smith (jassmith) wrote :

Marking confirmed. I have some work in this area though ultimately this is a team effort to reduce CPU usage. We need to find whats causing the CPU spike.

Changed in unity:
importance: Undecided → High
status: New → Confirmed
Revision history for this message
Marco Biscaro (marcobiscaro2112) wrote :

Jason, there is something that I can do to help debugging?

Changed in unity (Ubuntu):
status: New → Confirmed
Revision history for this message
Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt) wrote :

Isn't this a duplicate of bug 782810?

On a totally idle machine I find compiz is still using 1-2% CPU. And that's with an i7-2600. This is obviously bad for the battery life of notebook users.

Revision history for this message
Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt) wrote :

See also bug 813409 where unity-panel-service uses around the same level of constant CPU as compiz. Though switching to a VT console, compiz stops using the CPU while unity-panel-service doesn't.

Revision history for this message
Sam Spilsbury (smspillaz) wrote : Re: [Bug 803943] Re: compiz consuming a lot of cpu

On Jul 20, 2011 7:32 PM, "Daniel van Vugt" <email address hidden> wrote:
>
> See also bug 813409 where unity-panel-service uses around the same level
> of constant CPU as compiz. Though switching to a VT console, compiz
> stops using the CPU while unity-panel-service doesn't.

Indeed. Compiz isn't drawing the screen to show the result of polling for
load so its essentially sleeping during this time
>
> --
> You received this bug notification because you are a member of Unity
> Bugs, which is subscribed to unity in Ubuntu.
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/803943
>
> Title:
> compiz consuming a lot of cpu
>
> Status in Unity:
> Confirmed
> Status in “unity” package in Ubuntu:
> Confirmed
>
> Bug description:
> This problem is exclusive to unity (when running compiz with gnome-
> panel, this doesn't happen).
>
> 1. Close all windows opened, if any
> 2. Open a terminal and run 'top'
> 3. Notice that compiz is consuming a lot of CPU time (although there is
nothing special running). In my case, it's consuming about 13% when idle.
> 4. Unmaximize the terminal window, if maximized, and start moving the
window slowly
> 5. Notice that compiz is now consuming much more CPU than before (in my
case, arround 50%).
> 6. Open a video.
> 7. Notice that compiz consume much more CPU than idle (about 25% in my
case), although I'm not doing anything related to window management.
> 8. (optional) Install the gnome-panel package and choose "GNOME classic"
in login screen. Start compiz with "compiz --replace" and follow the steps
from 1 to 7. Notice that the CPU consuming is much lower (in my case, 1%
when idle, 25% when moving the window and 9% with the video).
>
> ProblemType: Bug
> DistroRelease: Ubuntu 11.10
> Package: unity 4.0.1-0ubuntu2 [modified: usr/bin/unity-preferences
usr/share/applications/unity-preferences.desktop]
> ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.0-2.3-generic 3.0.0-rc4
> Uname: Linux 3.0-2-generic i686
> Architecture: i386
> CompizPlugins:
[core,bailer,detection,composite,opengl,compiztoolbox,decor,vpswitch,imgpng,resize,snap,grid,regex,move,gnomecompat,mousepoll,animation,unitydialog,wall,workarounds,place,expo,ezoom,session,staticswitcher,fade,scale]
> Date: Thu Jun 30 11:54:20 2011
> InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 11.10 "Oneiric Ocelot" - Alpha i386 (20110610)
> ProcEnviron:
> LANGUAGE=pt_BR:en
> LANG=pt_BR.UTF-8
> SHELL=/bin/bash
> SourcePackage: unity
> UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)
>
> To manage notifications about this bug go to:
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/unity/+bug/803943/+subscriptions

Revision history for this message
Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt) wrote :

Yeah I guessed it was compiz updating the screen. But experience tells me code can always be optimized, and logic tells me that if the screen is not changing then it should be possible to make compiz use negligible CPU.

Revision history for this message
Stefano Bagnatica (thepisu) wrote :

1) This is not a duplicate of #782810, because that was opened for Ubuntu 11.04. In our case, the CPU usage was OK in 11.04, and gone to 25% upgrading to 11.10.

2) Maybe it is related to ATI cards and fglrx drivers? I have ATI Radeen HD 4200.

3) Look also this question on AskUbuntu:
http://askubuntu.com/questions/67680/why-does-compiz-use-25-cpu-while-idle

Revision history for this message
Luke Hoersten (lukehoersten) wrote :

http://askubuntu.com/questions/67680/why-does-compiz-use-25-cpu-while-idle I'm having this same problem. 25% CPU is a best case for me. 60%+ is average. I'm on an nVidia card (Macbook Air). Any debug help needed, please let me know!

Revision history for this message
Jan Girlich (vollkorn) wrote :

I don't believe this bug is hardware-specific since I have an Intel GM965 and reports so far had Nvidia and Ati graphic cards.

Revision history for this message
Jan Nekvasil (jan-nekvasil) wrote :

I'ts definitely NOT hardware-specific. I have three different boxes on my desk right now; with Nvidia, ATI and Intel graphic card. all three of them are showing ~3% CPU usage by compiz in htop when idle.

Revision history for this message
eriks (eriks-kruze) wrote :

For me the same problem. On idle compiz is using more than 10% of CPU.
My graphic card: ATI Radeon Express 200M.
With Ubuntu 11.04 all was ok.

Revision history for this message
Nicholas Shatokhin (robotex) wrote :

Ubuntu 10.10 Compiz uses 12% of CPU.

Revision history for this message
Thom Pischke (thom-pischke) wrote :

Ditto here, about 12% of cpu with intel GMA, core 2 duo

compatible controller: Intel Corporation Mobile GM965/GL960 Integrated Graphics Controller (primary) (rev 0c)

Revision history for this message
Nicholas Shatokhin (robotex) wrote :

Oh, sorry, I made mistake. Ubuntu 11.10, not 10.10. Videocard: NV GF8600M GS

Revision history for this message
José Antonio (jsilva-jcode) wrote :

Same problem on my Lenovo x220 with Ubuntu 11.10. 15% CPU all the time.

Revision history for this message
Sergio Callegari (callegar) wrote :

Confirmed. My first contact with unity after an upgrade to Oneiric.

When doing absolutely nothing (just a terminal running top) I get

compiz ~9% cpu

then another

5% goes away with unity-panel-service
4% with the dbus daemons
3% for the indicator multiload

(yes, the system is not really idle, I have a cpu load applet!)

This sounds weird to me and certainly not ok. Why an applet updating every second should end up making the system burn about 20% of its cpu resources?

Revision history for this message
Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt) wrote :

Sergio, the issue with indicator-multiload causing high CPU in compiz is bug 784055.

Revision history for this message
ladariha (riha-vladimir) wrote :

Same on Lenovo ThinkPad R400 (intel 4500mhd, c2d t6670)

Revision history for this message
undy (undy) wrote :

Same on eeepc 901 after upgrade to 11.10

Revision history for this message
Juris (juris-a) wrote :

Same on Lenovo S12 with nvidia ion and proprietary drivers.

Revision history for this message
Alejandro Benitez (benitezagm) wrote :

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1860437 (Unity Laggy Ubuntu 11.10)

The Unity interface causes lags. Dragging windows is laggy, resizing windows is laggy, window animations are also laggy.

Revision history for this message
McEye (spam-mceye) wrote :

Same here.
DELL E6420

Revision history for this message
bryandrewery (bryan-shatow) wrote :

Dell optiplex with ATI card here.

Revision history for this message
Maurice Knopp (maurice-knopp) wrote :

I can also confirm this bug.

Lenovo Workstation with proprietary nvidia 280.13 driver and Quadro FX 1700 / 512MB Video Board and dual monitor config (twinview).

11.04 worked just fine.

Revision history for this message
Maurice Knopp (maurice-knopp) wrote :

I forgot, I'm using the 64 bit version of Ubuntu.

Revision history for this message
Simone Lussardi (simone-lussardi) wrote :

Ubuntu 11.10 32 bits, Lenovo T400, ATI Raden HD 3400, fglrx driver installed, same as all of you. At full speed of processor, is always using at least 1% of the CPU (throttling between 1% and 3% at full idle). I think this bug is also causing some slight choppy behaviour when dragging windows around.

Revision history for this message
Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt) wrote :

Simone, the "slightly choppy behaviour" with the fglrx driver is bug 763005.

Revision history for this message
Josh Burghandy (kid1000002000) wrote :

Confirmed; compiz consumes 4-30% of cpu cycles on my toshiba a135 1.7ghz. all the time. This makes a significant drain on my battery.

Revision history for this message
Jayson Rowe (jayson.rowe) wrote :

I am seeing the exact same symptoms (x84_64, btw). I'm using a Nvidia GTX 280 w/ Nvidia drivers. I am occasionally seeing compiz as high as 65-70%. If I slowly move a terminal window it will usually max out one of my 4 cores (AMD PII X4 965). Is there anything I can do to provide a log, or more information? I'm more than happy to do anything I can to get this resolved.

Revision history for this message
Jayson Rowe (jayson.rowe) wrote :

Here is 'htop' showing my compiz cpu usage (sitting at idle desktop)

Revision history for this message
Johan Jeppsson (johjep) wrote :

I also have this problem, although my compiz occasionally draws in excess of 50% CPU when idle. I have an Core i7 processor.

Revision history for this message
Simon Greenwood (sfgreenwood-gmail) wrote :

Similar here on Lenovo Thinkpad Edge AMD with Radeon card running 32bit and workstation with AMD Phenom II X2 / PNY Geforce 210 running 64bit. Compiz is at around 30% with Chromium, Thunderbird, Skype and TweetDeck running on the workstation. In addition the display is occasionally freezing when windows are resized.

Revision history for this message
Luke Hoersten (lukehoersten) wrote :

Anyone found a workaround to this problem?

Revision history for this message
ThomWilhelm (thomwilhelm) wrote :

I've switched back to using Unity 2D because of this issue on my laptop, compiz uses 25% even when idle which means if I do anything else my laptop heats up and the fan is quite noisy!

Any news from the devs if this being looked into?

Revision history for this message
Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt) wrote :

Hello all. Can you please verify the problem is specifically the Unity plugin? To do this...

1. Open a terminal and run "top". Verify the CPU usage is high before proceeding.
2. Run ccsm. If you don't have it then you need to install package "compizconfig-settings-manager".
3. In ccsm, untick the box for the Unity plugin. Your panel and launcher will vanish.
4. Look at the terminal window running top and verify the CPU usage for compiz has decreased to something more acceptable.
5. VERY IMPORTANT: Tick the box for the Unity plugin to enable it again.

If at any point you find that compiz crashes while ticking and unticking boxes you might end up in a state where Unity doesn't come back when you log in again. To fix this, press Ctrl+Alt+T to open a terminal, run ccsm, and tick the box for the Unity plugin. Alternatively, you can start ccsm from a virtual terminal by pressing Ctrl+Alt+F1, log in, and then run "env DISPLAY=:0 ccsm".

Revision history for this message
John Moodie (jhmoodie) wrote :

Unloading unity plugin and decorator makes no difference in my case.
64 bit with fglrx (Catalyst 11.10).

With top running in a terminal;

1: Open a browser, type a non-existent address in, such as http://non-existant-garbage.com
Compiz and Xorg cpu usage spikes to about 50% and 40% respectively and will continue to remain there until the browser request is cancelled (or until there is no spinning load icon or mouse pointer change or the windows is minimised)

2: Open software centre and install a program. Compiz and Xorg will spike and remain high until the program has installed and there is no spinning progress icon in the top bar.

Sounds like a polling issue?

Revision history for this message
Jayson Rowe (jayson.rowe) wrote :

Unloading the unity plugin and decorator also makes no difference for me either (Nvidia w/ proprietary drivers from repo).

I can duplicate what John describes above as well.

Revision history for this message
Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt) wrote :

Please include the actual CPU percentages you see compiz using, with unity active and inactive.

Changed in compiz-core:
status: New → Confirmed
Changed in compiz (Ubuntu):
status: New → Confirmed
Omer Akram (om26er)
Changed in unity:
importance: High → Medium
Changed in unity (Ubuntu):
importance: Undecided → Medium
Changed in compiz-core:
importance: Undecided → Medium
Changed in compiz (Ubuntu):
importance: Undecided → Medium
Changed in compiz-core:
assignee: nobody → Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)
Changed in unity:
assignee: nobody → Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)
Changed in compiz (Ubuntu):
assignee: nobody → Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)
Changed in unity (Ubuntu):
assignee: nobody → Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)
Changed in compiz:
assignee: nobody → Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)
importance: Undecided → Medium
status: New → Confirmed
132 comments hidden view all 212 comments
Revision history for this message
Dimitri Nüscheler (dimitri-nuescheler) wrote :

When disabling vsync I have an additional problem next to tearing, which makes performance sluggish and increases tearing even more. Ubuntu wrongly thinks that my screens refresh rate is 50 when it is 60. Forcing compositing to 60hz improves the experience a lot. It's probably not as good as vsync, but it's very comfortable. I was never a big fan of vsync though, because it always at's a tiny tiny little delay. it's not instantanously.

Revision history for this message
Biji (biji) wrote :

thanks #173 did that and cpu usage lower on nvidia 630M

Revision history for this message
Karl Frisk (karl-frisk) wrote :

Daniel van Vugt, how can we try these fixes out? Is there a PPA that has them?

Revision history for this message
Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt) wrote :

Karl, the XDamageReport fix (bug 1007299) still needs more development done before anyone can or should test it.

As for bug 1005569, I heard last week that Ubuntu packaging had started selecting backporting some fixes including that one for the next update to 12.04.

Sorry, no PPAs for those.

Revision history for this message
Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt) wrote :

Dimitri, Biji, regarding comments #173 and #174, that is nvidia bug 92599.

Revision history for this message
Raymond Wells (rfw2nd) wrote :

I had some success by opening up CompizConfig Settings Manager (Alt+F2, ccsm assuming you have it installed.) and enabling "copy to texture" I noticed the CPU usage on my machine dropped from a hard 10% to about 2% even with programs open. I still find it odd that compiz's CPU usage spikes when I drag windows or sometimes when I have smooth animations in windows despite having the fglrx drivers installed, since it's supposed to be hardware accelerated. Leads me to believe that something is causing it to do more work than it should on the software side.

Revision history for this message
Raymond Wells (rfw2nd) wrote :

About my previous comment.. For some reason I thought I had installed fglrx on this machine; but it would appear that it is not the case. So the solution in comment #178 may not work.

Revision history for this message
Raymond Wells (rfw2nd) wrote :

Okay, so I tried messing around with some options, and here's something that worked for me (on fglrx driver):

- The problem goes away when I turn off Sync to VBlank (ccsm, OpenGL section). I don't remember having the high CPU usage while idle, but I did have the usage spikes while dragging windows. On my desktop (Radeon 2600XT), and my laptop (Radeon 4670), turning off Sync to VBlank dropped compiz's CPU usage while dragging windows from 25-70% to around 3-9%.

I found the following workaround to be effective for me on both my desktop and laptop to both get rid of the tearing, and :
(requires proprietary ATi drivers.)
1. Turn off Sync to VBlank in ccsm.
2. Open up the Catalyst control center, (command: amdcccle)
3. Turn TearFree Desktop on (it's under Display Options)
4. Change the "Wait for vertical refresh" setting to "On, unless application specifies." (I had issues with compiz starting up, and changing that fixed it.)

The result will be: compiz running with acceptable CPU usage and no tearing. The only side effect I've noticed is that sometimes while moving windows very rapidly, the cursor will jump and the little hand will become separated from the window it is dragging.

Revision history for this message
Ashton Fagg (fagg) wrote :

This affects me too. Can confirm that disabling vertical sync helps. Currently using a Dell Latitude E6410 with nVidia NVS3100M running TwinView mode. Performance was utterly atrocious prior to this, with periods where Compiz would hog a whole core. Disabling vertical sync seems to make the machine run much quieter and cooler.

Revision history for this message
Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt) wrote :

If disabling sync-to-vblank solves your problems then that means the driver is reporting that it "can do" sync to vblank, but then breaking its promise and not doing it when asked. But I'm not sure compiz is doing everything it can to detect such driver behaviour, so won't call it a driver bug just yet.

Revision history for this message
Nick Maynard (nick-maynard) wrote :

Similarly to @fagg, I have disabled vertical sync. I have noticed idle usage drop from ~52% to ~28%. Which is an improvement.

glxinfo output:
OpenGL vendor string: NVIDIA Corporation
OpenGL renderer string: Quadro 1000M/PCIe/SSE2
OpenGL version string: 4.2.0 NVIDIA 295.40

Revision history for this message
Martin Horseling (martin-horseling) wrote :

You may want to consider a related problem with the combination Compiz and Clamav. I did an upgrade last week from 10.04 to 12.04. After doing this, I noticed a significant slowdown in the performance, basically it became unusable for work.

Looking at system monitoring, Compiz was somewhere in the range of using 50% of one processor, but more significant Clamav (installed from the repositories in 10.04) was using close to or over 100% of one processor. I could fry an egg on the laptop. I killed ClamAv and then removed it using package manager. This improved things instantly, though I must say I still perceive it to be slower than 10.04.

Since it does not get hot anymore, but overall it is not great.

Hardware: HP Compaq 6720S, HDD320GB, 1 GB ram.

Revision history for this message
Mark Fernandes (typist) wrote :

This is a problem for me too. After many attempts at doing other things I was able to reduce (not eliminate) load averages from around 50% to 20% by removing VBlank in the CCSM and disabling Vertical refresh in AMD cccle. After I did "unity --reset" I noticed I kept getting error messages but they scrolled away quickly - however I could capture the parts where the error was shown and its below:

(compiz:2409): GConf-CRITICAL **: gconf_client_add_dir: assertion `gconf_valid_key (dirname, NULL)' failed
Initializing unityshell options...done
compiz (core) - Warn: unhandled ConfigureNotify on 0xc00090!
compiz (core) - Warn: this should never happen. you should probably file a bug about this.
compiz (core) - Warn: unhandled ConfigureNotify on 0xc000a1!
compiz (core) - Warn: this should never happen. you should probably file a bug about this.

If you need more info let me know what I should do.
Thanks

Revision history for this message
Developer (lunixhacker) wrote :

I also suffer on this problem on an ultra high end laptop with an i7 processor and a nvidia quadro 1000M (proprietary driver activated) graphics card running a clean install of the latest 12.10 builds. There are always two processes comsuming a lot of cpu: Xorg and compiz. At Idle both use around 3% cpu. If i do somthing, it doesn't matter if it is snapping a window, resizing a window, launch a programm or watch a video: compiz climbes up to 50% (very often) and sometimes even up to 118 for a second. This should not be the case. Disabling Unity plugin does not help very much, and disabeling sync to Vblank results in tearing (although cpu goes down a bit).
I hope this bug can be fixed till the release of 12.10, because the Unity interface will be nearly perfect right then. This is a really big performance issue with high importance, because it can make users switch. Compiz and Xorg alone are causing very high CPU usage. KDE actually has a bit better performance concerning moving tasks ans especially snapping (compiz often consumes lot of cpu concerning this). When I play a video in KDE X is about 10% and kwin around 1 or 2 %. In Ubuntu Xorg is about 10% and compiz around 10%.
But I have to admit Compiz is making great progress! I hope that 12.10 brings a lighter compiz!

Revision history for this message
Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt) wrote :

lunixhacker,

The issue with nvidia+Xorg CPU usage is also discussed in bug 973506.

I am personally curious to see if the fix for bug 1007299 helps with your compiz CPU usage. That fix won't hit quantal till at least compiz 0.9.8+bzr3265 (or later).

Revision history for this message
Developer (lunixhacker) wrote :

Thank you for your reply!
Another thing I noticed (beside the too high cpu in idle and doing simple tasks by Xorg and compiz) is that cpu usage gets up to 10 times higher when only moving the mouse cursor (in idle). This is for sure not normal, if i compare it to other systems.

Revision history for this message
Daniil Bubnov (demoth-cadaver) wrote :

Ubuntu 12.04 64bit, clean install
noteboot: hp hdx16
video: nvidia 9m

- when i don't touch mouse compiz eats 9%
- when i move mouse - 20 - 30%
- when i move window - 60 - 70%

wtf?

Revision history for this message
Kim Nguyễn (kim.nguyen) wrote :

This bug makes it particularly painful to use Google Chrome/Chromium as reported here:
http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=98200

One easy test case:
Enable the compiz benchmark plugin (compiz-plugins-extra)

Open google chrome with two tabs, one blank the other one pointing to:
http://www.lri.fr/~kn/test.html (this is a blank page with a bit of javascript that changes the title of the page every two seconds).
right click on the tab with the javascript code and choose pin tab. Now bring the other, non pinned tab in front. After two seconds.
the pinned tab starts glowing to notify of the title change in the background tab. While the background tab is glowing, one can see
1) compiz renders at 60 FPS, burning between 15% and 20% CPU (depending on the machine I tested on).
2) strace of compiz shows that it is polling the X server socket at a very high rate (see linked bugreport).

I could confirm this on precise, both on my laptop and desktop, both Intel graphic cards.
Disabling V-sync does not help.
Also this does not happen with compiz launched alone.

If compiz is launched alone (just X, xterm, compiz and google-chrome), then compiz stays at a moderate 11FPS when the tab is glowing.

Revision history for this message
Andrei Dziahel (develop7) wrote :

@kim.nguyen: confirming issue you have described — I'm experiencing it too for a pretty long time already

Revision history for this message
Andrei Dziahel (develop7) wrote :

@kim.nguyen: videoadapter is nvidia GF 560

Revision history for this message
Ravi Kumar (kumarravi-kumar267) wrote :

This bug causes overheating on my laptop. Beside this it makes 3D game unplayable. I have to use Unity 2D...

Revision history for this message
luh3417 (raen) wrote :

Seems this Bug is over a year old any idea when it might be fixed? I am running ATI Radeon 3300 on AMD64 4 core Phenom CPU. It used to to run alot faster on KDE.

Revision history for this message
Bernie Innocenti (codewiz) wrote :

> Seems this Bug is over a year old any idea when it might be fixed?
> I am running ATI Radeon 3300 on AMD64 4 core Phenom CPU.
> It used to to run alot faster on KDE.

The bug was about compiz becoming gradually slower over time, probably due to resource leaks caused by Unity).
This has not been happening for me in a long time.

I think we could close this bug as fixed and open new bugs for any other performance problems that may still exist.

Revision history for this message
Dilton McGowan II (diltonm) wrote :

>> I think we could close this bug as fixed and open new bugs for any other performance problems that may still exist.

You are wrong, game performance is in the toilet with Unity. Run any game on Unity 3D that lets you check FPS then log out and log into Xfce and run the same game. You will see at least 35% increase in performance.

Unity 2D is slightly better but oddly not that much.

Changed in compiz:
assignee: Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt) → nobody
Changed in compiz-core:
assignee: Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt) → nobody
Changed in unity:
assignee: Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt) → nobody
Changed in compiz (Ubuntu):
assignee: Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt) → nobody
Changed in unity (Ubuntu):
assignee: Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt) → nobody
Revision history for this message
Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt) wrote :

Yes, there are real performance problems remaining in compiz and unity. We're still working on improving that from several different angles.

I agree with Bernie that overcrowded performance bugs like this tend to never get resolved. That's because:
  1. There are too many people to reach any consensus. So really we need to make the original reporter that sole authority on what works, and everyone who disagrees should log their own performance bugs.
  2. People experience performance problems with different root causes. So they subscribe to a common bug and expect their problem will be solved when someone else's performance bug is resolved.

Performance bugs are almost always too vague and subjective for everyone to agree. So generally we just keep working on improving performance every way we can, with help from peoples' comments, and eventually/sometimes the original reporter will decide the bug is closed. Sometimes.

Revision history for this message
Dilton McGowan II (diltonm) wrote :

That technique for bug resolution should work too.

Revision history for this message
Bernie Innocenti (codewiz) wrote :

>> I think we could close this bug as fixed and open new bugs for any other performance problems that may still exist.

> You are wrong, game performance is in the toilet with Unity.
> Run any game on Unity 3D that lets you check FPS then log out
> and log into Xfce and run the same game. You will see at least
> 35% increase in performance.

You're misreading my comment: I never said that compiz and unity are free of performance bugs. I'm saying that the problem described by the original reported is no longer reproducible.

There might already be other launchpad bugs for the constant (non-degrading with time) performance hit that you've observed. If not, please go ahead and file a new one.

Revision history for this message
Marco Biscaro (marcobiscaro2112) wrote :

As the original bug reporter, I can confirm this bug is now solved *to me* with Ubuntu 12.04 (unity version 5.14.0-0ubuntu1). When idle, compiz consumes < 1% of CPU time and when moving windows and doing other things related to windows management, it consumes about 5%.

Daniel said in comment #197 that "performance bugs are almost always too vague and subjective" and I agree. My performance problem (which this bug report represents) is now solved. I'll mark this bug as fixed, and ask that other people that face similar performance problems that open another bugs reports with their specific hardware info and steps to reproduce.

Thank you for your understanding.

Changed in compiz:
status: Confirmed → Fix Released
Changed in compiz (Ubuntu):
status: Confirmed → Fix Released
Changed in compiz-core:
status: Confirmed → Fix Released
Changed in unity:
status: Confirmed → Fix Released
Changed in unity (Ubuntu):
status: Confirmed → Fix Released
Revision history for this message
Marco Biscaro (marcobiscaro2112) wrote :

Probably the bugs marked as duplicates of this one should be unmarked as duplicated and set to incomplete, waiting for feedback from the original reporters to know if the problems still happening.

Revision history for this message
Jesse Johnson (holocronweaver) wrote :

What graphics card and associated driver are you using? I am on a Radeon 6950 with Catalyst 12.3 and am still having compiz utilize 2-3% CPU on idle and 50-100% while moving windows. I will try upgrading my graphics driver to see if there is any improvement.

Revision history for this message
Marco Biscaro (marcobiscaro2112) wrote :

@Jesse Johnson: I don't have the exact graphic card model, but it was a Intel card (Asus Eee PC 1001HA netbook).

Revision history for this message
odror (ozdror) wrote :

The problem is not solved. I have the same issue with the Radeon 6850.

Ubuntu Kernel 3.2.0-30-generic and unity 5.14.0

On 09/11/2012 09:07 AM, Jesse Johnson wrote:
> What graphics card and associated driver are you using? I am on a
> Radeon 6950 with Catalyst 12.3 and am still having compiz utilize 2-3%
> CPU on idle and 50-100% while moving windows. I will try upgrading my
> graphics driver to see if there is any improvement.
>

Revision history for this message
Marco Biscaro (marcobiscaro2112) wrote :

Comments #13, 34, 139, 180, 194, 202 and 204 are about performance issues with Radeon graphic cards, which *are not* the same problem of this bug report (which was originally noticed on a Intel graphic card). Please, open another bug report for the Radeon problem (if there is no report about it yet).

Revision history for this message
Karl Frisk (karl-frisk) wrote :

OK, so this bug is being closed down. Now, which is the bug to subscribe to for staying up to date with efforts to fix persistent performance issues?

Because the problem still exists in 12.10 Quantal beta 1. Moving around a window makes compiz use 25% and xorg 15% of cpu (Ivy Bridge i7, Intel Graphics HD 4000).

Revision history for this message
Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt) wrote :

No more comments please.

If you still have any problems, please log a bug of your own using this command:
    ubuntu-bug compiz

Revision history for this message
Jesse Johnson (holocronweaver) wrote :

See comment #12. This bug is not hardware specific. I have the same problem on my Intel and NVIDIA cards. Should I post a bug for each card, replicate this bug but with the stipulation 'cross-hardware problem', or should we continue this bug?

Revision history for this message
Jesús (jbarcons) wrote :

The problem still exists in 12.10. Moving a window makes Xorg use 80% and Compiz 20% of CPU.

Revision history for this message
Anton Statutov (astatutov) wrote :

Jesús, try to remove fglrx driver if it is installed . This have helped me.

Revision history for this message
Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt) wrote :

No more comments please.

If you still have any problems, please log a bug of your own using this command:
    ubuntu-bug compiz

This bug is Fix Released as per comment #200.

Revision history for this message
jmalter (joerg4711) wrote :

This also effects me on my laptop Lenovo L412 with Intel Core i5 with Intel HD Graphics running on 12.10.
Top shows between 80% and 140% cpu and a load index between 1,2 and 1,4 in idle phase

GMPH (gmphtravel)
Changed in unity (Ubuntu):
assignee: nobody → GMPH (gmphtravel)
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