Unity is slow

[Jussi Pakkanen]

I'm using Unity team release PPA. I am using the NVidia binary blob, GLXGears gets a steady 55 fps.

All aspects of the Unity desktop are slow. Switching virtual desktops is laggy. Alt-tabbing is slow, a quick tap may take half a second or so to actually change windows. Dragging windows is fast, but if they go near the edges and the maximisation effect comes up, everything slows down massively.

Sometimes the operations above are just slow, sometimes they become slideshows. There is no pattern that I can see for this.

Tapping super to bring up the dash takes forever. Tapping alt to bring up the HUD is relatively fast at first, but then it does the "gray out the Dash" animation which takes seconds.

Bringing up Dash previews is the slowest operation of them all. The animation shows maybe five frames total.

It is also extremely easy to crash Compiz. I usually have four windows open, one on each virtual desktop. This is relatively stable. Opening a fifth window is almost guaranteed to crash Compiz. When there are five or more windows open, regular operations such as switching virtual desktops or alt-tabbing crash Compiz. Bringing up the HUD or Dash crashes compiz every now and then. The crash reporter does not see these crashes, so I can't send them to LP.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 12.10
Package: unity 6.6.0+bzr2749stagingubuntu0+789 [origin: LP-PPA-unity-team-release]
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.5.0-16.25-generic 3.5.4
Uname: Linux 3.5.0-16-generic x86_64
NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia
ApportVersion: 2.6.1-0ubuntu1
Architecture: amd64
CompizPlugins: [core,composite,opengl,compiztoolbox,decor,vpswitch,snap,mousepoll,resize,place,move,wall,grid,regex,imgpng,session,gnomecompat,animation,fade,unitymtgrabhandles,workarounds,scale,expo,ezoom,unityshell]
CrashDB: unity
Date: Wed Oct 3 11:09:47 2012
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 12.10 "Quantal Quetzal" - Alpha amd64 (20120918.1)
ProcEnviron:
 TERM=xterm
 PATH=(custom, no user)
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/zsh
SourcePackage: unity
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

Jussi,

We've heard significant complaints about nvidia and the new Compiz/Unity. They are tracked here:
    https://bugs.launchpad.net/compiz/+bugs?field.tag=nvidia-is-slow

If you could please log your crashes ASAP, that would be helpful:
    ubuntu-bug /var/crash/something.crash

[Jussi Pakkanen (jpakkane)]

None of those bugs describe the symptoms I'm seeing.

Ubuntu-bug will not allow me to file the crash because it claims I am using third party packages (i.e. the Unity team release PPA).

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

OK, try attaching the .crash files. Sometimes they contain usable stack traces.

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

Though, this is already multiple bugs in one bug number. Can we make this one just about the slowness and new bugs for crashes?

[Jussi Pakkanen (jpakkane)]

The crash is filed as bug 1060841.

[Jussi Pakkanen (jpakkane)]

Disabling VSync with ccsm makes animations smoother but the entire desktop is still not very usable. For example opening the Dash and HUD is still very slow.

[Jussi Pakkanen (jpakkane)]

This has something to do with full screen performance.

If I play a regular video with MPlayer in a windows, the performance is good. When toggling the window to fullscreen, the playback becomes very jerky. This happens with all major MPlayer backends (xv, gl, gl2) and under both Unity and IceWM.

GLXGears under IceWM gets 60 fps whether run in a small window or a maximised one (bottom menu bar is still visible).

Under Unity in a window it gets ~55 FPS. Maximising the window drops the frame rate to 15 FPS.

[Bilal Akhtar (bilalakhtar)]

This is worrying, what's your screen resolution for the record?

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

I believe bug 1049214 is likely to be the biggest reason why nvidia graphics seem slow in compiz 0.9.8.*

[Jussi Pakkanen (jpakkane)]

My resolution is a standard 1920x1200.

That bug would seem to explain some of the issues, but not why MPlayer would be slow when going fullscreen under IceWM.

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

Jussi,

It's still experimental but should work around your problem... Try enabling:
    CCSM > Composite > Unredirect Fullscree Windows

[Jussi Pakkanen (jpakkane)]

It does not. Gears goes from 15 to 22, but that's it.

[Jussi Pakkanen (jpakkane)]

After re-investigation:

MPlayer with xv backend fullscreen is smooth.

MPlayer with gl backends fullscreen is smooth(ish) on gl backend in a window, but jerky fullscreen. Gl2 is slightly more jerky all around.

Gears is not totally fullscreen, it is "maximised". That means that the Dash and top bar are showing.

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

Wow, so rendering glxgears directly (bypassing Compiz/Unity) is still slow? That's weird. You know it only works for fullscreen windows, right?

Sounds like compiz/unity in the background is still hammering your GPU when it should not be.

Please try plain compiz so we can rule Unity in or out. To do that you can untick the Unity plugin in CCSM, or just install
gnome-session-fallback and log in to Gnome Classic (Compiz without Unity).

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

OK, "Unredirect Fullscreen Windows" only works for fullscreen windows. Keep that in mind.

Yes, the mplayer gl backend is slower than the mplayer xv backend. I noticed that with intel graphics too.

Yes, "glxgears -fullscreen" actually won't fullscreen properly if unity is loaded (so Unredirect won't help you with glxgears). That's bug 985369.

[Jussi Pakkanen (jpakkane)]

Logging in with gnome-session-fallback works otherwise, but window decorations are not drawn, so I can't resize or move windows. Bypassing both Compiz and Unity by running IceWM gets a steady 60 fps. If I disable all VSyncs, I get ~4000 fps even under Unity, but not when the window is maximised.

If I manually resize the gears window in Unity, the FPS goes down as the window size is increased (VSync enabled). Maybe the image texture gets copied to main memory needlessly?

[Richard Roberts (prowlcat2000)]

I'm experiencing something very similar with the regular 6.8 version of Unity on a new Quantal not running nvida-current with a GeForce GT 520 video card. My resolution is 1600 x 900. All windows transitioning, reducing and maximizing is slowed to a crwal.

[Richard Roberts (prowlcat2000)]

So reading the comments above I ran some tests:
- running nvidia-current 304.51 glxgears +- 60 fps intermediate or maximized;
  With Unity, toggling any window size from very small to maximized is instantaneous, minimizing is instantaneous, but leaves behind a brief outline of the window as it shrinks, I never noticed that before; if hidden Unity doesn't come back out unless you press the Super key, but there is a bug report on this issue;
- running nouveau without Unity (unchecked in ccsm) glxgears +-255 fps intermediate +- 41 maximized;
  "Sans" Unity, toggling any window size from very small to maximized is instantaneous, minimizing is somehow slow;
- running nouveau 1.0.2-0ubuntu3 glxgears +-255 fps intermediate +- 41 maximized;
  With Unity, toggling any window size from very small to maximized is instantaneous, minimizing is extremely slow; when hiding Unity leave a shadow behind that doesn't get filled in.

The video card is a GeForce GT 520.

[AO (aofrl10n)]

Though my amd64 Ati Radeon HD is not affected to the same extend as Richard's, I too have noticed that minimizing a window is much slower than it used to be, I can see how this can become too slow on some systems.

[John Kim (kotux)]

I'm having no problems on Ubuntu 12.04.3.

This bug report is being closed due to your last comment regarding this being fixed with an update. For future reference you can manage the status of your own bugs by clicking on the current status in the yellow line and then choosing a new status in the revealed drop down box. You can learn more about bug statuses at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bugs/Status. Thank you again for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. Please submit any future bugs you may find.