[i945gm] rotating screen degrades performance with intel driver

[lcampagn]

Using kubuntu/hardy on a lenovo x60 tablet. When the screen is rotated in any orientation other than "normal", performance is visibly degraded--things that were very smooth like scrolling a browser window now redraw at about 5Hz. Rotating back to normal restores original performance.

My video hardware:

00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Mobile 945GM/GMS, 943/940GML Express Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 03) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
        Subsystem: Lenovo ThinkPad T60/R60 series
        Control: I/O+ Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- ParErr- Stepping- SERR- FastB2B-
        Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B+ ParErr- DEVSEL=fast >TAbort- <TAbort- <MAbort- >SERR- <PERR-
        Latency: 0
        Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 20
        Region 0: Memory at ee100000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=512K]
        Region 1: I/O ports at 1800 [size=8]
        Region 2: Memory at d0000000 (32-bit, prefetchable) [size=256M]
        Region 3: Memory at ee200000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=256K]
        Capabilities: [90] Message Signalled Interrupts: Mask- 64bit- Queue=0/0 Enable-
                Address: 00000000 Data: 0000
        Capabilities: [d0] Power Management version 2
                Flags: PMEClk- DSI+ D1- D2- AuxCurrent=0mA PME(D0-,D1-,D2-,D3hot-,D3cold-)
                Status: D0 PME-Enable- DSel=0 DScale=0 PME-

00:02.1 Display controller: Intel Corporation Mobile 945GM/GMS/GME, 943/940GML Express Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 03)
        Subsystem: Lenovo ThinkPad T60/R60 series
        Control: I/O+ Mem+ BusMaster- SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- ParErr- Stepping- SERR- FastB2B-
        Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B+ ParErr- DEVSEL=fast >TAbort- <TAbort- <MAbort- >SERR- <PERR-
        Region 0: Memory at ee180000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=512K]
        Capabilities: [d0] Power Management version 2
                Flags: PMEClk- DSI+ D1- D2- AuxCurrent=0mA PME(D0-,D1-,D2-,D3hot-,D3cold-)
                Status: D0 PME-Enable- DSel=0 DScale=0 PME-

[Justin Dugger (jldugger)]

Assigned to intel driver package

[schmolch (saschaheid)]

You have to disable dri for a fast rotated display:

Driver "intel"
 Option "DRI" "false"

This only works in Hardy though, the never intel-driver in Intrepid is slow in any case.

[Bryce Harrington (bryce)]

[This is an automatic notice.]

We'd like to forward your bug upstream, however upstream requires
that you first test it against their newer driver code.

To save you the effort of building the driver from source, we've built
packages for the driver and its new dependencies.

So you have a couple options:

 1. Download and test .debs for intrepid, from:
     https://edge.launchpad.net/~intel-gfx-testing/+archive

 -or-

 2. Download and test the Jaunty alpha-2 (or newer) Live CD,
     (which includes a beta of the new xserver 1.6 as well).
     See http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/releases/9.04/ for ISOs

Thanks ahead of time! You can simply reply to this email to report your
findings.

P.S., if you wish to forward your bug upstream yourself, please follow
these directions to do so:
  http://intellinuxgraphics.org/how_to_report_bug.html

[schmolch (saschaheid)]

Thanks for backporting the drivers, i really appreciate it.

I added the repository on my x60t running Intrepid, but i still get the same horrible performance after rotating the screen (3-4fps when i do anything like moving a window or scrolling something).

[Bryce Harrington (bryce)]

Thanks for testing; this should go upstream. Setting to Triaged for now.

[schmolch (saschaheid)]

There is a new patch out that might resolve this issue.
It requires to pull code from git though and i have not been able to compile all the dependencies yet.
See here:
http://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=14568

[schmolch (saschaheid)]

I was not able to build all the dependencies on jaunty so i installed gentoo-linux and emerged the xorg.git overlay.
It works very well, there is no loss of performance anymore.
Note that xf86-video-intel-2.6.0 is not recent enough, the patch was added a few days later, so you need to pull that from git.

[epv (epvubuntu)]

This still happens for me with jaunty alpha:
xserver-xorg-video-intel 2:2.6.1-1ubuntu2
[drm] Initialized drm 1.1.0 20060810
[drm] Initialized i915 1.6.0 20080730 on minor 0

With UXA turned on, acceleration is fine in "normal" rotation, but when display is rotated with xrandr, window updates are extremely slow and jerky. (Without UXA, it's extremely slow in any rotation)

[schmolch (saschaheid)]

Just 2.6.1 does not work for me either, it does not seem to have the
neccessary patch included.

2009/2/16 epv <email address hidden>:
> This still happens for me with jaunty alpha:
> xserver-xorg-video-intel 2:2.6.1-1ubuntu2
> [drm] Initialized drm 1.1.0 20060810
> [drm] Initialized i915 1.6.0 20080730 on minor 0
>
> With UXA turned on, acceleration is fine in "normal" rotation, but when
> display is rotated with xrandr, window updates are extremely slow and
> jerky. (Without UXA, it's extremely slow in any rotation)
>
>
> ** Attachment added: "xorg.conf"
> http://launchpadlibrarian.net/22697457/xorg.conf
>
> --
> rotating screen degrades performance with intel driver
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/214668
> You received this bug notification because you are a direct subscriber
> of the bug.
>

[epv (epvubuntu)]

The screen rotating behavior has changed for me now. It is different at least as of 2:2.6.1-1ubuntu4, but may have changed earlier.

Currently, with UXA on, attempting to rotate gives a very garbled partial rotate screen which takes about 10 seconds to paint.

With UXA off, attempting to rotate gives a completely black screen from which one needs to kill the X server to recover.

On the other hand, unrotated, non-UXA performance has improved.

[Bryce Harrington (bryce)]

The upstream report indicates this issue is fixed now.

@lcampagn, if you find it is still an issue in current karmic, feel free to reopen this bug.

@everyone else, open a new bug with 'ubuntu-bug xorg' if you're still seeing this problem.