Performance degrades over time

[Rocko]

After reboot, the ondemand setting gives good CPU frequency switching speeds. But after the computer has been running for a while, it slows down.

I can see this most obviously playing call of duty 4 under wine - I can get framerates around 25-35fps after rebooting, but after the computer has been running for some time if I run the game again the framerate drops to 10-15fps and the frequency applets no longer indicate maximum frequency is being attained. Either rebooting or setting the frequency governor to 'performance' restores the performance.

I find this happens in both Jaunty and Intrepid with kernels 2.6.27 through 2.6.30-rc7.

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: amd64
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 9.04
HibernationDevice: RESUME=UUID=457843ae-5339-4eda-84a2-57ff06b539a5
MachineType: Dell Inc. XPS M1530
Package: linux-image-2.6.28-12-generic 2.6.28-12.43
ProcCmdLine: root=UUID=709f7178-44db-418f-be0e-489169db001a ro quiet splash
ProcEnviron:
 LANG=en_AU.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.28-12.43-generic
SourcePackage: linux

[Rocko (rockorequin)]

I noticed an odd but possibly related behaviour:

1. I had set up_threshold to 40 instead of 95, and everything was running fine even after hours of running the kernel.

2. I changed it back to 95, and the frame rate slowed.

3. I tried changing ignore_nice_levels to 1, but it had no effect on frame rate.

4. I tried changing up_threshold back to 40 and then changing the CPUs to performance instead of on-demand, but neither had an effect on frame rate.

5. I ran glxgears. This normally gets 3500 fps, but could only manage 1.5 fps this time. However, in the wine CoD4 app, the frame rate increased back to normal while glxgears was running. Stopping glxgears made it drop again.

[Rocko (rockorequin)]

I'm changing this to compiz as I no longer think it's a scheduling issue - setting the up_threshold to 40 masked the problem, but as soon as I changed it back to 95, the problem reappeared.

When I reproduce the problem, turning off compiz restores performance to CoD4 - normally it makes no difference whether compiz is running or not.

The last time I reproduced the problem, I turned off compiz then turned it back on again while CoD4 was running. On quitting CoD4, the screen refresh became awful - I could actually see the screen being redrawn pixel line by pixel line. Switching to a console (ctrl-alt-f1) and back fixed it.

Version info:

compiz 1:0.8.2-0ubuntu8.1
nvidia 180.44, 180.53, 180.60, 185.18.04

[Rocko (rockorequin)]

I suspect the problem is a compiz/nvidia issue with two screens. I normally have the following setup:

* laptop monitor - 1680x1050 - screen 1
* external monitor - 1680x1050 - screen 2
* wine is set to emulate a virtual desktop and CoD4 is set to run at 1680x1050. I usually run it on screen 2.

After reboot, there are no issues with frame rates. After some hours, the framerate performance degrades significantly (to half or worse) unless:

* I disable compiz.
* OR I run wine without emulating a virtual desktop, in which case I get 'full screen mode' on the laptop screen
* OR I set the screens to be clones.

So after reboot compiz recognises that the wine window is not supposed to have desktop effects applied (whether it runs on screen 1 or 2), but after some hours it must be trying to do something with the screen drawing operations and slowing down frame rates.

[Rocko (rockorequin)]

I've confirmed it is compiz: last time it happened, disabling then re-enabling compiz didn't fix the problem, but killing compiz did:

1. I disabled compiz
2. I killed both the compiz-decorator processes that I found with the 'ps xa | grep compiz' command
3. I re-enabled compiz

After re-enabling compiz, there are no compiz-decorator processes that appear when I do 'ps xa' - only the /usr/bin/compiz command.

[Robert Ancell (robert-ancell)]

In the case of duplicate bug 353514 the performance continued to degrade until their system froze

[Scott Deagan (scott-deagan)]

I am experiencing this problem with Ubuntu 11.04. Sometimes my machine will run smoothly for days, but then moving windows around becomes jerky, like the frame-rate is wrong resulting in tearing (especially annoying with Wobbly Windows). I have an nVidia GTX 460 running driver 280.13. My CPU is an AMD A8-3850.

I do not understand why the rating of this bug is 'low', as anyone who experiences it will (in most cases) restart Ubuntu. The next time I experience is I will try Rocko's method (restarting Compiz). I believe this bug is more significant that 'low' as it has a direct impact of end-user experience. If the goal of Ubuntu is to gain 200 million users, then small things like this should be ironed out at a priority. Users love a smooth, responsive fluid UI - this was proved by a study recently conducted by Intel (who reverse engineered the iPad user experience).

This bug was created in 2009, yet still hasn't been assigned to anyone?

[jhfhlkjlj (fdsuufijjejejejej-deactivatedaccount)]

 Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. We are sorry that we do not always have the capacity to look at all reported bugs in a timely manner. There have been many changes in Ubuntu since that time you reported the bug and your problem may have been fixed with some of the updates. It would help us a lot if you could test it on a currently supported Ubuntu version. When you test it and it is still an issue, kindly upload the updated logs by running apport-collect <bug #> and any other logs that are relevant for this particular issue.

11.04 is no longer supported, and 11.10 is nearing the end of its life. We've had lots of bugs on performance degradation, one of them seriously having affected me around the 11.04-11.10 cycles. I am extremely confident that 12.04+ releases will behave properly as they have undergone serious changes.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for compiz (Ubuntu) because there has been no activity for 60 days.]