[i855GM] Mathematica 7 and Maple 10 3D plots unusable and general performance issue

[Pasquale]

Dear Friends,

I have an intel 855GM graphics card with the last 2.7.1 drivers.
Maple 10 and Mathematica 7 3D-plots are in practice unusable/invisible.
I've tried with several xorg.conf configurations, i.e exa/uxa with/without
tiling, with different migration heuristics and even with different drivers versions (2.6 and 2.7)
but the problem persist. I think it's due (again) to this damned graphic drivers,
because the problem does not show up on Nvidia/ati cards. I would say to
Brice Harrington that the problems with the intel graphics drivers are still
far to be solved completely. Even if with the new driver 2.7.1 3D performances
are acceptable, 2D is still very slow. Just compare Gimp's or Firefox's
performances on XP and on Ubuntu, the differences are visible at eye.
Its sad to see native Linux applications running faster on Windows!!
That's what people will think:

"Linux: You can't even plot a 3D graph."

Cheers,

Pasquale

Here some useful output:

Lspci:
00:02.1 Display controller: Intel Corporation 82852/855GM Integrated Graphics Device (rev 02)
 Subsystem: Benq Corporation Device 5002
 Flags: fast devsel
 Memory at 60000000 (32-bit, prefetchable) [disabled] [size=128M]
 Memory at 68000000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [disabled] [size=512K]
 Capabilities: <access denied>

xorg.conf:
Section "Device"
 Identifier "Configured Video Device"
 Option "AccelMethod" "exa"
 Option "MigrationHeuristic" "greedy"
 Option "Tiling" "true"
EndSection

[Bryce Harrington (bryce)]

Hi pasquale-galianni,

Please attach the output of `lspci -vvnn`, and attach your /var/log/Xorg.0.log (and maybe Xorg.0.log.old) file from after reproducing this issue. If you've made any customizations to your /etc/X11/xorg.conf please attach that as well.

[This is an automated message. Apologies if it has reached you inappropriately; please just reply to this message indicating so.]

[BandGap (drstingl)]

Hi all,

I also have a problem with mathematica7 and 3D plotting. In my case it's very frustrating, because every time I issue a 3d plotting command the Xserver resets! (and all my changes are gone)

Are there any workarounds known?

Here is parts of Xorg.0.log:

>>>cat /var/log/Xorg.0.log | grep Intel
(--) PCI:*(0:0:2:0) 8086:2e22:8086:0023 Intel Corporation 4 Series Chipset Integrated Graphics Controller rev 3, Mem @ 0xd0000000/4194304, 0xc0000000/268435456, I/O @ 0x0000f1a0/8
(II) intel: Driver for Intel Integrated Graphics Chipsets: i810,
 Mobile Intel® GM45 Express Chipset,
 Intel Integrated Graphics Device, G45/G43, Q45/Q43, G41, IGDNG_D,
(II) intel(0): Integrated Graphics Chipset: Intel(R) G45/G43
(==) intel(0): Intel XvMC decoder disabled

>>>cat /var/log/Xorg.0.log | grep WW
(WW) warning, (EE) error, (NI) not implemented, (??) unknown.
(WW) The directory "/usr/share/fonts/X11/cyrillic" does not exist.
(WW) intel(0): libpciaccess reported 0 rom size, guessing 64kB
(WW) intel(0): drmSetMaster failed: 2.6.29 or newer kernel required for multi-server DRI
(WW) intel(0): ESR is 0x00000011, page table error
(WW) intel(0): PGTBL_ER is 0x00100000, CS instruction GTT PTE
(WW) intel(0): Existing errors found in hardware state.

Part of lspic:
>>> lspci -vvnn
(...)
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Intel Corporation 4 Series Chipset Integrated Graphics Controller [8086:2e22] (rev 03)
 Subsystem: Intel Corporation Device [8086:0023]
 Control: I/O+ Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- ParErr- Stepping- SERR- FastB2B- DisINTx+
 Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B+ ParErr- DEVSEL=fast >TAbort- <TAbort- <MAbort- >SERR- <PERR- INTx-
 Latency: 0
 Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 2300
 Region 0: Memory at d0000000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=4M]
 Region 2: Memory at c0000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=256M]
 Region 4: I/O ports at f1a0 [size=8]
 Capabilities: <access denied>

00:02.1 Display controller [0380]: Intel Corporation 4 Series Chipset Integrated Graphics Controller [8086:2e23] (rev 03)
 Subsystem: Intel Corporation Device [8086:0023]
 Control: I/O+ Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- ParErr- Stepping- SERR- FastB2B- DisINTx-
 Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B+ ParErr- DEVSEL=fast >TAbort- <TAbort- <MAbort- >SERR- <PERR- INTx-
 Latency: 0
 Region 0: Memory at d0400000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=1M]
 Capabilities: <access denied>
(...)

[BandGap (drstingl)]

Also, the xorg.conf is not very elaborate:

Section "Device"
 Identifier "Configured Video Device"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
 Identifier "Configured Monitor"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
 Identifier "Default Screen"
 Monitor "Configured Monitor"
 Device "Configured Video Device"
EndSection

Cheers,

BG

[Timo Aaltonen (tjaalton)]

I dare to say this is fixed in 9.10, as we have the same problem with then intel stack in 9.04 (although we only have 965 chips). Unfortunately, there's no way to backport the stuff, since it would need a new kernel, mesa, libdrm and xserver-xorg-video-intel..

if you still see the problem with 9.10, feel free to reopen.