opengl performance regression with compiz

[Stefan Krause]

Binary package hint: compiz

OpenGL performance is much worse with Ubuntu 10.04 Alpha 3 than with 9.10 when using compiz (i.e. visual effects are turned on) in windowed mode.
I found that for some demo I've built Ubuntu 9.10 was about 27% faster and confirmed those findings with the unigine benchmark.

Here are the number for the Unigine_Tropics-1.2 (windowed_1024x768.sh, default settings):
10.04 With Effects Turned On: 27.9796 FPS
9.10 With Effects Turned On: 32.0972 FPS

I think the problem is due to compiz because if I disable all visual effects the performance is pretty much equal for 9.10 and 10.04:
10.04 Without Effects Turned On: 34.4443 FPS
9.10 Without Effects Turned On: 34.794 FPS
(The same is true for my own program)

As clearly can be demonstrated by those numbers metacity performs equally, but compiz got much slower for 10.04 Alpha 3.

I'm using the same nvidia driver release 195.36.08 (yes that's the hot one ;-) on both systems. The driver settings regarding quality, vsync etc. are equal.

Please let me know if you need further details.

[Stefan Krause (stefan-krause)]

Please replace all occurrences of 9.04 with 9.10 - sorry for that.

[MvW (2nv2u)]

Same problem here, although I haven't tested the game performance, the Compiz performance in general is very poor on several machines using nVidia hardware.
They all the 195.36.15 driver and showing the desktop EXPO and rotating the cube show on all machines, even a 8800GTS 512, a dramatic frame rate drop.
Sometimes making the complete desktop pretty much unusable (Read 1-5 fps) even in the menus and window mini / maximizing.
There doesn't seem any CPU load or whatsoever causing this problem.
None of this was a problem in 9.10 and Compiz worked flawlessly on all machines.

[Alberto Salvia Novella (es20490446e)]

I'm also having low Compiz performance, specially in menus, with the following configuration:

- Graphic processor: ATI Radeon HD 5750
- Graphic driver: fglrx
- Graphic processor family processing power: 4,7 TFLOPS
- Screen resolution: 1920x1080
- Screen refresh frequency: 60 Hz

- Maximum glxgears benchmark of 5 with Compiz off: 37702 images / 5 seconds
- Maximum glxgears benchmark of 5 with Compiz on: 11087 images / 5 seconds

And some details I found are:

- GIMP has much low performance on menus than Nautilus.
- Firefox has better performance on menus than Nautilus.
- Menu performance is proportionally inverse to screen resolution, but other effects performance isn't.
- Many windows animations freeze for about half a second before taking place, for any screen resolution.

[Pedro Villavicencio (pedro)]

Thanks for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. Could you please run from a command line: apport-collect 533495 .It will attach the required information to the report, for more detailed Debugging instructions please look at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DebuggingCompiz. Thanks in advance.

[Alberto Salvia Novella (es20490446e)]

Architecture: amd64
CompizPlugins: [core,ccp,move,resize,place,decoration,dbus,mousepoll,gnomecompat,png,svg,imgjpeg,text,commands,neg,wall,snap,animation,scale,scaleaddon,expo,staticswitcher,regex,resizeinfo,workarounds,ezoom,vpswitch,fade,session,shift,wobbly]
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 10.04
EcryptfsInUse: Yes
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 10.04 LTS "Lucid Lynx" - Release amd64 (20100429)
MachineType: MEDIONPC MS-7358
NonfreeKernelModules: fglrx
Package: compiz 1:0.8.4-0ubuntu15
PackageArchitecture: all
PciDisplay: 01:00.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: ATI Technologies Inc Device [1002:68be]
ProcCmdLine: BOOT_IMAGE=/boot/vmlinuz-2.6.32-22-generic root=UUID=fbb00259-8239-4c5e-800f-e817ade40c42 ro quiet splash
ProcEnviron:
 LANG=es_ES.utf8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.32-22.35-generic 2.6.32.11+drm33.2
RelatedPackageVersions:
 xserver-xorg 1:7.5+5ubuntu1
 libgl1-mesa-glx 7.7.1-1ubuntu3
 libdrm2 2.4.18-1ubuntu3
 xserver-xorg-video-intel 2:2.9.1-3ubuntu5
 xserver-xorg-video-ati 1:6.13.0-1ubuntu5
Tags: lucid
Uname: Linux 2.6.32-22-generic x86_64
UserGroups: adm admin cdrom dialout lpadmin plugdev sambashare
dmi.bios.date: 08/06/2007
dmi.bios.vendor: Phoenix Technologies, LTD
dmi.bios.version: 6.00 PG
dmi.board.name: MS-7358
dmi.board.vendor: MICRO-STAR INTERNATIONAL CO., LTD
dmi.board.version: Fab D
dmi.chassis.type: 3
dmi.chassis.vendor: OEM
dmi.chassis.version: OEM
dmi.modalias: dmi:bvnPhoenixTechnologies,LTD:bvr6.00PG:bd08/06/2007:svnMEDIONPC:pnMS-7358:pvrOEM:rvnMICRO-STARINTERNATIONALCO.,LTD:rnMS-7358:rvrFabD:cvnOEM:ct3:cvrOEM:
dmi.product.name: MS-7358
dmi.product.version: OEM
dmi.sys.vendor: MEDIONPC
system: distro = Ubuntu, architecture = x86_64, kernel = 2.6.32-22-generic

[Alberto Salvia Novella (es20490446e)]

apport information

[Alberto Salvia Novella (es20490446e)]

apport information

[Alberto Salvia Novella (es20490446e)]

apport information

[Alberto Salvia Novella (es20490446e)]

apport information

[Alberto Salvia Novella (es20490446e)]

apport information

[Alberto Salvia Novella (es20490446e)]

apport information

[Alberto Salvia Novella (es20490446e)]

apport information

[Alberto Salvia Novella (es20490446e)]

apport information

[Alberto Salvia Novella (es20490446e)]

apport information

[Alberto Salvia Novella (es20490446e)]

apport information

[Alberto Salvia Novella (es20490446e)]

apport information

[Alberto Salvia Novella (es20490446e)]

apport information

[Alberto Salvia Novella (es20490446e)]

apport information

[Alberto Salvia Novella (es20490446e)]

apport information

[Alberto Salvia Novella (es20490446e)]

apport information

[Alberto Salvia Novella (es20490446e)]

apport information

[Alberto Salvia Novella (es20490446e)]

apport information

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

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

[MvW (2nv2u)]

This issue still remains and should not be closed.

[Sam Spilsbury (smspillaz)]

On Tue, Dec 7, 2010 at 6:17 PM, Reason <email address hidden> wrote:
> This issue still remains and should not be closed.
>
> --
> You received this bug notification because you are a member of compiz
> packagers, which is subscribed to compiz in ubuntu.
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/533495
>
> Title:
>  opengl performance regression with compiz

See this blog post:
http://smspillaz.wordpress.com/2010/05/21/beware-the-benchmarks/ as to
why this slowness is something intrinsically related to design (and
probably not something that we can directly fix until we get wayland
or something)

>
> _______________________________________________
> Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~compiz
> Post to     : <email address hidden>
> Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~compiz
> More help   : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp
>

--
Sam Spilsbury

[MvW (2nv2u)]

Although that may be the cause, it worked perfectly fine before 10.04.
Since the LTS release the performance is sluggish to say the least.
A lot of windows completely brings it to it's knees, this never happened in earlier releases on even slower hardware.
Never had the render problems mentioned in the article before and thus assume it had been fixed long before this issue came along.

[Sam Spilsbury (smspillaz)]

On Tue, Dec 7, 2010 at 8:34 PM, Reason <email address hidden> wrote:
> Although that may be the cause, it worked perfectly fine before 10.04.
> Since the LTS release the performance is sluggish to say the least.
> A lot of windows completely brings it to it's knees, this never happened in earlier releases on even slower hardware.
> Never had the render problems mentioned in the article before and thus assume it had been fixed long before this issue came along.
>

Pre 10.04 did not have DRI2 enabled on all hardware if I remember
correctly. In any case, this is not an issue with compiz since compiz'
code to handle that stuff has not changed in years.

> --
> You received this bug notification because you are a member of compiz
> packagers, which is subscribed to compiz in ubuntu.
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/533495
>
> Title:
>  opengl performance regression with compiz
>
> _______________________________________________
> Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~compiz
> Post to     : <email address hidden>
> Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~compiz
> More help   : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp
>

--
Sam Spilsbury

[MvW (2nv2u)]

Great, so basically it means this regression is a result of something else and we can rule out compiz as a suspect.
If the DRI2 switch is possibly responsible for this issue, how can I check if it is used and, most importantly, how can I disable it?

To clarify it a little, I'm not talking about a performance loss of a couple of frames per second. But a huge drop to even less than 1 frame a second, sometimes even locking the machine for a while. Now windows and the cube is spinning fine.
The more windows I open the less responsive it gets. Open 15 of them and compiz becomes pretty much unusable.

I'm using a 8800GTS512 equivalent (Quadro FX) with 1GB graphical memory and a Core i7, should be more than enough..

[Travis Watkins (amaranth)]

In that case DRI2 will have nothing to do with it because the nvidia driver uses its own system. Can you try using the nouveau driver (add xorg-edgers repo, uninstall nvidia driver, install libgl1-mesa-dri-experimental) and see if you have the same problem? Assuming nouveau works correctly on your hardware, of course.

[Sam Spilsbury (smspillaz)]

On Tue, Dec 7, 2010 at 9:28 PM, Reason <email address hidden> wrote:
> Great, so basically it means this regression is a result of something else and we can rule out compiz as a suspect.
> If the DRI2 switch is possibly responsible for this issue, how can I check if it is used and, most importantly, how can I disable it?
>
> To clarify it a little, I'm not talking about a performance loss of a couple of frames per second. But a huge drop to even less than 1 frame a second, sometimes even locking the machine for a while. Now windows and the cube is spinning fine.
> The more windows I open the less responsive it gets. Open 15 of them and compiz becomes pretty much unusable.
>
> I'm using a 8800GTS512 equivalent (Quadro FX) with 1GB graphical memory
> and a Core i7, should be more than enough..
>

DRI2 is not the problem, it is the binary nvidia driver which we cannot support.

> --
> You received this bug notification because you are a member of compiz
> packagers, which is subscribed to compiz in ubuntu.
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/533495
>
> Title:
>  opengl performance regression with compiz
>
> _______________________________________________
> Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~compiz
> Post to     : <email address hidden>
> Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~compiz
> More help   : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp
>

--
Sam Spilsbury

[Alberto Salvia Novella (es20490446e)]

I haven't got this is issue any longer.