[RV620] Lags after enabling ATI proprietary drivers and restarting twice

[Chainz]

After enabling ATI proprietary drivers (for my ATI Radeon HD3450 AGP) and restarting (just Xorg using CTRL+ALT+BACKSPACE, or whole system just once) everything works perfect - fast and smooth, compiz and everything.

After another system restart, just after logging into the system it gets extremely slow.

Somehow CPU, no matter what I do, gets maximum up to 50% load, the rest seems to be taken by IOWait - that's at least what System Monitor says, mouse moves with lags (like freezing for half a second after every 1 second), and everything is so slow (even letters typed in terminal show up with few second delay), compiz turned off.

It was the same on Hardy and now on Intrepid (also different kernels on Hardy), no matter if I created driver packages from ATI binaries or just simply enabled them through Ubuntu Hardware Drivers applet.

Of course after disabling proprietary drivers everything is fine and smooth (no acceleration though), CPU gets to 100% normally and no IOWaits can be observed.

[lspci]
00:00.0 Host bridge [0600]: Intel Corporation 82845 845 [Brookdale] Chipset Host Bridge [8086:1a30] (rev 03)
     Subsystem: Dell Device [1028:010e]
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: ATI Technologies Inc RV620 LE AGP [Radeon HD 3450] [1002:95c6]
     Subsystem: ASUSTeK Computer Inc. Device [1043:0028]

[Chainz (chainzee)]

I recently noticed that this problem was caused by Pulseaudio.
After killing pulse audio process CPU usage was back to normal.

It looks like Pulseaudio was trying to play music through the video port...
My card has HDMI port which might use this feature, but I have my monitor connected to d-sub.

More over after installing latest ATI 9.1 drivers the issue seems to be gone, but can't confirm it, since computer goes into freeze after 2 or 3 minutes. (terrible, I can't use it at all, will try to go back to previous 8.12)
These freeze occured on 2 machines I tested: ATI HD3450 and Radeon 9550.

[Bryce Harrington (bryce)]

Hi chainzee,

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.]

[Chainz (chainzee)]

Here you go: lspci -vvnn

[Chainz (chainzee)]

I haven't done anything to my xorg.conf.
All the logs were taken with ATI 9.2 drivers installed from generated packages.

The best way to recreate this problem is to open a web page with some "bigger" (then normal adds) flash.
The way to stop choppy behavior (and 50% processor use) it is to kill pulseaudio.

But even when there is no "major" problem graphics performance is still terrible - even moving windows is it choppy.
My HD3450 is doing worse even when comparing to 9600.
I even build my own packages from ATI drivers.

I found on Ubuntu Forums that other people having this card claim that it works fine and smooth for them.
But they all had a version with PCI-E not AGP like I have.

[Bryce Harrington (bryce)]

I've posted a new version of the -fglrx driver to our xorg-edgers PPA,
would you mind testing it either on Jaunty or Karmic and see if it
resolves this bug?

Get fglrx 8.620 here:

  https://edge.launchpad.net/~xorg-edgers/+archive/ppa

[Chainz (chainzee)]

I've installed just fglrx 8.620 on 8.10 and no difference.
So I upgraded my Ubuntu Studio into 9.10 (of course it got frozen 3 times in 1 hour after installation - typical) - poor performance, then I installed fglrx 8.620 on it.
After restart - horror, poor performance, highest refresh rate was 60Hz (My monitor supports up to 85Hz), there was nothing higher in the catalyst to select.
I have turned on standard proprietary drivers from Ubuntu. Performance is poor, even moving windows is choppy, but at least I can get up to 75Hz refresh rate.

4 Ubuntus ago I managed to get up to 85Hz (select my monitor correctly) using Screens & Resolution applet but then it was removed from the repositories - too bad :(

One more thing: Moving my windows on the desktop was and is choppy (also uses up to 100% of CPU), unless I turn on Compiz. Then moving windows is smooth and takes only up to 10% maximum of CPU load. Unfortunately I can't use Blender when Compiz is turned on.

PS. For few months I do not observe these issues with processor running up to 50% maximum - maybe some of the PulseAudio updates corrected it.

[Chainz (chainzee)]

I think we can close this case.

I've put this card into one of my other computers and although the performance is not stunning everything behaves just correct.

Thanks for all!