perf regression in 10.1 version of -sis (introduced between intrepid and jaunty)

[Willian]

Ubuntu: 9.04

Video: 01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] 661/741/760 PCI/AGP or 662/761Gx PCIE VGA Display Adapter
CPU: Intel(R) Celeron(R) CPU 2.13GHz
RAM: 1GB
glxinfo | grep direct: direct rendering: Yes

After update to Ubuntu 9.04, CS (the game "Counter Strike") is running too slow. I've tried the Ubuntu package (Wine 1.0.1) and the Wine 1.1.19 compiled. Before the update, CS was running ok.

[Steve Dodier-Lazaro (sidi)]

Hi,

I don't think this is wine related. It sounds like a driver issue, esp.
since we moved to X.org 1.6.

Please run 'glxgears' and 'glxinfo | grep render'. What does it give ?

Cordially, SD.

[Marek Kalnik (wdev)]

I don't think it's Wine related too. I have the same issue (major slowdown in Baldur's Gate running in Wine after update to 9.10). I have the same graphic card and I've also noticed slower scrolling in FF and serious performance problems with flash. It doesn't slow down in low demanding actions (like menus in BG or in flash games) but it slows down even in apps that were working fine before the update.

glxgears output:
371 frames in 5.0 seconds = 73.922 FPS
371 frames in 5.0 seconds = 74.157 FPS
371 frames in 5.0 seconds = 74.150 FPS
377 frames in 5.0 seconds = 75.294 FPS
372 frames in 5.0 seconds = 74.318 FPS

glxinfo | grep render:
direct rendering: Yes
OpenGL renderer string: Software Rasterizer

Since I have some issues with external monitor (bug: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/xserver-xorg-video-sis/+bug/281454) I configured xorg.conf to use the vesa driver, but the performance issues appear also with sis driver.

[Willian (wiltave-zipmail)]

glxinfo | grep render
direct rendering: Yes
OpenGL renderer string: Software Rasterizer

glxgears doesn't return nothing. After close the glxgears window, i get the following output:
glxgears
XIO: fatal IO error 11 (Resource temporarily unavailable) on X server ":0.0"
      after 171 requests (38 known processed) with 0 events remaining.

[Marek Kalnik (wdev)]

Willian, does the glxgears window show you running gears? If it does you have to run it a bit longer to get results - for 30 seconds or so.

[Willian (wiltave-zipmail)]

Hum... sorry about this... The output:

glxgears
151 frames in 5.1 seconds = 29.864 FPS
456 frames in 5.0 seconds = 91.178 FPS
330 frames in 5.0 seconds = 65.756 FPS
315 frames in 5.0 seconds = 62.922 FPS
252 frames in 5.5 seconds = 45.937 FPS
288 frames in 5.0 seconds = 57.392 FPS
398 frames in 5.0 seconds = 79.506 FPS
138 frames in 5.0 seconds = 27.566 FPS
316 frames in 5.0 seconds = 63.175 FPS
327 frames in 5.0 seconds = 65.332 FPS
276 frames in 5.1 seconds = 53.927 FPS

Thank you.

[Steve Dodier-Lazaro (sidi)]

This is quite low, and would explain why Wine is slow. My GPU is a 8400 GM,
with proprietary drivers, and I get 2200 with XFCE composite transparency,
4400 without.

[Marek Kalnik (wdev)]

As I wrote I'm using vesa driver but I tried do switch to sis and the results were even worse - 39 FPS. After that I gave an Ubuntu 8.04 Live CD a try and my results were back to normal 200-220 FPS. So the bug is located in something that was the same in 8.04/8.10 but was "upgraded" in 9.04.

[Marek Kalnik (wdev)]

I moved it to xorg since it's not wine related at all.

[Steve Dodier-Lazaro (sidi)]

Thanks. It's also related to xserver-xorg-video-sis but i couldn't find the
package/project on launchpad.

[Marek Kalnik (wdev)]

If it was *video-sis related why would it also appear under vesa driver? Anyway, the last test I could think of was running 9.04 live CD - problem appears, results are as with sis driver - 40 FPS.

As I don't have the knowledge necessary to figure out where the problem is (not even mentioning fixing it) I can just wait for somebody to take care of this bug. If there are any other tests/logs that would help I can submit those.

[Martin Olsson (mnemo)]

Please run this command on one of the affected machines:
apport-collect 368086

(it will attach hw / sw config data to the bug report)

[Willian (wiltave-zipmail)]

Architecture: i386
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 9.04
Package: xorg 1:7.4~5ubuntu18
PackageArchitecture: i386
ProcEnviron:
 SHELL=/bin/bash
 LANG=pt_BR.UTF-8
ProcVersion: Linux version 2.6.28-11-generic (buildd@palmer) (gcc version 4.3.3 (Ubuntu 4.3.3-5ubuntu4) ) #42-Ubuntu SMP Fri Apr 17 01:57:59 UTC 2009
Uname: Linux 2.6.28-11-generic i686
UserGroups: adm admin audio cdrom dialout dip floppy fuse lpadmin plugdev sambashare video

[Martin Olsson (mnemo)]

@William, Can you please test some non-WINE applications and see if they are slow as well? For example try openarena and chromium.

Also, I can see that your xorg.conf is customized. Can you please boot the jaunty live CD and see if the problems remain using that environment?

[Marek Kalnik (wdev)]

Architecture: i386
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 9.04
Package: xserver-xorg-video-sis 1:0.10.1-1
PackageArchitecture: i386
ProcEnviron:
 SHELL=/bin/bash
 LANG=pl_PL.UTF-8
ProcVersion: Linux version 2.6.28-11-generic (buildd@palmer) (gcc version 4.3.3 (Ubuntu 4.3.3-5ubuntu4) ) #42-Ubuntu SMP Fri Apr 17 01:57:59 UTC 2009
Uname: Linux 2.6.28-11-generic i686
UserGroups: adm admin cdrom dialout lpadmin plugdev sambashare

[Martin Olsson (mnemo)]

Marek Kalnik, you're using the VESA driver if you find that slow please open a separate bug. This bug deals with the -sis driver issue only.

[Marek Kalnik (wdev)]

I know that I'm using vesa driver. I wrote that before:

Marek Kalnik wrote 8 hours ago: (permalink)
As I wrote I'm using vesa driver but I tried do switch to sis and the results were even worse - 39 FPS.

The problem is that both drivers were running fine (as it comes to performance) before the update and now - both are considerably slower (though sis driver is even slower than vesa). The reason I use vesa is another bug (which I linked to in other comment) I encountered using sis driver. So I think the issue is not necessarily sis driver related but it is still related to that graphic chip.

[Willian (wiltave-zipmail)]

Well, i've tried openarena, chromium and urban terror and they are very, very, very slow! :(
I'm downloading the Jaunty cd and i will boot with it.
Thank's all!

[Martin Olsson (mnemo)]

@Marek, I missed your first comment about using VESA. However, the VESA doesn't even support acceleration so everything will always be slow if you use that driver. It's expected behavior with that driver.

@Willian, okay so we're dealing with a general perf regression introduced in the 10.1 version of the -sis driver. To get this fixed I strongly recommend you open a bug report in the upstream bug tracker (I'm not sure where this is though).

Between intrepid and jaunty there was just one single change to the debian package. The changes were:

xserver-xorg-video-sis (1:0.10.1-1) experimental; urgency=low
  * New upstream release.
  * Build against xserver 1.6 rc1.
  * Allow parallel builds.
  * Run autoreconf on build; add build-deps on automake, libtool and
    xutils-dev.

[Marek Kalnik (wdev)]

Martin, about the vesa driver, you seem to misunderstand. So I'll try to state it clearly:
1) on 8.10 I was using sis driver, then I switched to vesa - it was slow but it was running ok - I could watch movies, play old games, run flash apps.
2) after update to 9.04 all activities like those mentioned became hardly possible - other (than problem with games under wine) symptoms are:
a) movies are laggy in fullscreen
b) flash lags (eg. in youtube sound overtakes picture then it has to stop for a bit for picture to catch up)
c) firefox scrolling lags
d) smplayer stopped working with xv video settings (I have no idea what it is but it gave me the best results before update) - crashes very often (but I don't know if it is anyhow related)
3) when I noticed these problems I switched to sis driver - that gave me no positive effects

All of this makes me think that new X.org is trying to do something that the SiS 661/741/760 isn't able to do - no matter what driver is being used. It has no DRI, so maybe it is somehow related to it?

I'm running on sis driver now (thanks to sisctrl package I managed to deal with my external monitor somehow) so if you need any other tests to be performed or logs to be submitted - I can do that.

[Willian (wiltave-zipmail)]

Architecture: i386
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 9.04
Package: xserver-xorg-video-sis 1:0.10.1-1
PackageArchitecture: i386
ProcEnviron:
 SHELL=/bin/bash
 PATH=(custom, user)
 LANG=pt_BR.UTF-8
ProcVersion: Linux version 2.6.28-11-generic (buildd@palmer) (gcc version 4.3.3 (Ubuntu 4.3.3-5ubuntu4) ) #42-Ubuntu SMP Fri Apr 17 01:57:59 UTC 2009
Uname: Linux 2.6.28-11-generic i686
UserGroups: adm admin audio cdrom dialout dip floppy fuse lpadmin plugdev sambashare video

[Willian (wiltave-zipmail)]

Sorry about the attachments... They were to be in Bug #369815 :(
Admins, please remove them.
As suggests by martin, i open a new bug report in https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/xserver-xorg-video-sis/+bug/369815
Thank's guys and sorry about the mistakes!

[Marek Kalnik (wdev)]

After a while spent on 8.10 i tried 9.04 again, just to check if that problem has been solved. It hasn't but I've spent some time on Google and found out that adding sisfb to /etc/modules is the answer.

[Bryce Harrington (bryce)]

[This is an automatic notification.]

Hi Willian,

This bug was reported against an earlier version of Ubuntu, can you
test if it still occurs on Lucid?

Please note we also provide technical support for older versions of
Ubuntu, but not in the bug tracker. Instead, to raise the issue through
normal support channels, please see:

    http://www.ubuntu.com/support

If you are the original reporter and can still reproduce the issue on
Lucid, please run the following command to refresh the report:

  apport-collect 368086

If you are not the original reporter, please file a new bug report, so
we can work with you as the original reporter instead (you can reference
bug 368086 in your report if you think it may be related):

  ubuntu-bug xorg

If by chance you can no longer reproduce the issue on Lucid or if you
feel it is no longer relevant, please mark the bug report 'Fix Released'
or 'Invalid' as appropriate, at the following URL:

  https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/368086

[Bryce Harrington (bryce)]

We're closing this bug since it is has been some time with no response from the original reporter. However, if the issue still exists please feel free to reopen with the requested information. Also, if you could, please test against the latest development version of Ubuntu, since this confirms the bug is one we may be able to pass upstream for help.