Comment 11 for bug 19711

Revision history for this message
In , Michael (auslands-kv) wrote :

(In reply to comment #4)
> well, when the DRI is enabled, the DDX uses the bus mastering for 2D commands as
> well, so that will also cause bus master activity. I suppose we could put in
> some sort of hack to shut down the CP when DPMS is triggered. I'm not sure if
> that's the right fix or not.
>

I'm afraid I haven't dived far enough into the technical aspects, so I don't
know teh relationship between DPMS (which is the power saving state of the
monitor, isn't it) and bus mastering, direct rendering or the CPU power saving
states...

Thus, maybe just one comment from a users perspective:

- The ideal world is (of course) to have maximum 3D power with lowest energy
consumption ;-) I guess, that is not possible, if bus mastering is needed for
"full speed graphics"

- Best compromise would be if one could choose either to enable "full speed
graphics" (using bus mastering extensively for everything) or (if possible)
"good speed graphics" with bus mastering only when necessary (i.e. for 3D apps ?
I don't know)

To my mind, I like to have a low power consumption if I'm running on battery and
have to do a lot of work. But then I also like to at least be able to start some
3D apps such as Google Earth or a nice 3D game without always modifying
xorg.conf and restarting the xserver.

It would be alright if power consumption raises when I start a 3D app. But from
a users perspective it seems unnecessary to significantly raise power
consumption without using it. (At the moment I'm running without the dri module
and for 2D apps -- such as open office, firefox, etc. -- speed is totally fine
with low power consumption -> CPU frequently in C3. But of course, no 3D
capability at all).

This is certainly not a crucial bug/feature request. There are more pressing
bugs in the driver that are of much higher priority (especially the freezes with
the dri module). So, it's fine for me if this is postponed to some later time.

Thanks for your help

Michael