Ati Radeon 9200 extremely slow in Gutsy

[Magnus Lundborg]

In Feisty my Ati Radeon 9200 worked well, but after upgrading to Gutsy it is extremely slow (takes appr. 4 seconds to open a new terminal window and the response time for keyboard presses is about 0.5 seconds).
I'm using the ati driver just like in Feisty. In 'glxinfo' I used to have direct rendering (even if the 3D capabilities of this card are limited). Now I don't get direct rendering.
I have tested various 'xorg.conf's (both manually editing the config I used to have, trying 'dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg' as well as the new Screens and Graphics editor) and nothing seems to help.
So far I've had most luck using the vesa driver and that is pretty slow too, but at least 5 times quicker than the ati driver.

I hope this can be fixed since it is obviously a regression.

[Magnus Lundborg (lundborg-magnus)]

Current xorg.conf using the ati driver.

[Magnus Lundborg (lundborg-magnus)]

Current xserver log using the config above.

[Magnus Lundborg (lundborg-magnus)]

The xorg.conf I had in Feisty and when I switched to Gutsy.

[Magnus Lundborg (lundborg-magnus)]

Another xorg.conf I have tested after searching for solutions to this problem.

[Brian Murray (brian-murray)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. Could you please also add the full output of dmesg as an attachment after a fresh boot? Thanks in advance.

[Magnus Lundborg (lundborg-magnus)]

dmesg output after boot (before logging in at the gdm prompt)

[Magnus Lundborg (lundborg-magnus)]

dmesg output after logging into gnome.

[dmf86 (diogomiguelferreira86)]

Had the same problem here. Lost the 3D and it's very slow... Running 7.10 Beta.

[irwand (irwan-djajadi)]

I have the same problem here too. And I don't know how to turn off 3D.. How do you do this?
Window move is extremely slow. Typing this thing in firefox is painful.
Help! Thx!

[irwand (irwan-djajadi)]

Looks like Gutsy enables xgl by default, and this is really slow with ATI driver with Radeon 9200. To disable xgl: "touch ~/.config/xserver-xgl/disable" (make sure ~/.config/xserver-xgl is created first). Once XGL is not used, it should be as fast as Feisty..

[Magnus Lundborg (lundborg-magnus)]

Yes, after disabling xgl the speed is back to normal and 3D acceleration is enabled. So this wasn't a serious bug as such, but I think it would be good to create some list of drivers/cards that should not enable xgl. I guess it would be a bit daunting for a new user to face a GUI that hardly responds.

But at least it works for me now.

[Timo Aaltonen (tjaalton)]

Reassigning to xserver-xgl, not a driver bug.

[xodut (petr-odut)]

There is no direct rendering on ATI Mobility Radeon 9000 (laptop Asus M2442CU) & LiveCD (build 14-Oct-2007).

[Javier Acuña Ditzel (santoposmoderno)]

I had the same problem but irwand's solution worked to me.

[Travis Watkins (amaranth)]

Not a bug, you installed Xgl so you're getting Xgl. Just uninstall xserver-xgl to make it go away. It is _not_ installed by default.

[Luca de Pasqua (depasqua)]

Mine it's an Ati Radeon 9200 SE 128 Mb and that solution doesn't work...however, mine is also not recognized, or this is my opinion reading my xorg...where is the problem?

[Risto H. Kurppa (risto.kurppa)]

Reports on Hardy? I have a 9200 SE card and Hardy and I cannot make 3d-acceleration running at all. fglrx doesn't support this anymore, ati/radeon driver gives me this: http://pastebin.com/m7436eca7

[Risto H. Kurppa (risto.kurppa)]

Actually I tried Ubuntu Hardy Desktop live w. 9200SE, display connected to DVI, an oldish Apple Studio monitor and I couldn't see anything, just flickering and stuff.

I guess this is the reason: https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2859
Reported 2005, still unfixed.. But I'm not sure if this has anything to do with the slowness that's reported here..

[SlawekM (slawekme)]

I had the same problem with DVI monitor and Radeon 9200 (flickering and blanking) when I was running Windows, so I think it may be a hardware issue.