Re: [gentoo-desktop] Video Card Q965 + i810-2.0.0 + TVTime: high CPU usage by X

[Dirk Gassen]

Ok, I made some progress on this:

I was able to get the same performance of X on the 945G with 1.x intel  
driver (620GX) and the 965Q with 2.0 intel driver (745) with the  
following setup of the MTRR registers:

echo "base=0x0 size=0x80000000 type=write-back" >| /proc/mtrr
echo "base=0x80000000 size=0x10000000 type=write-combining" >| /proc/ 
mtrr

(Originally I didn't have the second line)

These post were very helpful (don't know why I didn't find them  
earlier):

http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-563647-highlight-.html
http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-501708-highlight-optiplex.html

Now the only thing that remains (I guess) is to find a proper setup of  
the MTRR registers on the 755. While playing with that I was a bit  
unluck... I was only able to make the box freeze so far.


On 14.01.2008, at 10:01, Dirk Gassen wrote:

> Thanks for your quick reply. Unfortunately, the email
> got stuck in a spam filter that's why I reply so late.
>
> --- Donnie Berkholz <dberkholz@g.o> wrote:
>
>> On 18:45 Fri 11 Jan     , Dirk Gassen wrote:
>>> I currently have a performance problem on a
>>> Optiplex 745/755 and the
>>> onboard graphics card. We would like to run tvtime
>>> as a TV application.
>>> Unfortunately, when tvtime starts X consumes >30%
>>> CPU, which results in a
>>> somewhat sluggish system (responses to user
>>> actions are slow, closed
>>> captioning looses characters, etc.).
>>>
>>> This system did already work well on an Optiplex
>>> 620GX (X CPU usage <15%).
>>>
>>> Here's some more info about the systems:
>>
>> To simplify things, I'm just going to point out what
>> I think are the
>> important facts.
>>
>>> Optiplex 620GX (works):
> [SNIP]
>>
>> 945G with the 1.x intel driver
>>
>>> Optiplex 745 (performance issues):
> [SNIP]
>>
>> 965Q with 2.0 intel driver
>>
>>> Optiplex 755 (also performance issues):
> [SNIP]
>>
>> Q35 with 2.0 intel driver
>>
>> You've tested the new hardware with the old driver,
>> and it didn't work
>> for unrelated reasons
>
> I'm not sure if the reasons were unrelated but with
> the old driver I get two bars with noise, one at the
> right side of the screen and one at the bottom (looked
> somewhat like uninitialized memory?). I wasn't able to
> get rid of by changing tvtime configuration options,
> so I thought the best way would be to upgrade the
> driver to 2.0, which fixed *that* problem.
>
>> Could you test the old
>> hardware with the new
>> driver, to test whether it's the driver version
>> change creating a
>> slowdown?
>
> Nope, doesn't seem to be related to the driver change.
>> 30% X CPU usage with 1.7.4.
>
>> Also, could you try 2.2 instead of 2.0? If
>> that doesn't work,
>> try 2.1.
>
> Same thing (I was already looking pretty often if
> there's a new driver version and jumped on each new
> version)
>
>> It's also possible that the driver's just not as
>> good on 965 and Q35 as
>> on 945.
>
> Would that be a hardware restriction or would that be
> fixable in the driver (and what would I need to
> do/contribute to fix it?)
>
>>> I suspect there's something wrong with the MTRR
>>> setup on the 745/755 (wild
>>> guess):
>>> localhost ~ # cat /proc/mtrr
>>> reg00: base=0x00000000 (   0MB), size=65536MB:
>>> write-back, count=1
>>> reg01: base=0x3d600000 ( 982MB), size=   2MB:
>>> uncachable, count=1
>>> reg02: base=0x3d800000 ( 984MB), size=   8MB:
>>> uncachable, count=1
>>> reg03: base=0x3e000000 ( 992MB), size=  32MB:
>>> uncachable, count=1
>>> reg04: base=0x3d500000 ( 981MB), size=   1MB:
>>> uncachable, count=1
>>> reg05: base=0x40000000 (1024MB), size=1024MB:
>>> uncachable, count=1
>>> reg06: base=0x80000000 (2048MB), size=2048MB:
>>> uncachable, count=1
>>>
>>> ... and X reports in its log:
>>> (WW) intel(0): Failed to set up write-combining
>>> range
>>> (0xd0000000,0x10000000)
>>
>> Yeah, this could cause problems with speed. If it
>> worked in the old
>> versions with otherwise identical software
>> configurations (e.g. kernel
>> features), this could be a driver bug.
>
> How would I go about setting it up manually? Or does
> that need to be fixed in the driver?
>
> Do you think I should contact the driver developers or
> file a bug report for the driver?
>
> BTW, to rule out any other interference from other
> pieces of software (e.g., OpenBox) I did start only X
> and tvtime, still the same problem.
>
>> Thanks,
>> Donnie
>> --
>> gentoo-desktop@l.g.o mailing list
>>
>>
>
>
>
>
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