Hi,

I've run KDE 4 since Arch moved to 4.1 Kwin compositing worked quite OK, but somehow things have gone awry now that I use 4.2.

At startup, compositing works smooth and fast, but the longer the session lasts, and especially, the more Windows I open, the worse it becomes. Especially running OOo and some company Java apps, compositing slows to a crawl. The present windows effect takes 20 seconds, starting with all the windows being presented and then slowly wobbling into place, until they finally settle. Clicking on a window then presents it in a wobbly, crawling style.

X usage remains at 20 or 25% doing absolutely nothing.

I am running Arch on a laptop with Intel 945 GM graphics. Apparently, there is an issue with Intel and X 1.5, but I did not have the problems on 4.1

I would like to know if more people suffer a performance degradation during their session or if this is a-typical....

This sounds familiar to a bug report we had a few months ago. It was solved by changing/upgrading/downgrading the Intel driver.

Thanks! I had the older packages still on my system, so I downgraded a step. Will check if this helps and report back!

Hmm, looks like it does not make a difference. In the end, the present windows effect became sluggish again and compositing was disabled....

Am gonna try running MEPIS with KDE4 for a while, maybe the X version is the culprit....

Hmmm again.

After closing some windows it now works OK again... I am starting to think the 'present windows' plugin is getting a fit if more than X windows are open.....

I've gotta say thay I'm having serious performance problems with KDE4

I *love* the desktop and the possibilities it brings, the apps integration.. everything. The performance is, by now, horrible. Maybe it's not a KDE problem itself but Xorg's or Qt's (check the latest qt4.5 rc), the thing is that the performance is low though

I use an intel 945gm too with 2,5gb of ram on a Core Duo 1,86ghz (which is not a bad system) but my whole desktop *feels* slow. I've tried plenty of drivers configurations, versions or whatever you can think of. The problem still persists.

I hope you can find a solution and point it to me!

Even though I have this performance issue, I still belive KDE 4.2 is so awesome that I use it (specially because of the PIM apps )

Damnshock

Well, I have found the culprit I think.

I must say that KDE4 feels snappy for me, except for the occional compositing issue.

I did some tests today, and the Present Windows plugin is definitely not production ready, at least on my machine.

When I have 11 or 12 windows open on different desktops and activate 'Present Windows on all desktops', it chokes, wobbles windows thumbnails into place and finally Kwin will disable compositing. Opening Java apps is especiallby bad, since it may choke on 10 windows when 2 of them are Java apps (e.g. OpenProject).

Maybe this is an X problem, so as said, I will try it later today on MEPIS. If

Damnshock, as far as your issue goes, maybe you need to check if your opengl works OK. What framerate do you get when you run glxgears?? Are you sure you have set Desktop effects to use OpenGL and direct rendering??

Just to make sure: You're running in OpenGL mode right, not XRender? XRender is just plain slow.

Zarin wrote:Just to make sure: You're running in OpenGL mode right, not XRender? XRender is just plain slow.

Yes, OpenGL mode, direct rendering.

But....

I installed the MEPIS KDE4 remaster and it is much smoother. Running glxgears (I know it is not a benchmark tool ), gives me around 800fps, whereas in Arch I get 430fps.

I think Arch is having a problem because of the issues between intel video and the 2.6.28 server with GEM. That coupled with some annoying problems caused by updates lately are making me consider giving up on Arch for now. But that is another story....

I do use opengl and have direct rendering activated. In fact, Xrender works *smoother* than OpenGL, isn't that funny?

Code: Select all

bash-3.2$ glxgears
1158 frames in 5.0 seconds = 231.475 FPS
1329 frames in 5.0 seconds = 265.677 FPS


Not really good, right?

By the way I've disabled the present windows plugins and the thing has improved quite a bit. The performance is still bad though.

Those figures are really low... What's your distro?

XiniX wrote:Those figures are really low... What's your distro?

Archlinux.

I'm writing these lines from my freebsd partition in which I'm compiling KDE 4.2 to check the performance here as it has more updated intel drivers.

I'll come back... whenever this ends!

I had problems with Arch as well on my intel card. Not as bad as yours, but enough to make the system choke on heavy openGL loads. In MEPIS everything is really smooth.

I think the problem is that Arch runs 2.6.28, and apparently that kernel has issues with intel video, or the other way round....

XiniX wrote:I had problems with Arch as well on my intel card. Not as bad as yours, but enough to make the system choke on heavy openGL loads. In MEPIS everything is really smooth.

I think the problem is that Arch runs 2.6.28, and apparently that kernel has issues with intel video, or the other way round....

Probably is my system which is doing something wrong, I'm not really sure if it's Arch's fault or mine. The thing is that my system is NOT smooth. Actually, not at all.

The drivers... intel 2.5 and 2.6 are supposed to deal much much better with GEM than the 2.4 series. I have 2.5.1 installed here on freebsd: I'll post results as soon as I can have the programs compiled( I'll check glxgears).

[EDIT]
I just realized that this makes waaaaay no sense :S FreeBSD's kernel does not have GEM as far as I know. I'll check the performance though
[/EDIT]

Anyway, the topic was about kwin and we should stick to that

Damnshock