Ubuntu
mesa package

DRI very slow on ATI Radeon 9600 on PowerPC

Bug #69607 reported by Sgominator on 2006-11-01

This bug report is a duplicate of: Bug #61607: 3d rendering performance regression Dapper->Edgy with Radeon 9600 M10. Edit Remove

Affects		Status	Importance	Assigned to	Milestone
	mesa (Ubuntu)	Confirmed	Undecided	Unassigned
	xserver-xorg-video-ati (Ubuntu)	New	Undecided	Unassigned

Bug Description

Binary package hint: xserver-xorg-video-ati

Fresh Edgy Eft install on Apple Powerbook5,9 (G4, 17", ATI Radeon 9600 R300 chipset).
glxinfo output:

pete@macpete:~$ glxinfo
name of display: :0.0
display: :0 screen: 0
direct rendering: Yes
server glx vendor string: SGI
server glx version string: 1.2
server glx extensions:
GLX_ARB_multisample, GLX_EXT_visual_info, GLX_EXT_visual_rating,
GLX_EXT_import_context, GLX_EXT_texture_from_pixmap, GLX_OML_swap_method,
[...]

glxgears output:

ete@macpete:~$ glxgears
*********************************WARN_ONCE*********************************
File r300_maos.c function r300EmitArrays line 546
Cannot handle offset c0302000 with stride 3, comp 3
***************************************************************************
Try R300_SPAN_DISABLE_LOCKING env var if this hangs.

no fps output but i've calculated the red gear runs at 12 RPMs!

xmoto: game menu is less than responsive, but game runs at about 1 FPS

The same machine has SUSE 10.1 on-board: none of the above.

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fuoco (fuoco2-deactivatedaccount) wrote on 2006-11-03:

I have the same problem on my ibook 14'' with radeon 9550. I found that running 'glxgears -printfps' shows the FPS rate, and it's at about 25 (!!)
I also know that it can work much better, because few months ago I used gentoo on this machine and had it working very well.

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Sgominator (pietro-dania) wrote on 2006-11-06:

I didn't know the -printfps option:

SUSE 10.1:

5879 frames in 5.0 seconds = 1175.786 FPS
5907 frames in 5.0 seconds = 1181.218 FPS
5880 frames in 5.0 seconds = 1175.909 FPS
5863 frames in 5.0 seconds = 1172.478 FPS
5883 frames in 5.0 seconds = 1176.433 FPS

Kubuntu Edgy:

pete@macpete:~$ glxgears -printfps
*********************************WARN_ONCE*********************************
File r300_maos.c function r300EmitArrays line 546
Cannot handle offset c0302000 with stride 3, comp 3
***************************************************************************
Try R300_SPAN_DISABLE_LOCKING env var if this hangs.
57 frames in 5.0 seconds = 11.342 FPS
168 frames in 5.0 seconds = 33.537 FPS
174 frames in 5.0 seconds = 34.673 FPS
174 frames in 5.0 seconds = 34.651 FPS
174 frames in 5.0 seconds = 34.720 FPS

Timo Jyrinki (timo-jyrinki) on 2006-12-17

Changed in xserver-xorg-video-ati:
status:	Unconfirmed → Confirmed

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b (ben-ekran) wrote on 2007-01-05: problem is libgl1-mesa-dri & libgl1-mesa-glx

See the comments on the following forum:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=320649

I think most users fixed the problem by replacing these ubuntu packages:

libgl1-mesa-dri (6.5.1~20060817-0ubuntu3)
libgl1-mesa-glx (6.5.1~20060817-0ubuntu3)

with these from debian (etch):

libgl1-mesa-glx_6.5.1-0.4_powerpc.deb
libgl1-mesa-dri_6.5.1-0.4_powerpc.deb

What is the difference between these versions? They seem to both be 6.5.1, but r300 DRI seems only functional on the debian packages.

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b (ben-ekran) wrote on 2007-01-05:

I believe this bug is not against the ati xorg but actually against the following mesa packages:

libgl1-mesa-dri (6.5.1~20060817-0ubuntu3)
libgl1-mesa-glx (6.5.1~20060817-0ubuntu3)

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fuoco (fuoco2-deactivatedaccount) wrote on 2007-01-05:

Yes. I'm not sure what's the difference between the two packages, but i think the ubuntu one is a snapshot before the official release, there's must be some changes between the two snapshots. Either that or it's a packaging problem.

At any rate, indeed it boosts the glxgears score, but it's not enough. I still have problems:
with ppracer some races only give 2-3 fps while others work fine - but only in 16 bits depth. I tried also flight gear and it's as slow as without acceleration at all.
Plus compiz doesn't work - it just crashes the X server. (AIGLX)

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b (ben-ekran) wrote on 2007-01-06:

Yup, I can confirm that the "fix" of using debian packages does not solve the issue, I still get 100% cpu usage on all but the simplest opengl applications.

is the r300 driver known to provide compatible 3D acceleration on powerbooks on any OS with any version of mesa?

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Erik (echakr) wrote on 2007-01-06:

My r300 on PowerBook 5,4 worked fine in Dapper, it broke when I upgraded to Edgy, currently on Feisty and the fix is not in.

See Bug #61607
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/xserver-xorg-video-ati/+bug/61607

Maybe the bugs needs to be marked as duplicates?

Revision history for this message

fuoco (fuoco2-deactivatedaccount) wrote on 2007-01-06:

It didn't work for me in dapper, but as I already said it did work in gentoo many months ago before I switched to dapper.
It might be a good idea to try and use the more recent mesa release versioned: 6.5.2. Unfortunately I couldn't find a deb for that, and I don't know how to make one...