Guide to Get the Best Performace from the GMA 500

[godfazr]

I'd dumped EMGD because of poor 2d performance, hope it's improved.

I'm now using Unity 2D and can say that 2d performance is acceptable for my current needs with netbook (mail, web, non-HD video). Fullscreen flash is slow though, but I can live with framed 240-360p.
For all other I have desktop

[fanum]

was looking at the meego 1.2 page, and noticed this bug:

"Bug 17265 - [emgd] Driver can't read EDID information correctly"

https://bugs.meego.com/show_bug.cgi?id=17265

Does that potentially mean that with future releases we will no longer have to configure xorg.conf files? That would be a huge step forward to EMGD's usability on non supported platforms.

[Anaesthisia]

I'm now using Unity 2D and can say that 2d performance is acceptable for my current needs with netbook (mail, web, non-HD video). Fullscreen flash is slow though, but I can live with framed 240-360p.
For all other I have desktop

The listing of performance for different drivers states for a lot of the setups that 3D performance is better than 2D performance so why use a 2D gui?

A

[fanum]

The listing of performance for different drivers states for a lot of the setups that 3D performance is better than 2D performance so why use a 2D gui?

A

Because unity 3d still does not work properly with emgd. It is now working, but there are several bugs that make it slow an distorted. This is a huge step forward tho, as it was not even working until a week or so ago.

[Anaesthisia]

Because unity 3d still does not work properly with emgd. It is now working, but there are several bugs that make it slow an distorted. This is a huge step forward tho, as it was not even working until a week or so ago.

Ah, so perhaps this is the bug that was mentioned earlier in the thread as filed with the Unity folks?

A

[fanum]

Ah, so perhaps this is the bug that was mentioned earlier in the thread as filed with the Unity folks?

A

Correct

[yigal.weinstein]

I need help getting EMGD working in 11.04 on my device, a Viliv S5:
dmesg | grep DMI
[ 0.000000] DMI present.
[ 0.000000] DMI: YKMF_Yukyung YKMD_S5 Premium-ch/To be filled by O.E.M., BIOS 080015 07/20/2009

The Monitor:
4.8" WSVGA (1024 x 600)

Present and not working 10-emgd.conf, which is just the one created by emgd-xorg-conf but with the explicit modeline for my device:
http://paste.ubuntu.com/610737/

Nothing on the monitor works with this configuration, "out of sync" etc.. Thank you for any help you might have to offer getting a 10-emgd.conf that works.

Edit solution found:
I went through /var/log/Xorg.0.log to get a clue as to what the problem was. It was painfully obvious that there is no modeline 1024x600 so instead I first attempted 960x540 and this worked satisfactorily, though much too small to be productive, and then I tried 1024x768 and it's working just great with that.

[mattrope]

It should be supported... emgd 1.6 are present in meego repos and usually are shipped in IVI version.

@mikewhatever
IVI version is different, should support Russellville eMenlow (gma500)

Meego IVI releases include EMGD and work on "GMA500" style hardware. Meego Netbook releases do not include EMGD by default, and although it's possible to install EMGD from the zypper repository, there's still a bit of manual configuration hacking and other work that's necessary to get the "netbook" release working properly (due in part to the fact that Netbook runs the X server as a non-root user and that isn't officially supported by EMGD at the moment). Getting the netbook release working with EMGD is doable (or at least it was last time I checked about six months ago), but not terribly easy; it's a better idea to start with the IVI release and then make the modifications you want from there.

What's the bug? Has it been reported to Intel? 2D has always seemed plenty fast to me, but I'll have to try disabling accel and benchmark the two.

There are some xrender operations that perform poorly when UXA acceleration is enabled. Intel is aware of the issue and investigating, but it's somewhat of a lower priority issue than 3D performance/functionality due to the intended audience of the driver.

was looking at the meego 1.2 page, and noticed this bug:

"Bug 17265 - [emgd] Driver can't read EDID information correctly"

https://bugs.meego.com/show_bug.cgi?id=17265

Does that potentially mean that with future releases we will no longer have to configure xorg.conf files? That would be a huge step forward to EMGD's usability on non supported platforms.

EMGD always needs a simple xorg.conf at the moment, but if EDID is available for the display, panel timings don't need to be provided. Most of the platforms that EMGD targets (which don't necessarily match the types of netbooks that people on these forums are using) often use panels which do not have EDID support, so manual timings must be provided (there's simply no way to auto-detect). I don't know whether the same is true for most of the "GMA500" netbooks out there, but if you have a system with EDID capability, then EMGD should already be able to detect all the panel timings on its own and you can pretty much get away with a 5 line xorg.conf.

The bug you're referencing is actually user error on the submitter's part. Regardless of whether or not EDID is available, a line that reads 'Option "PcfVersion" "1792"' is still necessary in the xorg.conf for historical/compatibility reasons; if that line is omitted; the driver switches into some legacy behavior and doesn't give the expected results.

[chone]

Hey all,

I installed the new EMGD driver for Natty and it's great...except for one thing. The Synaptics Trackpad is broken - whenever it registers input, it immediately logs out (or goes to a strange, purple screen)! (The buttons work fine.) I've disabled it so I don't log myself out of sessions. With the native drivers this problem does not exist.

This might be a problem with the way I upgraded from Maverick to Natty. I accidentally reopened some Maverick repos and did an update...but since, I've removed those bad repose and uninstalled and reinstalled the EMGD driver. This problem is similar to a bug that was opened and fixed at the beginning of April for Xorg - something about a null pointer error/segfault.

I'm running a T91-MT with Natty. Xorg is at version 1.9 as it should be, the kernel is 38 as it should be. The touchscreen still works (and works great, out of the box), even for the mouse. It's gotta be a stupid synaptics problem. Any idea what I did wrong/how I should fix it?

I'm visiting a friend at college now. When I get home, I might do a clean install of Natty and see if that solves the problem. I've done so much crap to this computer that it kind of deserves a fresh install anyway.

[Sakartu]

Hey all,
I've been reading this forum for about a year now, ever since I decided to install Ubuntu on my 1101HA. Thanks for all the great work you've done so far and tista, sorry to see you go

So far the praise, I have an actual question as well... I have just reinstalled my netbook because it gave some problems and I wanted to try 11.04 anyway. Everything seems to be working ok, but suspend still seems to have some problems.
Using the 99video workaround doesn't really seem to do anything; it will suspend with or without the file in place, but every so often the machine just locks up completely when going into suspend. The screen stays on but stays black and nothing will respond anymore, I can't even get the kernel to reboot my system using the SysRq trick... It looks a bit like the problem mentioned by jbernardo in this post.

Any ideas?

EDIT; I only just found the GRUB_GFXPAYLOAD_LINUX=text line for the grub config in a post I didn't read yet, I hope this solves the problem. I'll keep you posted

Cheers, Sakartu