HOWTO: Jaunty Intel Graphics Performance Guide

[kennyschiff]

I did the optimal for my Thinkpad X61 with an Intel GM965 and seemed to work fine until I tried to turn on desktop effects.

I was initially unable to do this, because it turns out the GM965 is black listed. I followed the procedure described here to remove it from the list, which did allow me to enable desktop effects; however, the side effect is that my shift key stops working.

I've seen this problem within VMWare before, but changing the keyboard layout doesn't solve this problem, nor does "setxkbmap ." I guess there is a reason that the GM965 is black listed

[Roanoke]

Thanks a ton for this guide. My FPS in nexuiz spiked at least 200%.

[SQuark]

Worked great for me! Many many thanks!

Just one little note: Xubuntu does use GDM for the login screen, so no need to scare off the less knowledgeable Xubuntu users.

[jerrylamos]

With Karmic Alpha 1, Edgers 2.7.99 driver slowed down vs. 2.7.0 on my IBM Thinkpad R31 with i830 video and IBM ThinkCentre A30 with i845 video.

Launchpad bug 382017 has the #'s including 36% slower on GtkPerf from Synaptic on the i845, 90% slower on the i830. Oof.

Fastest driver on the i845 is VESA. 2.7.99 measured 58% slower....

Jerry

[scarf]

shouldn't the downloads for the kernels be verified in some way? gpg signature? or at least by using https?

also, how do we get updates for the kernels? just keep monitoring this thread?

[scarf]

text and scrolling seem to be big problems for me still, with 855GM and safe configuration. i ran gtkperf maximized (almost 1280x768) and i set the test rounds to 1000.
results:

GtkPerf 0.40 - Starting testing: Sun May 31 00:53:14 2009

GtkEntry - time:  1.25
GtkComboBox - time: 36.97
GtkComboBoxEntry - time: 19.45
GtkSpinButton - time:  7.62
GtkProgressBar - time: 22.39
GtkToggleButton - time: 10.27
GtkCheckButton - time:  6.56
GtkRadioButton - time: 11.32
GtkTextView - Add text - time: 256.86
GtkTextView - Scroll - time: 64.59
GtkDrawingArea - Lines - time: 46.25
GtkDrawingArea - Circles - time: 52.83
GtkDrawingArea - Text - time: 63.21
GtkDrawingArea - Pixbufs - time:  1.69
 --- 
Total time: 601.29

i tried the optimal configuration, and the results are slightly better on paper, but hardly noticeable:

GtkPerf 0.40 - Starting testing: Sun May 31 01:56:06 2009

GtkEntry - time:  1.16
GtkComboBox - time: 36.37
GtkComboBoxEntry - time: 18.92
GtkSpinButton - time:  7.48
GtkProgressBar - time: 21.36
GtkToggleButton - time: 10.07
GtkCheckButton - time:  5.22
GtkRadioButton - time: 10.71
GtkTextView - Add text - time: 235.12
GtkTextView - Scroll - time: 60.79
GtkDrawingArea - Lines - time: 42.52
GtkDrawingArea - Circles - time: 51.07
GtkDrawingArea - Text - time: 57.71
GtkDrawingArea - Pixbufs - time:  1.59
 --- 
Total time: 560.08

unfortunately, i couldn't get my rt2860 wifi driver working with the 2.6.29 kernel, even tho i have the source code and recompiled and reinstalled the module for the 2.6.29 kernel. so, back to the safe config for now.

[meganox]

I'm getting absolutely horrible effects with UXA enabled now, going to revert. Hopefully Karmic will be better.

[3rdalbum]

Can I just say: Don't fiddle with the graphics on a production system. I tried a HOWTO on my netbook and it caused the graphics to go much slower. I reversed what I did as well as I could, and it broke Gnome - nothing I've done has fixed it. Reinstall time.

[jsravn]

This solution is a mixed bag for me. I have a thinkpad x41 with i810 graphics.

Optimal solution (with the kernel upgrade) proved to be very unstable. Random lockups, and suspend/hibernate stopped working completely. However, my 2d performance improved remarkably.

I'm using the safe solution now (without kernel upgrade), and my system is much stabler and I still have improved 2d. However hibernate no longer works for me, X crashes on resume, and screen fonts occasionally get corrupted (missing the top bit of the character).

Also, despite what the guide says, I found my system to be less stable and I lost all my 2d performance by disabling tiling. So I have tiling set to true now.

Hoping for a more permanent, working solution... .

[bradvf]

Rc2 worked for me (full screen Flash was the main problem), however all other fixes and kernels had varying results. In the end I repartitioned the h/d and moved my home folder onto a separate partition, then installed Ibex. It's so much quicker (even the Rc2 fix seems sluggish compared to this.
The work put into this thread is amazing, and a credit to the ubuntu community imho. I've learned so much from following it, and although it's not working for everyone, it is for some.
Cheers everyone.