Display is very slow and Xorg consuming CPU like crazy after upgrading to Fedora 14

OR13 · 05-06-2011, 05:50 PM

Hello.

Recently, I've upgraded my Fedora 13 system to Fedora 14.
All is well but one - quite important - thing.

The display is UNBELIEVABLY slow, and the xorg process (/usr/bin/Xorg :0 -nr -verbose -auth /var/run/gdm/auth-for-gdm-G4lWjL/database -nolisten tcp vt1) consumes up to 99% of the CPU when trying to do very simple things like scrolling page in Firefox.

My video card is an intel i915 built-in card.
I know for years that support for this hardware is not... perfect, but I've been working on this machine for 7 yrs w/o having the problem above, so I know it's possible...

I've seen this thread that seems to be related, but couldn't understand the solution offered there, and the given link is broken :\

I'm attaching my xorg.conf (/etc/X11/xorg.conf), output of lsmod and output of lspci.

Code:

# lspci | grep VGA
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation 82845G/GL[Brookdale-G]/GE Chipset Integrated Graphics Device (rev 01)

Code:

# lsmod | grep i915
i915                  242432  3 
drm_kms_helper         22278  1 i915
drm                   139248  3 i915,drm_kms_helper
i2c_algo_bit            4197  1 i915
i2c_core               21552  9 saa7134,v4l2_common,videodev,tveeprom,i2c_i801,i915,drm_kms_helper,drm,i2c_algo_bit
video                  17730  1 i915

This is driving me absolutely crazy,
so I would really appreciate any attempt to help.

Thanks!

RockDoctor · 05-07-2011, 02:18 PM

I've got revision 3 of the 82845G controller on my Shuttle running F14 - no problem running without an xorg.conf file. I see you've got a few extra goodies enabled in your xorg.conf file; what happens if you comment out the options for Card0?

OR13 · 05-08-2011, 02:46 PM

Commenting out all Card0 options makes a very small difference, I'm not even sure if for the better of for the worse :/

I must add: deleting xorg.conf altogether made things a LITTLE better, but still there is a lot of improvement in need.

RockDoctor · 05-09-2011, 10:48 AM

I guess I'd try partially reverting the xorg upgrade starting with xorg-x11-drv-intel and xorg-x11-server-Xorg and any dependencies. Not fun, but might be worth the effort. I know it's not advisable to mix packages from different releases, but I've done it before with varying results. Just be prepared for a totally borked X - I prepare by keeping local copies of all rpm packages I've downgraded so that I can boot into text mode and upgrade to something that will work (however poorly) without having to go online.

PTrenholme · 05-09-2011, 12:56 PM

You might check to see if your F14 turned on compriz. That can be quite a resource hog. Oh, also check the amount of memory you BIOS is letting the 915 chip use. (On this decade old system I'm using [ATI video, not Intel], the BIOS was letting the display system use 64M. I got a vast improvement when I upped it to 256M - the max the BIOS would allow.)

Also, I got better performance with the XFCE desktop than either GNOME or KDE could provide. You might try moving to XFCE4 to see if it satisfies your needs.

OR13 · 05-13-2011, 12:26 PM

Thank you both for your replies,
and special thanks to PTrenholme -
your advice of boosting AGP Aperture Size to 256MB made my user experience MUCH MUCH better.

Thank you, and I hope this will help others as well

John VV · 05-13-2011, 01:48 PM

a upgrade ????
just HOW did you go about that ?
Did you use the recommended "preupgrade" ( assuming your /boot partition is 500meg + )
or did you use the install dvd and select "upgrade an existing install "
-- if a clean new install then ignore below -- still the BEST way to "upgrade"

fedora 14 removed and used some different programs .
So i am guessing that there are more than the normal 3 to 6 fedora 13 rpms still installed
That there are still some "orphaned" fedora 13 programs .

Did you install "yum-utility" ??
and run the package clean up ?

to see just what of fedora 13 is still installed on fedora 13 run

Code:

rpm -qa | grep fc13