xf86-video-intel-2.21.15 slow for anybody?
 

Hello folks,

Just applied the Sep 09 updates and I've experienced a bit of slowness in X11. It still works fine and everything, and my fps tests show that it hasn't dropped but switching between virtual desktops (hooray, rotating cubes!) is a bit slow and choppy.

I'm not sure if this is the newer xorg server, but before Pat put 1.14 into testing/ it was an upgrade for -current which had no problem, so I'm suspecting it may be xf86-video-intel.

Anybody noticed something similar (if not, are you on an nVidia optimus laptop because I happen to be)?

Check the options using DRIConf and see if you may need to set the refresh rates and other options for X.Org and the driver.

You surely mean a Nvidia Optimus craptop ? Biggest mistake of my life.

Why? The Intel video card is only meant for the basic usage, not for 3D rendering. That's what the NVIDIA card is meant for. Unlike the NVIDIA driver for Windows, the NVIDIA driver for Linux can't automatically switch between the two cards.

To being able to use the NVIDIA Optimus card you need bumblebee, virtualgl, bbswitch and ideally the proprietary nvidia driver.

This NVIDIA Optimus gives you the best compromise between power saving and 3D performance. If you don't need 3D rendering, you only use the primary Intel card, with which you start the xserver. This way at least my battery lasts about 4 1/2 hours. And if you need 3D rendering, then you run this application with the command `optirun <command>`, and use the secondary NVIDIA card. This way my battery lasts about 1 1/2 hours.

@TommyC7: To the original question. Can't you downgrade the xserver and/or xf86-video-intel and check if it gets faster again? If this happens then there's probably a bug in the new version.

I'm not using Slackware anymore, and I never used those rotating cubes, but I wouldn't wonder if those wouldn't be really fast with the Intel video card, since they need 3D rendering as far as I know.

Btw., you can test the difference of the 3D performance between the Intel and the NVIDIA card by running glxspheres (part of virtualgl). Run it first with just `glxspheres` and then with `optirun glxspheres`.

I think you actually answered the 'why' yourself. The whole issue of battery life is a non-issue. Unless you are directly traveling (aeroplane, train, bus, car) you are likely close to a power source. If you travel a lot and battery life is critical to you, you probably don't need a discrete graphics card anyway. My point is that even with the efforts of bumble-bee, this is not trivial stuff and it requires the user to jump around and take special steps for special cases. Fact is, if I had known/realised up front what junk this was, I'd have chosen another laptop. Remember, it was for this exact reason that Linux Torvalds gave Nvidia the middle-finger - and boy, he was 100% right. A year or more down the road and nothing has changed.

I have an Optimus laptop and, like you, don't think that battery life is an issue. So I set Nvidia in the BIOS and never looked back. Everything works perfectly fine.

My dumb craptop can't even do that. :-(

This isn't a thread to complain about nVidia Optimus or about whether having it or not is better.

As previously stated, I've done most of that stuff already.

I can't figure it out, my FPS is fine including for 3D applications but it looks like the FPS should be much lower (even though it isn't).

I'm attempting to revert the drivers now.
=============================================================
UPDATE: 09/10/2013 20:37
=============================================================
2.21.14 still had the unexplained slowness while 2.21.13 did not. As of now I'll stick with 2.21.13 but it was so weird.

I can't quite explain it but *every* test I ran showed there was nothing that was degrading performance but it was stuttering without dropping in frame rate.