Opengl applications hogging CPU

boogerballs · 01-05-2015, 12:00 PM

Hi, I'm new. I'm running xubuntu using XFCE as my DE.

I recently installed AMD's new Omega 14.501 Drivers from their website for my R9 280x card, because the open source Xorg drivers were causing the screen to tear pretty badly.

Anyway, it installed correctly and it's working, except it didn't fix the screen tearing issue.

Attempting to use v-sync with XFWM's compositer doesn't help at all with the screen tearing, in fact it makes it worse, So, I ditched xfwm's compositer and tried to install compton instead.

Compton does seem to help with the screen tearing when I run it like this:

Code:

compton --vsync opengl --unredir-if-possible &

However, I noticed when compton is running it takes 25% cpu usage and I don't even have any fancy compton config, just using default settings it runs at. Now, I wouldn't have thought much of this, other than figured compton is a resource hog and uninstalled, but I realized that steam also idles at 25% cpu usage. When I run the steam client and compton together they consume 50% cpu minimum.

What is wrong with my computer that makes compton and steam and every other opengl program decide that they need to use 25% cpu, or a single core of my cpu each?

purevw · 01-05-2015, 04:10 PM

What graphics card? What is your basic hardware and computer setup? What version of openGL? Does "lsmod" list fglrx as being a loaded driver?

If you are running the proprietary AMD fglrx driver and running an HD5000 card or higher (older than that is not supported by the driver), you run "amdcccle" as root to make adjustments to the driver (assuming it's the same setup as openSUSE). If you card is supported, the is a "Tear Free" setting within the options.

boogerballs · 01-06-2015, 05:22 AM

My basic computer setup is:
FM2+ AMD socket motherboard (Don't know exact model offhand, but it's MSI)
AMD A10 7700K 3.5 GHz APU
XFX R9 280x Graphics Card

I know apu and graphics card combo is stupid, but I got the graphics card way later on.

Yes, fglrx is loaded when I run lsmod and here's what fglrxinfo outputs when run

display: :0.0 screen: 0
OpenGL vendor string: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc.
OpenGL renderer string: AMD Radeon R9 200 Series
OpenGL version string: 4.4.13283 Compatibility Profile Context 14.501.1003

The No tear doesn't have any effect really in amdcccle, or catalyst control center or whatever it is.

It seems to be only certain programs use an entire cpu core when idleing, such as steam and compton, I think it has something to do with software that uses glx.

It's pretty disappointing though, because when I run games that should get decent framerates like CS:GO on lowest settings, steam is bottlenecking the cpu so they perform very poorly on linux compared to how they would perform on windows.

purevw · 01-07-2015, 05:08 AM

I haven't messed with XFCE very much, so I can't be of much help. I use LXDE if I need a light desktop.

If there are desktop effects available, I would try turing them off when gaming. See if that makes any difference. Also, is your system using opengl 3.1?

boogerballs · 01-07-2015, 07:15 AM

I installed lxde, switched over to it and I'm still getting massive screen tearing, as well as steam and compton always using at least 25% cpu each.

Even without any compositer enabled at all, same problems.

Turning on tear free desktop in amdcccle causes CS:GO to shit the bed the moment it starts attempting to render 3D at all. The screen spazzes out and freezes with a weird grey pattern.

here is my xorg.conf file:

Code:

Section "ServerLayout"
	Identifier     "aticonfig Layout"
	Screen      0  "aticonfig-Screen[0]-0" 0 0
EndSection

Section "Module"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
	Identifier   "aticonfig-Monitor[0]-0"
	Option	    "VendorName" "ATI Proprietary Driver"
	Option	    "ModelName" "Generic Autodetecting Monitor"
	Option	    "DPMS" "true"
EndSection

Section "Device"
	Identifier  "aticonfig-Device[0]-0"
	Driver      "fglrx"
	#BusID       "PCI:0:1:0"
	Option		"UseFastTLS" "2"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
	Identifier "aticonfig-Screen[0]-0"
	Device     "aticonfig-Device[0]-0"
	Monitor    "aticonfig-Monitor[0]-0"
	DefaultDepth     24
	SubSection "Display"
		Viewport   0 0
		Depth     24
	EndSubSection
EndSection

This is the generic config file generated by running "aticonfig --initial"

I have to comment out the line "BusID "PCI:0:1:0"" because otherwise X fails to start.

I also added the line "Option "UseFastTLS" "2"" to see if that changed anything, but it seems to have no effect on anything.

here is the log file from /var/log/Xorg.0.log:
http://pastebin.com/e8mvgyi1

I had to use pastebin because it made the post too long

boogerballs · 01-07-2015, 07:47 AM

I uncommented busid line and changed it to "PCI:1:0:0" and now it starts up, still tearing issues though.

Code:

[Section "ServerLayout"
	Identifier     "aticonfig Layout"
	Screen      0  "aticonfig-Screen[0]-0" 0 0
EndSection

Section "Module"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
	Identifier   "aticonfig-Monitor[0]-0"
	Option	    "VendorName" "ATI Proprietary Driver"
	Option	    "ModelName" "Generic Autodetecting Monitor"
	Option	    "DPMS" "true"
EndSection

Section "Device"
	Identifier  "aticonfig-Device[0]-0"
	Driver      "fglrx"
	BusID       "PCI:1:0:0"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
	Identifier "aticonfig-Screen[0]-0"
	Device     "aticonfig-Device[0]-0"
	Monitor    "aticonfig-Monitor[0]-0"
	DefaultDepth     24
	SubSection "Display"
		Viewport   0 0
		Depth     24
	EndSubSection
EndSection]

This next part is just a rant, but I feel if anyone reads this it will be helpful if they are considering buying an AMD/ATI graphics card

ATI/AMD cards are a pretty big rip off. There are massive tearing issues for both linux & windows if you get an R9 280X which is just an overclocked HD 7970 as can be seen when you run lspci:

Code:

01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] Tahiti XT [Radeon HD 7970/8970 OEM / R9 280X]

,
Windows is semi-fixable via changing the idle clock speed using profiles in catalyst control center, though.

But, the card is nothing without the driver and when a company fails to produce a working driver, they're selling you an overpriced worthless hunk of garbage.

purevw · 01-10-2015, 04:22 AM

Does Ubuntu have a way to turn off KMS (kernel mode setting)? It is an option in openSUSE, but I have never needed it. I run an HD7890 one one machine and an HD7870 on another and have no problems. I don't game, though. I run a GPU stress program called Unigine to stress the graphics. I disable the KDE "reduce tearing" option in their effects and only use amdcccle for settings, but under the amdcccle 3D options, I generally set the driver to use application settings when possible.

Quote:

I know apu and graphics card combo is stupid, but I got the graphics card way later on.

Is there any chance that it is the root of your problem? I have never used an APU, so I have no idea.

Have you checked the Ubuntu forums for posts concerning AMD cards? I am quite at home with openSUSE, but not nearly as familiar with how Ubuntu does things.

boogerballs · 01-10-2015, 10:28 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by purevw

Does Ubuntu have a way to turn off KMS (kernel mode setting)? It is an option in openSUSE, but I have never needed it. I run an HD7890 one one machine and an HD7870 on another and have no problems. I don't game, though. I run a GPU stress program called Unigine to stress the graphics. I disable the KDE "reduce tearing" option in their effects and only use amdcccle for settings, but under the amdcccle 3D options, I generally set the driver to use application settings when possible.

Is there any chance that it is the root of your problem? I have never used an APU, so I have no idea.

Have you checked the Ubuntu forums for posts concerning AMD cards? I am quite at home with openSUSE, but not nearly as familiar with how Ubuntu does things.

Hi, I don't know anything about KMS, but one thing that has definitely helped with the tearing (though, not much) was updating my motherboard bios as well as installing the package amd-microcode.

I still get pretty awful screen tearing when I run flash in the browser or when games are rendering 2d things like when they play the intro videos, but tearing on firefox on standard html pages isn't as often, maybe once or twice every minute I'll get an awful tear.

About the opengl applications hogging the CPU, I came across a thread on AMD's forums and a guy had been complaining about opengl applications taking up an entire core of the cpu for months. I responded and said I had been having the same problem, and another guy responded finally that he had submitted a bug report. Apparently AMD's latest drivers (Omega 14.12 I think it's called) still have this bug. From the bug report the problem is "It should be a problem about account permission control.".

The problem only occurs if you run certain opengl applications as a normal user, when they are run as root user as if by magic, opengl and other direct rendering software no longer take up 25% cpu for no reason. I am hoping AMD fixes this soon, because it makes games on steam perform as if I'm running them on a toaster.

http://forums.amd.com/game/messagevi...&enterthread=y
http://ati.cchtml.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1131