Working quite well : xorg7.2, DRI, suspend, Radeon Mobility X600

[Norberto Meijome]

Hello everyone,
well, for once I'm not writing with a problem, and extremely happy w/FreeBSD :)

Over the last year i've been writing to this list with snippets of info on what
worked for me and the laptop I'm currently using ( a Thinkpad z60M ). I had
an entry for this laptop in the Compatibility list. With the latest software
from ports (xorg, mainly) and kernel / world, there have been some good
improvements to the whole situation. I've added more info to the entry in the
laptop compat list :,
http://laptop.bsdgroup.de/freebsd/index.html?action=show_laptop_comment&commentid=29803&laptop=1202 .

But here goes with the lot :)

Upgrade to xorg 7.2, latest kernel + World to date (2007-05-28).

Loading agp and radeon kernel modules, enables DRI to load fine in xorg! it now
works quite well with OpenGL:

$ kldstat
Id Refs Address    Size     Name
 1   31 0xc0400000 4de640   kernel
 2    1 0xc08df000 7a68     linprocfs.ko
 3    3 0xc08e7000 1f39c    linux.ko
 4    1 0xc0907000 13be0    snd_hda.ko
 5    2 0xc091b000 3dadc    sound.ko
 6    2 0xc0959000 17920    agp.ko
 7    2 0xc0971000 65474    acpi.ko
 8    1 0xc09d7000 4c2c     acpi_ibm.ko
 9    1 0xc09dc000 1d498    kqemu.ko
10    1 0xc09fa000 22140    radeon.ko
11    2 0xc0a1d000 10c68    drm.ko
12    1 0xc5d66000 c000     ipfw.ko
13    1 0xc5de6000 2000     rtc.ko
14    1 0xc5e5e000 7000     aio.ko


The video card is a
drm0 at pci1:0:0: class=0x030000 card=0x058e1014 chip=0x31501002 rev=0x00 hdr=0x00
vendor = 'ATI Technologies Inc'
device = 'M24 1P Radeon Mobility X600'
class = display
subclass = VGA

A year ago, xorg 6.x, no DRI, glxgears would show :
[betom at ayiin] [Wed May 10 11:22:41 2006]
~
$ glxgears
3086 frames in 5.4 seconds = 567.330 FPS
3760 frames in 5.0 seconds = 749.966 FPS
3860 frames in 5.0 seconds = 768.628 FPS
3800 frames in 5.0 seconds = 756.635 FPS
3760 frames in 5.0 seconds = 749.888 FPS
3780 frames in 5.0 seconds = 749.527 FPS
3800 frames in 5.0 seconds = 756.423 FPS
3860 frames in 5.0 seconds = 770.521 FPS
3840 frames in 5.0 seconds = 767.983 FPS
3837 frames in 5.0 seconds = 766.985 FPS


Currently:
[betom at ayiin] [Mon May 28 22:23:12 2007]
~
$ glxgears
8772 frames in 5.0 seconds = 1754.273 FPS
7113 frames in 5.0 seconds = 1422.555 FPS
8184 frames in 5.0 seconds = 1636.676 FPS
8841 frames in 5.0 seconds = 1768.043 FPS
9415 frames in 5.0 seconds = 1882.501 FPS
8845 frames in 5.0 seconds = 1768.976 FPS
9036 frames in 5.0 seconds = 1806.932 FPS
8637 frames in 5.0 seconds = 1727.369 FPS

So it's a DEFINITE improvement. There are still some things that need some
fixing though:

- There are a few cases when, after logging off from X, the video memory seems
to be stuck with the old image - GDM doesn't show up at all (although I can type
my username and pwd and log in). the session afterwards is the same - things
"are" there , but rather useless as they dont show on screen. Zapping the
server (Ctrl-Alt-Backspace) works, but doesn't solve the problem. Again,
sometimes there is no problem at all.

- When using some OpenGL apps (been testing with graphics/mesa-demos), some
artifacts appear on the screen. Sometimes only in the area of the GL app,
sometimes on the screen overall. For example ,

http://www.meijome.net/files/freebsd/2007-05-28-22.25.04.jpg

On the good side, there hasn't been any lockup that I could attribute
to OpenGL / DRI / xorg. When using some games that use, i believe, opengl ,
like games/warzone2100 in full screen, there is no problem at all (other than
hours spent playing :D )

Following messages from mesa-demos apps, I've added
R300_SPAN_DISABLE_LOCKING=yes
to my X Session environment. the demos worked better when this was set, though
I need to find a test case to see whether this affects in any way the screen
artifacts I've seen

- Composite , although working faster than before , it is definitely slower,
even with just drop shadows enabled. I have XFCE4, default composite settings
(I haven't played with tuning composite itself)

Sound works out of the box with the snd_hda from FreeBSD itself (YEAY!), but I
found that it makes the sound a bit choppy under high-cpu loads (buildworld,
for instance). Ariff's low latency binaries (sound.ko and snd_hda.ko), build of
April 26, 2007 works without any choppiness, and no conflicts with the kernel
either.

Suspend and resume work fine, with DRI inclusive - it is a single core CPU ( I
believe there are still issues with suspend/resume with dual cores.

One down side of using xorg7.2 - i can't seem to be able to have 2 keyboard
layouts and be able to use the Alt key. I'll put more info into another email
when I can -i've gone full 'us' for now..

that's it :)
B
_________________________
{Beto|Norberto|Numard} Meijome

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A. Tell him your plans.

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Reading disclaimers makes you go blind. Writing them is worse. You have been
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