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I've observed it on both laptops I own!
HP Compaq nx6125 and Ubuntu 11.04 x64 - somewhat solved
Lenovo Thinkpad T500 and Ubuntu 11.10 x64 - help needed!
I'm still struggling with the Thinkpad to get performance level similar to that of 10 y.o. laptops...

All in all a really serious issue with multiple versions of Ubuntu that renders computers with perfectly compatible hardware unusable, as far as out of the box experience is concerned. Troubleshooting resultant issues seems to be a hard case even for users with some experience with installing graphics drivers.

EDIT: I can't really post additional details. Two different ubuntu versions, two laptops, two different set of graph. drivers (OS vs ATI prop.) - all with the same symptoms. Also I can't stress enough how massive the performance degradation is compared to a healthy system. For that reason I ask for input from people who may know roughly what are we dealing with here.

I can post more details if we were to focus on my current Thinkpad T500. In that case my

current system details:

Lenovo Thinkpad T500
Ubuntu 11.10 x64
ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3650 (also see the "What I have already tried" section about Intel graphics tested)
ATI Catalyst 11.10 drivers
OCZ Agility 3 SSD

but!

  • same with the default driver for ATI the card
  • same with the prop. driver for the ATI card from Jockey (Additional drivers applet)

What I have already tried:

0. Switching to Intel integrated card (Intel GMA 4500M HD) with the default driver - same effects => may indicate not driver related problem but a problem with something of global influence like e.g. nomodeset or other I don't even know about.

  1. (What you can read above)
  2. ATI Catalyst 11.10 and radeon.modeset=0 boot parameter + disabled Wait for VBlank.
  3. Unity 2D
  4. Ubuntu 10.04 LTS tested (ubuntu-10.04.3-desktop-i386.iso): Both live USB and installed version blazing fast! (on the default drivers - without even installing the proprietary fglrx drivers).

re2 a) seems to give me the only significant results (still poor) - perfect Unity elements performance with the same crawling stuttering/lagging when dragging windows around.

re2 b) this happens often http://i17.photobucket.com/albums/b68/Bucic/ubuntuforumsorg/Screenshotat2011-10-28083140.png

re2 c) Sometimes I am able to witness a normal performance when dragging a window around but only for a second or two. When I try to shake it longer it starts to lag and it will keep lagging like that with an increased probability of what you see in the sshot in point re2 b).

re2 d) I can't establish the radeon.modeset=0 influence though. Once it seems to work be smooth with it, the other time - without it. Really can't tell.

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Can you edit some additional details back into your question, such as what drivers you are using (proprietary or open-source), the type and speed of hard drives installed, etc.? – WarriorIng64 Nov 16 '11 at 15:42
Hello, this question has no information and activity for a very long time. I am closing it for now. If by any reason you think this question is still viable or useful in anyways or that there is still a good chance it will be answered please flag it to a moderator or add a comment with the reasons why you want it open. Regards – Bruno Pereira♦ Mar 29 '12 at 12:53

closed as not a real question by Bruno Pereira♦ Mar 29 '12 at 12:53

It's difficult to tell what is being asked here. This question is ambiguous, vague, incomplete, overly broad, or rhetorical and cannot be reasonably answered in its current form. For help clarifying this question so that it can be reopened, see the FAQ.

1 Answer

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The performance gains for me (I have an ati hd 3470 with fglrx installed) are:

  1. disabling Sync to VBlank

  2. disabling Blur of the Unity Dash

  3. disabling Detect Refresh Rate and setting Refresh Rate manually to 60 .

With these tweaks Unity feels snappy enough.

radeon.modeset=0 is necessary for fglrx to boot into X, because fglrx doesn't support KMS, unlike the opensource driver.

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#3 was new for me but it didn't make any difference. #2 is rather irrelevant as my dash and any other Unity element is as snappy as you could imagine. I can hold down Win+W and watch it switch tens of times per second without problems. Now my performance problems boil down to laggy windows and icons dragging, mostly. THIS brings us to moving windows lags after update to Natty I suspect it's the very same issue. I couldn't have known that before I got to the "all smooth, but not windows" state though. – Bucic Nov 22 '11 at 20:31
To my comment above - if switching to unity 2D didn't help in my case, I doubt it's the same issue. Am I right? Oh and severin - thanks for your input! – Bucic Nov 22 '11 at 21:08
You are probably right. For unity-2d you should try the default open source driver. In my experience that one works better with unity-2d. – severin Nov 22 '11 at 22:14
I think I know exactly which bug is causing this bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/fglrx-installer/+bug/763005 I've read it and the comments through and through and it exactly fits my experience so far. It's unsolvable by any "tricks". A real bug fix is in the works. Please vote it up at launchpad.net! This would also mean that my question is a duplicate of few other questions but this seems to be the main one askubuntu.com/questions/38028/… – Bucic Nov 22 '11 at 23:57
Unfortunatelly in my case it wasn't the bug no 763005. Or at least not only this one. The description fitted perfectly to what I'm experiencing but the solution provided (the ppa) which worked for many people there didn't work for me. The compiz maintaner was kind enough to propose a set of compiz bugs to subscribe to bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/fglrx-installer/+bug/763005/… That's all. – Bucic Nov 24 '11 at 20:21
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