[ltp] Re: Thinkpad Power Consumption Roundup [TPCR]

[Theodore Tso]

On Sat, May 02, 2009 at 02:11:48PM +0200, Christoph Bier wrote:
> Theodore Tso schrieb am 01.05.2009 16:24:
> 
> > On Fri, May 01, 2009 at 11:41:06AM +0200, Christoph Bier wrote:
> >> >> Nice! For me after upgrading to 9.04 graphics performance is much
> >> >> worse than with 8.10.
> > 
> > Most of my performance problems went away (on my X61s laptop) after I
> > used this xorg.conf file:
> 
> [...]
> 
> Thanks! I tested it but can't see any improvement though GtkPerf
> shows better performance (see also my answer to Volker).

The performance problem I was interested in could be seen by firing up
a gnome-terminal, and an emacs-snapshot window (both of which were
displaying anti-aliased text), and then taking some other window (say,
an xclock resize so it was roughly the 3/4 of the width of the gnome
terminal), and then moving it around in front of the gnome-terminal
and the emac-snapshot window.  With the zero-length xorg.conf file, I
could see the gnome-terminal and the emacs-snapshot windows repainting
the text as I moved the xclock window around and occluded and
unoccluded the windows.  

This was especially true of the emacs-snapshot window; the amount of
time it took to redraw the window was ***painfull*** by using the
xorg.conf file, text display in the gnome-terminal and emacs-snapshot
windows went away.  This change I'm sure doesn't do anything for 3D
acceleration, and I don't know how it relates to gtkperf.

Here are the results that I got on my X61s laptop:

GtkEntry - time:  0.05
GtkComboBox - time:  1.09
GtkComboBoxEntry - time:  0.74
GtkSpinButton - time:  0.13
GtkProgressBar - time:  0.18
GtkToggleButton - time:  0.15
GtkCheckButton - time:  0.13
GtkRadioButton - time:  0.24
GtkTextView - Add text - time:  0.32
GtkTextView - Scroll - time:  0.31
GtkDrawingArea - Lines - time:  0.60
GtkDrawingArea - Circles - time:  1.26
GtkDrawingArea - Text - time:  4.42
GtkDrawingArea - Pixbufs - time:  0.30
 --- 
Total time:  9.90

I can't compare it to what I had beforehand, but quite frankly, I
don't really care.  The gnome-terminal and emacs-snapshot repaint time
was my biggest complaint, and since I don't play tuxracer on a regular
basis, I'm not terribly worried about other drawing primitives.

I *have* noticed the instability, however.  Using xine or totem to
play certain video or audio files will often cause the Ubuntu Jaunty X
server to crash.  (The "special effects" that totem uses while it's
playing an mp3 file is often all it takes.)

This is definitely not goodness, but it's not quite enough for me to
try using bleeding edge X packages from someone's PPA, or to try to
figure out how to build my own X server and drivers from scratch.  I'm
hoping that Ubuntu will offer some bug-fixes, but if not, and if the
instability problem turns out to be worse, I might try forcibly
installing the Intripid X server bits....

						- Ted