Linux on a Fujitsu U810 - X Graphics Performance

After upgrading to ubuntu 9.04, and setting up the latest intel video driver repository to be able to work with an external monitor, I was fiddling a little with some internal-external monitor.

Then, some days later, I notice I was experiencing X was extremely slow; when running glxgears, I was getting about 60fps, scrolling a web page on firefox was flickering, and I was a little on misery. I thought that was the price, so I've been like that for one month.

But yesterday it was enough!

I send the 'grep 'EE' /var/log/Xorg.0.log' command, and I saw the following error in the X log file:

intel(0): Cannot support DRI with frame buffer width > 2048

So after some googling, what I did was to look at the xorg.conf file. For some unknown reason to me, I had the following

Section "Screen"
Identifier "Default Screen"
Monitor "Configured Monitor"
Device "Configured Video Device"
SubSection "Display"
Virtual 5094 2048
EndSubSection
EndSection

So after restoring the Virtual values to 2048 2048, and restarting X, now graphics was much improved!!

Now glxgears gives me 530fps, a x10 increase in performance, and it really is much more responsive!!

I found some other suggestions in the net that didn't work:

- include Option "AccelMethod" "xaa" -> the computer hung
- include the command export INTEL_BATCH=1 to my .bashrc -> no effect

I have to investigate these other suggestion found:

Option “PageFlip” “true”
Option “TripleBuffer” “true”
Option “XvMC” “true”
Option “XvMCSurfaces” “7″

I'll update this post once I test this options.