Help me analyze my configuration

[Harold L Hunt II]

Willem,

Willem Riede wrote:

> Dear experts,
> 
> I am running cygwin-xfree on a Windows 2000 PC connecting using XDMCP to
> the Gnome desktop on a PC running Red Hat 9. The W2K PC is an Iwill KA266-R
> motherboard, 850MHz Athlon, 512M DDR. The Linux PC is a dual Athlon MP 1GHz,
> 768M DDR. They are connected on a local 100 Mb ethernet LAN, that caries no
> other traffic of any significance. I don't believe my problem is transport
> related - bear with me, please.
> 
> Drawing / updating the xfree screen on the W2K PC is _much_ slower than any
> other display activity on that PC. The Video card is a ATI Radeon 8500DV in
> 1280x1024 16bit mode. 
> 
> To isolate the display speed from network speed, I look at the time it takes
> to redraw the part of the xfree screen that was hidden when I had a native
> W2K window (Windows Explorer for instance) on top of it for a short time. 
> No changes to the xfree screen content in between.
> 
> This takes about 1 to 2 seconds (hard to be precise just by watching), but
> much slower than drawing or restoring a native W2k window would be. Am I
> right in my assumption that this is only a function of my display speed?
> And is this slower than it should be?
> 

Actually, you are in perfect luck, as I have tested an almost identical 
hardware configuration to what you have above!  Unfortunately, you 
probably aren't going to like what I have to tell you.

The quick answer is that you do have a performance problem.  One thing 
you can do to restore the performance of Cygwin/XFree86 (without fixing 
the underlying problem) is to use the Shadow GDI-based engine, rather 
than the default Shadow DirectDraw engine.  You do this by passing 
XWin.exe the "-engine 1" flag:

XWin.exe -engine 1 -query my_remote_hostname_or_ip


The real solution, or lack thereof, lies below.

I have an Iwill KA266 with an Athlon 1.2 GHz chip, which was running 
Windows 2000 at the time.  I purchased an ATI All In Wonder 8500DV... 
hey, wait a minute, I gave a very good writeup of this in the archives:

http://sources.redhat.com/ml/cygwin-xfree/2002-12/msg00049.html

Here is the relevant text:

==============================================================================
I recently had purchased an ATI All In Wonder 8500DV, which was a 
beautiful piece of equipment.  However, the stock video drivers resulted 
in stuttering video playback (DVDs), dropped frames during recording 
video, and horrible, unusably slow performance in Cygwin/XFree86 when 
using DirectDraw-based engines.  In addition, my machine froze whenever 
I tried to print a PDF from Adobe Acrobat and in various other situations.

I installed Windows XP, thinking that Windows 2000 may have a problem 
with the card.  However, Windows XP froze during setup if I moved the 
mouse.  I managed to get Windows XP installed with only the keyboard, 
but the mouse still froze the computer when it was moved after Windows 
XP was fully installed.  I updated the video drivers but the problem 
persisted.

I then exchanged the video card, with the same results.  I immediately 
realized that my IWILL motherboard was probably to blame, with its less 
than perfect AGP support, along with the fact that this was the first 
AGP video card I had used on the motherboard.  So, I ordered a new ASUS 
motherboard for $130, figuring that would solve the problem.  Then the 
fiance found out.  The motherboard order was promptly cancelled amidst 
my grovelling :)  We returned the video card and I then tested each of 5 
old PCI video cards I have to find the one of them that does not produce 
interfence patterns on my 19 inch LCD monitor that we just picked up a 
few weeks ago.

I am now unhappily using a 5 year old PCI video card that only supports 
16 bit color at 1280 x 1024.  Bummer.

To make a long story short, your video drivers or your motherboard may 
be a culprit.
==============================================================================

So, I suspect that if you run any video playback software or anything 
else that uses DiretDraw, you will see very jerky and slow redrawing, 
indicating that this a problem with your video layer, not just with 
Cygwin/XFree86.  Try playing back a DVD or (if you have the All In 
Wonder) recording some TV and playing it back later.

You have to upgrade to the ATI drivers, which took me about 4 hours to 
do properly until the jerkiness went away.  You have to follow their 
instructions VERY carefully and you have to constantly check to see if 
Windows now thinks that the new drivers are installed.  In the end, you 
might end up with a freezing problem like I had.  I ended up having to 
get rid of my ATI All In Wonder 8500DV, which was really a great card 
other than the fact that it froze my motherboard.


> I am perfectly willing to accept this is due to something I have done wrong,
> or some issue with my combination of hardware. I have re-installed W2K to
> get a clean baseline, leaving out DirectX for now, in case that matters,
> but other than a small general speedup that one would expect from a clean
> install, that made no difference.
> 
> Please help me understand how I can analyze where my bottleneck is?
> 
> Much obliged, Willem Riede.


I hope that helps Willem.  I would be interested to know the outcome of 
your story, please keep the list informed.

Harold