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August 23, 2009

Workaround for fixing X.org acceleration issues on Intel chipsets

Filed under: Blog — krkhan @ 1:39 pm

Recent X.org drivers for Intel chipsets have introduced a new acceleration method called UXA which is supposed to provide “simpler, faster” code. However, for whatever reason, this bleeding-edge feature actually results in a loss of performance and reliability for particular chipsets (e.g. 915 family) on most distributions (Fedora and Ubuntu to name the foremost). In order to work around these issues, two solutions can be used:

  1. Enable Tiling in xorg.conf.

    Section "Device"
	Identifier  "Videocard0"
	Driver      "intel"
	Option      "Tiling" "False"
EndSection

    This fix does help the low framerate issue encountered on most distros, but it introduces screen tearing on some installations and worse, can happen in occasional X crashes as well.

  2. Use “greedy” MigrationHeuristic with EXA instead:

    Section "Device"
	Identifier  "Videocard0"
	Driver      "intel"
	Option      "AccelMethod" "EXA"
	Option      "MigrationHeuristic" "greedy"
	Option      "NoDDC"
EndSection

    While this completely bypasses the UXA acceleration, it seems to work well for most users.

For the time being, I’m sticking with the second workaround since I have no issues with using the older acceleration architecture until the new one achieves some decent stability.

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