[Nouveau] Bad performace for NV18 driver

[Ilia Mirkin]

On Fri, Jun 7, 2013 at 5:56 PM, Carlos Garces <carlos.garces at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi!
>
> I have some strange results on my test with nouveau drivers
>
> I'm using a old GeForce4 MX 4000 (NV18) with 128 MB.
>
> I have made 2 test.
>
> -The default configuration, using nomodeset without nouveau_vieux_dri.so
>
> $inxi -G
> Graphics:  Card: NVIDIA NV18 [GeForce4 MX 4000]
>            X.Org: 1.12.4 drivers: vesa,nouveau (unloaded: fbdev)
> Resolution: 1024x768 at 0.0hz
>            GLX Renderer: N/A GLX Version: N/A
>
> -The "optimized" configuration, after removing nomodeset, installing
> the 3d driver (nouveau_vieux_dri.so, package libgl1-mesa-dri) and
> configure the xorg to use only nouveau
>
> $inxi -G
> Graphics:  Card: NVIDIA NV18 [GeForce4 MX 4000] X.Org: 1.12.4 driver:
> nouveau Resolution: 800x600 at 85.1hz
>            GLX Renderer: Mesa DRI nv18 x86/MMX+/3DNow!+/SSE GLX
> Version: 1.2 Mesa 8.0.5
>
> The resolution is 800x600 because was impossible for me set up  1024x768
>
> There is the full xorg log
> http://pastebin.com/2ZbMwyRK
>
> The results are strange for me. I expect better performance on
> "optimized" configuration but some test using Cairo are very bad (0,54
> vs  5,38).
>
> The test are available at
> http://openbenchmarking.org/result/1306076-UT-2DGPUTEST63
>
> Any idea to improve the performace of NV18?
> Any know issue with nouveau_vieux_dri.so and NV18?

It's a little difficult to tell anything without seeing your xorg.conf
-- it seems like 1024x768 should work fine. You also appear to be in
16-bit mode, and using fairly old software (xorg 1.12, mesa 8.0,
xf86-video-nouveau 1.0.1). What kernel version are you on? Although
it's a fairly old card so perhaps there hasn't been much improvement
on it. In recent X versions, things get auto-detected for the most
part and you can forgo most explicit configuration like
modelines/etc... not sure if that's the case for xorg 1.12 or not.