FS#46810 - Kernel 4.2: serious degradation of display performances

Attached to Project: Arch Linux
Opened by Colin Pitrat (LiFo2) - Tuesday, 20 October 2015, 18:08 GMT
Last edited by Doug Newgard (Scimmia) - Wednesday, 21 October 2015, 03:48 GMT
Task Type Bug Report
Category Packages: Core
Status Closed
Assigned To No-one
Architecture i686
Severity Medium
Priority Normal
Reported Version
Due in Version Undecided
Due Date Undecided
Percent Complete 100%
Votes 0
Private No

Details

Description:
Upgrading from 3.19.3-3 to 4.2.3-1, I observed serious performance degradations on my (11 years old) media center.

Additional info:

* package version(s)
linux-4.2.3-1
linux-firmware-20150904.6ebf5d5-1

* config and/or log files etc.
The most particular piece of the configuration is the graphic card, an ATI Rage 128:
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] Rage 128 PRO Ultra AGP 4x (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])

In order to make it work, I'm forced to downgrade xorg-server and video drivers to these versions:
xorg-server-1.16.3-2
xf86-video-ati-1\:7.5.0-1
xf86-video-fbdev-0.4.4-3
xf86-video-r128-6.9.2-3
xf86-video-vesa-2.3.2-5

The rest of the install is up-to-date.

I have absolutely no idea of how to investigate further (except giving a try to linux-lts to see if 4.1 has the same effect) so do not hesitate if you need any additional info.

Regards,
Colin
This task depends upon

Closed by  Doug Newgard (Scimmia)
Wednesday, 21 October 2015, 03:48 GMT
Reason for closing:  Not a bug
Additional comments about closing:  User requested: Kernel upgrade is not the source of the issue !
Comment by Colin Pitrat (LiFo2) - Tuesday, 20 October 2015, 18:38 GMT
After many reboot with different combinations of packages downgraded, the issue kept appearing and disappearing.
In the end, it appears that boinc is sometimes getting crazy and eating all resources. Stopping it avoid the jerky animations.

However, X is eating 100% CPU whereas this wasn't the case in the past ... I don't know what changed but as the behaviour is still fluid, this might quite old and I won't be able to track where it comes from.

Closing this issue, sorry for the noise !

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