11.4: Issues with Intel Sandybridge graphics driver - i915 (i7-2620M)

**tkuchta** · 15-May-2011, 06:38

Can somebody more experienced advice me on this topic please?

I installed SuSE 11.4 x86_64 on Lenovo x220 containing Intel 2620M (aka Sandybridge) CPU about week ago. Kernel is 2.6.37.6-0.5

My attempts focussed mainly on reading various forums and trying to locate newer driver version - possibly due to lack of my X related knowledge - I failed to locate any leads.

1. I'm really lucky because I could login to KDE right after the vanilla install with no trouble whatsoever
2. KDE/linux (power off is needed to recover) reliably crashes after a while in KDE with enabled Desktop effects - this I solved by disabling Desktop effects
3. I see very high load when playing flash video and there are really strong tiling/overlay artefacts - it is almost not usable (example: playing content directly from news.google.com)
4. X11 performance is really bad (unusable) in some applications most likely relating to transparency and/or overlay - the desktops gets really unusable X11 fully loading the CPU - example selecting image region (transparent shade with yellow border) there is about 5 seconds lag after mouse events, some events are even miss registered. Though I admit that this might be hard to reproduce exactly without installing the same commercial application.

Anybody can advice me where to focus my search for solution please?

Thanks, T

**oldcpu** · 15-May-2011, 07:11

Reference item-3 and item-4, next time you get the overlay effects, try this work around: Press <CTRL><ALT><F2> (which will bring to a full screen text login), do NOT log in but rather immediately press <CTRL><ALT><F7>. Does that help ?

Also, ensure you have updated the xorg-x11-driver-video rpm in openSUSE-11.4 as that has the xf86-video-intel 2.15.0 driver inside.

**tkuchta** · 15-May-2011, 07:35

I forgot to mention that full KDE startup is over minute which I'd consider really slow.

**tkuchta** · 15-May-2011, 07:39

**tkuchta** · 15-May-2011, 07:51

The CTRL+ALT+F2 & Ctrl+Alt+F7 trick - works. However strange it seems it does cut the CPU activity and returns control. Not very convenient in image editing though. :-)

**oldcpu** · 15-May-2011, 09:34

Take a look at this thread Intel Graphics Drivers ... in particular post #6, #10, #11 and #26 of mine.

Now in the OSS repository is the 'stock' xorg-x11-driver-video-7.6-52.4 which was updated to xorg-x11-video-7.6-53.56.1 (which is flagged as 'i' in the zypper search results you provided). If you read those posts in the thread I asked you to look at you will see in post#26 that the updated xorg-x11-video-7.6-53.56.1 rpm offers:

Code:

Distribution: openSUSE 11.4
* Fri Apr 15 2011 sndirsch-at-novell.com
- xf86-video-intel-gen6-Invalidate-texture-cache.patch
  * fixes partial screen distortion on Sandybridge visible in KDE
    (bnc #680921, bfo #35808)

* Wed Apr 13 2011 James.Bottomley-at-suse.de
- xf86-video-intel-damage-fix.diff
  * upstream commit da990536eca09c6de74627541cd56ecfad925eda
    uxa: Undo damage translation before appending
  * our bugzilla 666704
  * freedesktop bugzilla https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=32734

and it explains how to get that information. So there were some Sandybridge updates in the latest xorg-x11-driver-video rpm, which however does NOT include the Intel 2.15 driver.

If it were me, and I wanted to update to the Intel-2.15 driver, I would check the tumbleweed on openSUSE and see if the tumbleweed repository

Code:

http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/openSUSE:/Tumbleweed/standard/

has the latest xorg-x11-driver-video rpm and check if it has the Intel-2.15 driver.

Unfortunately that driver is NOT there yet, so if you want to try the Intel-2.15 you would need to take a risk with the possibly unstable X11 repository for openSUSE-11.4

Code:

http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/X11:/XOrg/openSUSE_11.4/

and I know from experience that sometimes rpms from that repository will irreparably break one's install, requiring a complete re-install, so one takes their chances.

As I noted in the quoted thread above that the X11 repository does have an rpm with that 2.15 Intel driver.

Don't forget, when brushing up on one's basic openSUSE GNU/Linux graphic card practical theory to look at this guide (especially the various links in the index) : openSUSE Graphic Card Practical Theory Guide for Users

The fact IMHO is GNU/Linux ALWAYS lags MS-Windows SIGNIFICANTLY for video drivers, and the GNU/Linux Intel graphic drivers are significantly late in coming and what you are seeing with your relatively new hardware is a symptom of that. IMHO thats the simple bad news that comes with being a GNU/Linux user.

Please don't shoot the messenger here.

**oldcpu** · 15-May-2011, 09:36

Originally Posted by tkuchta

The CTRL+ALT+F2 & Ctrl+Alt+F7 trick - works. However strange it seems it does cut the CPU activity and returns control. Not very convenient in image editing though. :-)

Do you have this problem with image editing ?

I see that effect with proprietary nVidia drivers with Firefox and flash video but I do NOT see it with image editing with KDEnlive.

**oldcpu** · 15-May-2011, 09:37

Originally Posted by tkuchta

I forgot to mention that full KDE startup is over minute which I'd consider really slow.

What makes you think that has anything to do with the graphics ? I assume you think it does (have to do with graphics) because you have posted that in a thread entitled "11.4 : Issues with Sandybridge graphics driver".

**oldcpu** · 15-May-2011, 09:43

Originally Posted by tkuchta

I forgot to mention that full KDE startup is over minute which I'd consider really slow.

Further to this, how about telling us what is taking so long to boot ? You are the one who has that information (we don't have it). Now unfortunately this is NOT intuitively obvious to figure out, so to help you, please look at post #9 and #19 in this thead: OpenSuSE 11.4 review

Hopefully that helps you get a better handle on this.

Good luck !

**tkuchta** · 15-May-2011, 17:01

Thank you very much for "tone of" advice. It will take me a while to read it through ....

Right now I can clarify a few things:
- slow KDE start - It seems gfx driver related - I was watching it on the shell - it is X11 constrained the same way as my other issues. Also your Ctrl+Alt+Fx & Ctrl+Alt+F7 trick works here cutting the KDE start time from 1+minute to less than 15 seconds.
- Image editing - image editing tasks are where I'm the most affected by this graphics driver problem. I do not use KDEnlive ... I'm using specialized single purpose commercial application + OSS stack Gimp, raw editors, HDR stuff, etc.... anyway it uses similar features as destop effects due to layered editing. Though the most important for me - I should not have mentioned it. My apology - it will only be distracting from the real subject which is equally visible/repeatable in web browser & flash video.
- I'm aware of Linux vs. Windows gfx performance lag - I experience it every day for about 13+ years - this case is not just lag - this is broken driver and I do not have the choice to use discrete graphics (as I'd do on desktop) as this is laptop. I'll wait little longer before starting to think that AMD fusion might be better choice than Intel Sandybridge for ultramobile laptops. Obviously not all companies have equally useful products at the release date, and Intel is known for it - It is now 4-5 months from announced release date in January ....