# Graphics performance - related to graphic driver?



## semin (Jun 16, 2010)

Perhaps "performance" is not an appropriate term here, and also this may be due more to KDE4 (4.3.6) than to BSD by itself, but on my laptop my mouse cursor does not move smoothly. Normally this is not that a big issue but it can turn out to be a big problem when precision matters - such as when drawing pictures in the GIMP (2.6). The mouse cursor does not move smoothly but instead it "hops over" and then moves and then hops again. Also in the GIMP another annoying issue can be observed - on the working space the track of the cursor retained persistently which makes the whole screen a mess! (will upload the screen shot another day). 

All these are probably due to the graphic support not being complete yet, and I might need to try other graphic driver for this laptop. The graphic chipset is ATI Radeon IGP 320M, and IIRC I was on ati (or radeon?) driver. What would be the best driver for my laptop graphics chipset? Or is there any solution that I could improve the performance?


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## wblock@ (Jun 16, 2010)

Jerky mouse movement or keypresses not appearing until the mouse is moved often indicate use of AllowEmptyInput.  If you have an AllowEmptyInput line in xorg.conf, take it out.  (AutoAddDevices "Off" is the right way to configure xorg without hal.)

radeon is the right driver to use.  ati is just an autoloader which will load radeon.

If this is not an AEI problem, please post your xorg.conf and Xorg.0.log.


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## semin (Jun 21, 2010)

wblock said:
			
		

> Jerky mouse movement or keypresses not appearing until the mouse is moved often indicate use of AllowEmptyInput.  If you have an AllowEmptyInput line in xorg.conf, take it out.  (AutoAddDevices "Off" is the right way to configure xorg without hal.)
> 
> If this is not an AEI problem, please post your xorg.conf and Xorg.0.log.



Unfortunately it looks like it's not an AEI problem, and this only happens in Gimp but not in other applications e.g. Inkscape etc.

Attached are my xorg.conf and Xorg.0.log. Perhaps I should also seek advice from the Gimp community too...


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## wblock@ (Jun 21, 2010)

semin said:
			
		

> Unfortunately it looks like it's not an AEI problem, and this only happens in Gimp but not in other applications e.g. Inkscape etc.



If it only happens in Gimp, it's likely not an xorg problem at all.  Have you rebuilt Gimp?


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## semin (Jun 22, 2010)

wblock said:
			
		

> Have you rebuilt Gimp?



I didn't build it but as my laptop is currently on PC-BSD, the Gimp was built by the PC-BSD PBI server. Once FreeBSD8.1 is out I will try both package and ports and see if the glitch is still there. But I cannot see how rebuild or any build-config option has got to do with this phenomenon...


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