Fedora 8, ATi HD 2400 Pro and a recent update causing even 2D renedering to be slow

[reashlin]

Hello,

Reading the thread here http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?t=198731 my problem may be related, though I am using fedora 8.

I have a PC running a HD2400Pro. I have been using the livna repository which I have got fglrx from. Recently an update came updating xorg.

The update did nothing immediatly (i'm guessing I had to reboot X). The next day I booted the machine everything started up normally. In fact things started better than normal because the ATi catalyst control panel acutally remembered my "Big Desktop" settings.

Then I decided to drag a window across the screen. The result is a lovely slow render of the window jumping across the screen.

Fire up a web browser. All scrolling is now happening the same as screen rendering. Unnacceptably slow.

Watching a CPU monitor I have I am noticing whenever I scroll a window or move a window my CPU usage hits 100% and stays there until the window stops moving.

Just to point out I am not using compiz or anything like that. Just Fedora8 Kde 3.5. Strangely I have noticed heavy javascript based pages, such as slashdot, scroll at normal speeds once the static content is off the screen. Though I'm guessing this is a by product of modern browser rendering techniques.

So I am assuming, though am open to being corrected, that the GFX card is not being used to render the screen, just to output it.

Is there any other information that would help someone diagnose the problem, or should I try following the advice at http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?t=189227 which is advice on how to get fglrx, Fedora 9 and OpenGL working. Does/Can this at all apply to fedora 8.

Many Thanks

[reashlin]

OK,

Is there a chance I can roll back the update I made to the system so that I can have reasonable performance again. I found a guide a day or two ago that said yum could be enabled to allow rollbacks of updates. However as I had not set that flag before applying this update im guessing this wouldnt work.

At the least is there a list of recently applyed updates so that I can see exactly what it was that I updated.

Sorry if I sound a bit stupid but i've never had to go this deep into the workings of yum before. Is there a good reference out there that would detail the things I need to look at? Is yum actually less capable than I am thinking it might be?

[reashlin]

Hey,

Is anybody able to advise me at least where I should start looking for a problem?

Really when dragging windows around the screen takes seconds things get a little stupid and its really beginning to annoy me.

Is it worth removing my graphics drivers and trying a re-install of them?

sudo yum remove kmod-fglrx
sudo yum install kmod-fglrx

what are the likely side effects of doing this? The machine is in use at work so I can't be with too much downtime.

Cmon guys someone must be able to get me started on this. TBH i'm lost as to what I can do to fix this problem right now.

[reashlin]

OK,

Well re-enabling the latest kernel seems to have fixed the problem. Whatever the problem was. Now all I gotta do is fix VMWare server and a few other bits to like the new kernel.