# Intel 945GM Very Low glxgears Frame Rate

## bananabrowning

I'm running the 2.6.27 kernel on my notebook that has the Intel 945GM graphics chipset.  Compiz runs fine, but it seems my frame rate is not as it should be.  I am finding posts on other forums of people with the same graphics chipset getting ~1000fps in glxgears, but when I run glxgears, I'm only getting around 60.001 FPS, fluctuating +/-1.  My xorg.conf file is pasted here: http://pastebin.com/m4dda7332 to prevent clutter of this post.

I'm using the intel driver, have dri and glx enabled...I'm not sure how to remedy this.  Any suggestions?

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## albright

If you want higher framerates, turn off vsync (look for driconf).

But why do you want higher framerates - you're eyes can't tell

the difference  :Smile:   There is some debate which I have no right

to have an opinion about whether vsync off or on is to be

preferred.

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## pappy_mcfae

You DO NOT have a problem. You should have good openGL operation without video distortion. Any fps number higher than sixty WILL CAUSE PROBLEMS, especially with Intel video! 

Blessed be!

Pappy

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## DirtyHairy

Pappy: nope, a higher framerate just means that vsync is turned off, which will cause visual tearing, but might lead to smoother rendering (its around 1800 here on a Radeon X1300 with fglrx, and no problems). As albright said, it is debatable whether vsync is good or bad, depends on what you want. And, last but not least: glxgears is not a benchmark (TM), you can get pretty low glxgears FPS and very decent 3D as well as astronomically high glxgears and completely crapped-up 3D. If you want to measure your 3D performance, check the performance of recent openGL games or run a dedicated benchmark.

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## bananabrowning

Yup, I tried the vsync and it did improve frame rate.  My main concern was that the low fps might have been the culprit behind laggy flash video or the display slowing to a crawl when multiple flash video tabs are open.  Things seem to be running pretty smoothly now though.

Thanks!

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## pappy_mcfae

And with vsync off, you have no synchronization.   :Rolling Eyes: 

That's all well and good for ATI or nVidia, but it's not for Intel. Now, we can debate this issue, or I challenge you to try to make your openGL work right, vis a vis, be able to watch a DVD or turn on an openGL screensaver and look at the distortion that shows up if glxgears shows anything other than 60.

Also, install conky, and notice how your CPU is suddenly VERY busy trying to pump out all those frames that are going nowhere. 

So, go ahead, play with getting the highest frame rate. It will only slow your system to a crawl. 

Enjoy.

Blessed be!

Pappy

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## DirtyHairy

Sorry, I'm not interested in a flame war here, nor do I want to convince anyone to adjust his/her settings in one or the other way. As you said, pappy, turning off openGL vsync causes visual tearing, but shouldn't cause any problems apart from that. In addition, it concerns ONLY openGL; the refresh rates of X11 programs are only effected if they output to openGL and don't limit their frame rate, which shouldn't be the case for a system monitor. Video output via XV should do vsync independently of openGL, so that's again a different beast. For me, e.g. quake3 slightly jerky with vsync and fine without it, which could be explained by the whole game loop being limited to 60Hz by vsync (which again might be considered bad programming practice). A composited desktop again might react different on vsync, so, bottom line:

itry your stuff with both settings and choose whichever you like better  :Smile: 

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## pappy_mcfae

I'm not flaming. And perhaps I did come on a bit too strong. If so, I apologize.

While glxgears is not reportedly a benchmark, it is a good indicator of whether or not your video will look right. With nVidia drivers, you can directly tie everything to vsync. With Intel, it's a little different. You have to set up a half-dozen files to try to rein them in, and even at that, they still have a tendency to distort video.

The result will remain the same, though. Any glxgears rating over 60 fps will result in video distortion, openGL failure, and serious strain on the CPU.

Once again, I apologize. I didn't mean to come on so forcefully. 

Blessed be!

Pappy

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