I now own a successor of this card (ATI radeon 9250) and tried with recent kde-4 version (trunk). The same problems from above..

did you enable desktop effects?

I tried both. It makes no difference (perhaps a little difference for moving windows, when window-shadows/.. are active), even when using these programs in a kde-3 session. Best example for unsmooth scrolling is the detailed view in dolphin.

My actual (newer) gfx-card in AGP-4x-slot:

hwinfo --gfxcard
10: PCI(AGP) 100.0: 0300 VGA compatible controller (VGA)
  [Created at pci.310]
  UDI: /org/freedesktop/Hal/devices/pci_1002_5960
  Unique ID: VCu0.XYwojmR_sdA
  Parent ID: vSkL.s4zPh4a_106
  SysFS ID: /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:01.0/0000:01:00.0
  SysFS BusID: 0000:01:00.0
  Hardware Class: graphics card
  Model: "ATI RV280 5960"
  Vendor: pci 0x1002 "ATI Technologies Inc"
  Device: pci 0x5960 "RV280 5960"
  SubVendor: pci 0x17ee "Connect Components Ltd"
  SubDevice: pci 0x2801
  Revision: 0x01
  Memory Range: 0xb0000000-0xbfffffff (rw,prefetchable)
  I/O Ports: 0xa800-0xa8ff (rw)
  Memory Range: 0xcfef0000-0xcfefffff (rw,non-prefetchable)
  Memory Range: 0xcfec0000-0xcfedffff (ro,prefetchable,disabled)
  IRQ: 11 (61863 events)
  I/O Ports: 0x3c0-0x3df (rw)
  Module Alias: "pci:v00001002d00005960sv000017EEsd00002801bc03sc00i00"
  Driver Info #0:
    XFree86 v4 Server Module: radeon
  Driver Info #1:
    XFree86 v4 Server Module: radeon
    3D Support: yes
    Extensions: dri
  Config Status: cfg=new, avail=yes, need=no, active=unknown
  Attached to: #22 (PCI bridge)

Any news on this? With an updated KDE and Qt ?

I now have kde-4.3 svn + qt-4.5 installed. Still scrolling in kde4-applications is unresponsive in relation to kde3-applications (for example comparing scrolling a large folder in detail-view in konqueror(kde3) and konqueror(kde4)). 

With activated desktop-effects, all programs are affected (even kde3-applications/firefox/..).

My current gfx-card radeon 9250 with 256 MB RAM, glxgears: 3580 frames in 5.0 seconds = 715.913 FPS.

*** This bug has been confirmed by popular vote. ***

I have KDE 4.2 installed and I experience the same problems. I own a brand-new Lenovo W500 and I'm using the integrated intel GM4500 graphics card. Compositing works like a charm, just perfectly smooth. But when it comes to simple tasks like scrolling in a List View (e.g. Dolphin->Detailed View) it just starts lagging and it feels like my laptop is years old. Interestingly, the icon view with enabled preview is A LOT smoother, weird.
Also, when in split view mode, moving the "split-slider" (the one that separates the two sides) is super-slow. This is also true for the one that is  between the Places/folders and the file list view. This is true in general for all such separators in all KDE4 apps...

These is not limited to dolphin, though, but all other KDE4 apps show the same lagginess. It is not like that it is totally unusable but there is definitely some very inefficient code working in the background.

By the way, disabling desktop effects improves the situation only very slightly.

I can confirm, that in dolphin-icon-view the scrolling is really much smoother than in detailed view.

Please, report the Dolphin related issues into Dolphin report (they will get more attention that way)
Also, there is a report related to slow scrolling on Dolphin when using the Detailed view: bug 170010

Thanks

Well, i found THE solution to problem. Apparently, the laggines is solely due to QT. I found on some forum, that there is apparently a new way of rendering that will be soon the default for Qt4 apps. However, it can already be tried out by:

<qt/kde-app> --graphicssystem raster

So for dolphin this is:

dolphin --graphicssystem raster

With this new system everything is absolutely smooth. For me it is already stable, although it is still considered not. IMPORTANT: for dolphin, you need to kill all dolphin processes before trying this out, otherwise it won't work.

Also all other apps i tried run much smoother now (especially kile).

So finally, i think this bug report can be closed as it is not kde or dolphin specific and a solution is almost there.

Additional comment:

It is indeed unstable under some circumstances. For me dolphin crashes, when showing tooltips or previews in the information panel. Both should be disabled for now...

I tried this option, too. The scrolling is really more smooth now. But still not comparable with kde3 (compared detail view in konqueror-kde3/kde4 side by side)

I tried the kde3 dolphin equivalent "d3lphin", but really, i cannot tell which of them run faster. Both are to me like 100% smooth.

So maybe your QT libs are not recent enough or maybe you're right that the KDE4 dolphin is really a bit slower but on the hardware I'm using here you can't really make a difference.

For me this is fixed, aka "WORKSFORME"

Intel has better drivers I think. Also I use kde on some older PCs with really old gfx-cards like ati-rage, ati-radeon-7000/9000/9250 (although radeon 9250 is not really "old", I bought it brand-new before a few months). As long doing the same things (without desktop-effects) are slower in kde4 than in kde3, I am dissatisfied.

Right, this is totally understandable. We should, however,  wait for KDE 4.3 as this new way of rendering is a brand new feature of Qt 4.5 which was released only one month ago. So i think, things will further improve in the near future.

I have the same issue with intel 945GM vga card.

I have the same issues with an Nvidia 8200 based computer (closed-source driver, compositing and effects enabled) as well as with an IBM T42 (ATI Radeon 7500).

To me, it seems kwin makes most of the problems. Everything lags, the system feels as if it's constantly waiting for something before acting on my commands. When clicking the K menu, it takes about 1s before it will open (the systems have 2Gig ram each, it should appear instantly!). Even with repeated actions, it's a little better, but not as snappy as KDE3 was before. Changing to compiz makes the system much faster and snappier. However, compiz doesn't run 100% stable now, and some laggines seems tied to KDE apps. I played around with a Gnome desktop especially on the older thinkpad which was quite unusable with effects under KDE - with Gnome, it runs smooth too!

In addition, I can make huge cpu loads doing nearly nothing. Klicking on a window title bar WITHOUT actually moving the window makes kwin immediately eating up one core! The desktop effects are smooth, that's not the point. Even wobbly windows and transparency run without any delays.

After all, I'm kind of tired hearing "let's wait for KDE xxx to come out". I think there are some really dramatic performance problems and they should be addressed. If not, it would be better to go back to the KDE 3 architecture. The new features are nice, but most of them are kind of eye candy. They are nice, but a snappy system on a >=2GHz system with 3D capable gfx hardware is even more essential. First, they said it's about NVidia closed-source driver. Now it's due to Qt....

Even with kde-4.3, I will have to continue to use not only the kde3-desktop, but also kde3-programms, because the scrolling-issue seems to be qt-4-related (akregator, dolphin, gwenview, kchmviewer,..), perhaps their new mvc-layer has performance-losses. the only usable kde4-app for me at the moment is kopete.

Could qt4-perfomance be optimized any further?

by the way: is there a way with qt/kde-config-files, to start all kde4-programms by default with graphicssystem=raster?

Hi all!

I'm experiencing similar problems with Dolphin (for a long time) and more recently with Kopete and KWin:

https://qa.mandriva.com/show_bug.cgi?id=52716

Reading from the bug:

{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{
Description of problem:

I'm using the radeonhd driver with my ATI Radeon HD 2600 Pro card. When running
KDE-4.3.0's KWin, it takes a lot of time to set the active window by hovering
above it with the mouse (I have focus follows mouse). IceWM does not exhibit
this problem, and it used to be OK up to a previous Cooker upgrade.

I will attach my xorg.conf file shortly.

I should note that Kopete has a similar problem with scrolling, and these seem
to be the only KDE apps affected.

Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):


How reproducible:

Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Update to latest cooker.
2. Use the radeonhd driver.
3. Start X in KDE 4.3.0 mode.
4. Try to switch windows.

.
.
.

OK, here's what I discovered since then:

1. After disabling "EXA" in xorg.conf, KDE 4 and Kopete had become fast again:

{{{{{{{{{
# Commented out.
# Option "AccelMethod" "EXA"
}}}}}}}}}

However, after this was enabled, then some gtk+2 apps have become sluggish -
most notably XChat.

2. Someone on #mandriva-cooker suggested that I'll use the "radeon" driver
instead of "radeonhd". I switched to using it using drakx11 (I'll attach my
up-to-date xorg.conf soon). However, KDE 4 and Kopete are still problematic as
of Mandriva Cooker from today.

3. I enabled the KDE 4 desktop effects and KDE 4 and Kopete are still sluggish.

Regards,

-- Shlomi Fish
}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}

However:

(In reply to comment #10)
> Well, i found THE solution to problem. Apparently, the laggines is solely due
> to QT. I found on some forum, that there is apparently a new way of rendering
> that will be soon the default for Qt4 apps. However, it can already be tried
> out by:
> 
> <qt/kde-app> --graphicssystem raster
> 

This seems to fix the problem for Kopete. Many thanks! Now I'll see if I can find a way to try kwin with it , and see how dolphin behaves with it.

> So for dolphin this is:
> 
> dolphin --graphicssystem raster
> 
> With this new system everything is absolutely smooth. For me it is already
> stable, although it is still considered not. IMPORTANT: for dolphin, you need
> to kill all dolphin processes before trying this out, otherwise it won't work.
> 
> Also all other apps i tried run much smoother now (especially kile).
> 
> So finally, i think this bug report can be closed as it is not kde or dolphin
> specific and a solution is almost there.

Regards,

-- Shlomi Fish

Some guy researched this bug:
http://blog.jasondonenfeld.com/190

He has found the reason of this bug in xorg source cod in file ./composite/compalloc.c

I would be glad to test his solution, but i don't use Gentoo and I don't know how to copmpile xorg...

May be somebody will try that solution?

now I have a state-of-the-art system with intel gfx card. only one scrolling problem remains: the folderview in dolphin. it works good with graphicssystem=raster, which is not default.

I created this bug report: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=258997
I did not entered it here because your bug is about ATI, me instead have a nVidia

I should note that it is now OK in recent KDEs and Mandrivas (I'm on Mandriva Cooker with an ATI Radeon HD 2600 Pro card and the radeon driver and using KDE-4.5.80 (4.6 beta)).

Is there any slowness remaining on recent KDE, Qt, and X11 video drivers?

(In reply to comment #25)
> Is there any slowness remaining on recent KDE, Qt, and X11 video drivers?

I don't think there is.

Regards,

-- Shlomi Fish

Can this report be closed now?

(In reply to comment #27)
> Can this report be closed now?

on my experience it can be closed

I think this bug can be closed too. I no longer have the Radeon HD 2600 Pro card and on my laptop with ATI Mobility Radeon HD, KDE is working fine. Closing.

I know this bug is closed, but I think there is an issue with some of the free graphics drivers provided by some packages from some Linux distributions. I'm having this same issue today with Ubuntu 12.04 LTS with KDE 4.8.5. (a reinstall from 13.04 Beta) Once I install Catalyst Control Center for the AMD/ATI graphics to install the proprietary driver, the problem should go away as it did before.

I believe the current fix is to default to Xrender if there is a graphics issue, but a reinstall or upgrade may leave a user with KDE settings in the home folder that are based on having a better driver that is missing after an upgrade or reinstall if the home folder is not touched during installation.