Fixing graphics lag on ATI graphics cards with Compiz

Patrick Hurst — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 20:57:16 +0000

I recently picked up an MSI GT725 series laptop for portable gaming, and I’m fairly happy with it, although I haven’t had it for too long. One issue that irked me when I first set up Linux on it alongside Windows 7 is that when I enabled Compiz, many things would lag, such as window resizing, window moving, and the opening/closing of Tilda and Yakuake. It turns out that this is due to an old patch for xserver never having been included due to the fact that it causes corruption on Intel cards; however, since I wasn’t using an Intel card, I was able to apply it with no problems. Although the patch can be applied to the raw xserver source code, a much better way to fix it for Linux distros that use apt-get is to use a pre-patched version: simply add the two lines

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/ubuntu-x-swat/xserver-no-backfill/ubuntu jaunty main

deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/ubuntu-x-swat/xserver-no-backfill/ubuntu jaunty main

to /etc/apt/sources.list (as root, obviously); then, add the key via

sudo apt-key adv --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv-keys AF1CDFA9

Update your repository information via

sudo apt-get update

, then upgrade all the packages that come up as needing one. Reboot and you should be golden.

On another note, I’ve been unable to get the sound to not come out of the bass speakers on the laptop; as a result, everything has an excess of bass, which makes it sound absolutely horrible. If anybody has any idea what’s causing this, help would be much appreciated.

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Fixing graphics lag on ATI graphics cards with Compiz