raspberry pi 3 feels sluggish compared to raspbian

[theseankelly]

Hi Forum

I'm pretty new to raspberry pi and arch in general (though I've used arch as a main OS many years ago). I'm technically running the armv7 image (per the setup wiki's recommendations) but posting here anyway since it's ARMv8 hardware.

Quick question: I installed arch, xorg, and lxde on my pi. The UI is extremely sluggish in most cases -- like I drag a window around and it visual lags behind where my cursor is, maybe a 500ms lag time. This is using standard programs like lxterm, nothing fancy. On raspbian, however, even heavier applications like chrome zip around on the screen. I don't understand how this is possible because a barebones lxde install on arch should be much more responsive...no?

Am I missing something obvious? If it's a more detailed answer and I just need to learn the ins and outs of optimizing my pi, that's cool. Don't worry about spelling it all out for me; I'm happy to do the learning. Just wanted a quick sanity check to see if there's something obvious I'm doing wrong.

[graysky]

Missing drivers perhaps? Kodi on my RPi2/3 is very smooth. Haven't tried a DE.

[BetaPictoris]

Have you installed xf86-video-fbturbo-git package ?

[theseankelly]

Nope, and a quick google for that package name pointed me at this page:

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Ra ... org_driver

Didn't even think to look at the main arch wiki for Raspi-specific stuff. Now I know, and I see there's a bunch of other suggestions for optimizations there! I'll take a look. Thanks.

[modul]

I use the standard driver "xf86-video-fbdev". Performance is pretty good.

I was nosy, so I'v installed "xf86-video-fbturbo-git". Performance with this driver is very bad. Maybe the setup needs some tweaks.

[theseankelly]

Interesting. I notice better performance on xf86-video-fbturbo-git than on xf86-video-fbdev. What's your gpu_mem setting, out of curiosity?

[modul]

gpu_mem=64

Should I try more with the "xf86-video-fbturbo-git"?

[graysky]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_code('', '% cat /boot/config.txt
# See /boot/overlays/README for all available options
gpu_mem=192')

[modul]

More gpu_mem doesn't help.

I use framebuffer_depth=24. Only when I comment it out, the xf86-video-fbturbo-git driver is a little bit better.

My WM's are openbox or i3, while i3 is a tick faster.

[jwhickman]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('theseankelley', 'I') notice better performance on xf86-video-fbturbo-git than on xf86-video-fbdev.