https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=38800
--- Comment #11 from Michel Dänzer michel@daenzer.net 2011-07-04 09:30:56 PDT --- Note that as you say it's not hitting even 10% CPU load, it's probably not a simple CPU bottleneck but some kind of timing / timeout issue. The tracepoint events listed by
perf list|grep -e drm -e radeon
might be useful, but I haven't played with those myself, so I can't give specific instructions.
Or, just attach gdb to the app and/or X server, interrupt them every now and them and see if they're in a particular place most of the time. That might at least give an idea where to continue digging.