nvidia optimus issue

[Ashleyyyy]

okay, i've had an issue that i've spent 3 days of troubleshooting on, and i can't figure it out. 

 

i've got intel graphics 620 and an nvidia gtx 950m in my laptop, and i'm trying to use the 950m to play games. the issue is, whenever i activate it, i get massive screen tearing, even on the desktop and in chrome etc, that i can't resolve.

the rest of my laptop specs are in my signature. 

 

things i've tried:

• force full composition pipeline (this option was unavailable in nvidia-settings, i tried it using a terminal command)
• multiple desktop environments, including gnome, xfce and kde
• multiple distro's, arch (antergos) and ubuntu
• bumblebee (corrupted my system so hard control+alt+f2 for terminal didn't even work, i had to chroot into it using a live usb and purge it)

 

it's not a massive issue, i could just make a 100GB partition on my  500gb hdd in my machine, and install Windows on it exclusively for gaming, but i'd rather just use ubuntu. 

[pxnguinPr3]

Can you screenshot the tearing? (I know this may sound silly but try it)

[Ashleyyyy]

4 minutes ago, pxnguinPr3 said:

Can you screenshot the tearing? (I know this may sound silly but try it)

no, because i'm on the stock nouveau driver again after the bumblebee crash. 

 

the tearing is just as bad as running xfce or lxde with vsync off, and no compositor. if i move apps around on the desktop or watch videos or play games, the screen tearing is insane.. 

[pxnguinPr3]

Erm, Just try lightshotting, gyazoing or windos snipping tool. trust.

[Ashleyyyy]

Just now, pxnguinPr3 said:

Erm, Just try lightshotting, gyazoing or windos snipping tool. trust.

i can't do that, because it only appears on the nvidia card. now i'm using my intel graphics everything is fine. 

[pxnguinPr3]

Use nvidia card, try screenshotting it.

[Ashleyyyy]

3 minutes ago, pxnguinPr3 said:

Use nvidia card, try screenshotting it.

i'm using the nouveau drivers, and i don't know of a way to enable my nvidia gpu on these. 

[pxnguinPr3]

tbh, im lost, im not the one to speak to on this.

[MysticalGnome]

I need to run this command from the terminal, this does not completely fix the problem but it does make a difference.

nvidia-settings --assign CurrentMetaMode="nvidia-auto-select +0+0 { ForceFullCompositionPipeline = On }"

If you installed the latest driver than the above should work.

[Ashleyyyy]

7 hours ago, MysticalGnome said:

I need to run this command from the terminal, this does not completely fix the problem but it does make a difference.

nvidia-settings --assign CurrentMetaMode="nvidia-auto-select +0+0 { ForceFullCompositionPipeline = On }"

If you installed the latest driver than the above should work.

tried that, didn't work. 

[noahdvs]

Don't use Nouveau on anything from GTX 900 series and up. Nvidia is keeping the Nouveau devs from being able to implement proper support for those graphics cards. You have to install the proprietary Nvidia driver.

 

I'm not going to be very helpful since I have trouble with this too on my laptop (Intel Graphics 520 & GTX 960m). I use openSUSE Tumbleweed which has a community package that does all the Nvidia/Bumblebee setup for me. My advice is to find a package that does everything for you or to just give up on this if you can't find anything and buy a laptop with AMD graphics next time so you can avoid all of this BS.

 

On 11/30/2017 at 8:53 PM, pxnguinPr3 said:

Erm, Just try lightshotting, gyazoing or windos snipping tool. trust.

This is the Not-Windows section. OP uses Linux.

[Ashleyyyy]

10 minutes ago, noahdvs said:

Don't use Nouveau on anything from GTX 900 series and up. Nvidia is keeping the Nouveau devs from being able to implement proper support for those graphics cards. You have to install the proprietary Nvidia driver.

 

I'm not going to be very helpful since I have trouble with this too on my laptop (Intel Graphics 520 & GTX 960m). I use openSUSE Tumbleweed which has a community package that does all the Nvidia/Bumblebee setup for me. My advice is to find a package that does everything for you or to just give up on this if you can't find anything and buy a laptop with AMD graphics next time so you can avoid all of this BS.

 

This is the Not-Windows section. OP uses Linux.

okay, couple things. 

 

1. i have the proprietary driver installed. i switched from ubuntu 17.10 to linux mint for this reason, because ubuntu did an update that corrupted them for some reason. 

2. i've had an amd laptop (a6-6310 APU), and that was even worse, because amd doesn't update their proprietary drivers so you can't install them on anything past ubuntu 14.04 i believe. and the power management didn't work on that machine. so the battery life on linux was craptastric. 

3. i've had issues with bumblebee, and for me, if i use bumblebee to run a game, i get the same tearing across the display as when i just run the whole desktop from the gpu. 

[MrPatience]

On 07/12/2017 at 12:36 PM, firelighter487 said:

okay, couple things. 

 

1. i have the proprietary driver installed. i switched from ubuntu 17.10 to linux mint for this reason, because ubuntu did an update that corrupted them for some reason. 

2. i've had an amd laptop (a6-6310 APU), and that was even worse, because amd doesn't update their proprietary drivers so you can't install them on anything past ubuntu 14.04 i believe. and the power management didn't work on that machine. so the battery life on linux was craptastric. 

3. i've had issues with bumblebee, and for me, if i use bumblebee to run a game, i get the same tearing across the display as when i just run the whole desktop from the gpu. 

Last amd laptop I had ran just fine with opensource drivers, was an a4-4000 APU series. 

I use proprietary drivers on my Mint 18.2 - Asus ROG PC , the gtx960 doesn't quite like nouveau at all, even after trying to tweak it.

[noahdvs]

On 12/7/2017 at 6:36 AM, firelighter487 said:

okay, couple things. 

 

1. i have the proprietary driver installed. i switched from ubuntu 17.10 to linux mint for this reason, because ubuntu did an update that corrupted them for some reason. 

2. i've had an amd laptop (a6-6310 APU), and that was even worse, because amd doesn't update their proprietary drivers so you can't install them on anything past ubuntu 14.04 i believe. and the power management didn't work on that machine. so the battery life on linux was craptastric. 

3. i've had issues with bumblebee, and for me, if i use bumblebee to run a game, i get the same tearing across the display as when i just run the whole desktop from the gpu. 

1. Can't help you with that. With proprietary Nvidia drivers, sometimes the drivers don't play well with a new version of the Linux kernel. Ubuntu 17.10 came with a new kernel. This is why you use the Intel GPU for the desktop and Nvidia only for games.

2. Don't use proprietary AMD drivers. AMD has been focusing their efforts on their new open source driver (AMDGPU) and it now works better for most users than their proprietary driver (AMDGPU-PRO). If the proprietary driver you used was fglrx, yeah, that thing was bad and you shouldn't use it anymore. Older AMD GPUs might not be able to use AMDGPU, but any AMD laptop you buy in the future will.

3. There are fixes out there for screen tearing, but I've never had that issue and I couldn't tell you what the fixes are or where to find them.

[Heller64bit]

Have you tried to follow the Arch wiki and the troubleshooting on this issue? Arch Wiki - Optimus

 

I've got a Lenovo Ideapad G780, with Nvidia 635m+Intel GPU with Optimus enabled running on Arch proper and Nvidia proprietary drivers (not Nouveau). I've been running in for about 2 years now, with little issues ( except those with Steam, but the Arch Wiki also helped on that front too.  ). 

 

Hope it helps. Cheers!

[Ashleyyyy]

31 minutes ago, Heller64bit said:

Have you tried to follow the Arch wiki and the troubleshooting on this issue? Arch Wiki - Optimus

 

I've got a Lenovo Ideapad G780, with Nvidia 635m+Intel GPU with Optimus enabled running on Arch proper and Nvidia proprietary drivers (not Nouveau). I've been running in for about 2 years now, with little issues ( except those with Steam, but the Arch Wiki also helped on that front too.  ). 

 

Hope it helps. Cheers!

i've looked at that when i was still troubleshooting it, but nope, didn't work. 

 

i've given up and gone back to Windows anyway, so yeah..

[Heller64bit]

Well sorry to hear a user leave linux because of flipping Optimus... Lovely idea, but in practices on Linux it's crap. 

[Ashleyyyy]

20 minutes ago, Heller64bit said:

Well sorry to hear a user leave linux because of flipping Optimus... Lovely idea, but in practices on Linux it's crap. 

on Windows it works great. you'd never know the desktop is actually rendered by intel graphics when gaming. but just the fact that you have to log out and log back in on linux to use your gpu is so annoying. 

[noahdvs]

28 minutes ago, firelighter487 said:

on Windows it works great. you'd never know the desktop is actually rendered by intel graphics when gaming. but just the fact that you have to log out and log back in on linux to use your gpu is so annoying. 

To be fair, it's Nvidia's fault because they refuse to support Optimus on Linux and they block the developers of the open source driver from getting anything done on newer GPUs. If it wasn't for that, it would work out of the box like AMD and Intel. This is just kind of how it is on Linux. If the hardware vendor's driver is open source and in the kernel, the user experience is generally smooth. If they choose to make their driver proprietary, Linux support is usually sub par. Nvidia's main interests in Linux are the type of 3D rendering PIXAR does (yes, they use Linux) and super computers, so that's where all of their effort goes. It just so happens that the work they do put into their driver has also made their graphics cards perform well for gaming on Linux desktops.

 

It's still true that Linux isn't great for gaming though, regardless of Nvidia's Optimus laptop support. Perhaps if you used a distro where this stuff can be setup for you it wouldn't be so bad, but you would still see significantly worse performance than on Windows with an Optimus laptop. On openSUSE Tumbleweed, I don't need to log in and out to change GPUs, I just run my games with either `primusrun` or `optirun` to switch on the Nvidia GPU for only that game.

[Ashleyyyy]

20 minutes ago, noahdvs said:

To be fair, it's Nvidia's fault because they refuse to support Optimus on Linux and they block the developers of the open source driver from getting anything done on newer GPUs. If it wasn't for that, it would work out of the box like AMD and Intel. This is just kind of how it is on Linux. If the hardware vendor's driver is open source and in the kernel, the user experience is generally smooth. If they choose to make their driver proprietary, Linux support is usually sub par. Nvidia's main interests in Linux are the type of 3D rendering PIXAR does (yes, they use Linux) and super computers, so that's where all of their effort goes. It just so happens that the work they do put into their driver has also made their graphics cards perform well for gaming on Linux desktops.

well you can't really blame them for not supporting linux all that well. i mean, it has a 3% market share...

[noahdvs]

10 minutes ago, firelighter487 said:

well you can't really blame them for not supporting linux all that well. i mean, it has a 3% market share...

Yet AMD and Intel do their Linux support the right way. AMD doesn't even hire a big team of people to do it, but they've had a massive amount of progress while Nvidia does very little. Even without AMD and Intel, the least they could do is not actively block Nouveau developers from developing drivers for newer Nvidia graphics cards.

[Claryn]

This has nothing to do with your video-drivers. What you need is Compton.

Here are some distro-agnostic guides:

https://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2144468

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Compton