Arch Linux

MrEvilBreakfast

Member

From: Abbotsford, BC

Registered: 2011-11-03

Posts: 30

Nvidia Performance Level 3 - MSI GT780DX

Hiya all,

I'm running Arch on an MSI GT780DX, with an Nvidia 570M. At the moment I'm running Arch-CK 4.0.5-2-CK (but over the many many many months I've been dealing with this issue I've ran many kernels to no avail - stock kernels from the inception of v4, and all incarnations of liquorix) with the nvidia-ck 352.21-1 drivers.

For the life of me, I can't get this card to clock properly. I've enabled coolbits, added powermizer options in my xorg, all do absolutely nothing. The card stays at performance level two.

This is what my nvidia-settings looks like in the Powermizer tab.
http://i.imgur.com/QHtgzi3.png

In Windows, MSI provided an overclocking utility which when I hit P1 above my keyboard, performance level 3 would kick in. Linux has no such tool. My guess is that the overclocking utility wrote to registers on the card. If that's the case, how on earth can I do think in Linux?

MaximusSilin

Member

Registered: 2015-06-24

Posts: 1

Re: Nvidia Performance Level 3 - MSI GT780DX

I have exactly the same problem (performance level stays constant at level 1 (from 0 to 2), with GT635M. According to this 352.21 driver no longer supports povermizer settings from xorg.conf. So the easiest solution is to stay on older version of driver.

MrEvilBreakfast

Member

From: Abbotsford, BC

Registered: 2011-11-03

Posts: 30

Re: Nvidia Performance Level 3 - MSI GT780DX

I've been running into the same issue for several driver iterations, plus for a whlie I was using the 340xx driver. You'd think someone with more technological savvy would have figured something out.

The really strange thing is that with Powermizer, I can change the card's memory frequency all day, in a way that changes both level 2 and 3, but I cannot change the GPU's frequency at all.

Last edited by MrEvilBreakfast (2015-06-26 16:06:44)

SuperIce97

Member

Registered: 2015-08-06

Posts: 1

Re: Nvidia Performance Level 3 - MSI GT780DX

It seems that you can't set it correctly anymore in the 350 series (I've tried both 352 and 355). However, if you run an older version (I use 349.16), you can set it quite simply in the xorg.conf file.
This is what my Device section in my xorg.conf file looks like:

Section "Device"
    Identifier     "Device0"
    Driver         "nvidia"
    VendorName     "NVIDIA Corporation"

    Option	   "CoolBits" "28"

#Min. Power on both
#    Option "RegistryDwords" "PowerMizerEnable=0x1; PerfLevelSrc=0x2233; PowerMizerDefault=0x3; PowerMizerDefaultAC=0x3" 

#Adaptive on AC, power saving on battery
#    Option "RegistryDwords" "PowerMizerEnable=0x1; PerfLevelSrc=0x2233; PowerMizerDefault=0x1; PowerMizerDefaultAC=0x1" 

#Overclock
    Option "RegistryDwords" "PowerMizerEnable=0x1; PerfLevelSrc=0x2222; PowerMizerDefault=0x1; PowerMizerDefaultAC=0x1"

EndSection

As you can see, I have a few different powermizer settings that do different things (lowest state for quietness, standard state, and overclocked state). Just leave the one you want to use uncommented. This should work for you as we have the same laptop model. If for some reason it stops working correctly, just reinstall the driver. It's only happened to me once, but it's worth mentioning.

To set your overclock, you can now go to the powermizer page in nvidia-settings and set your overclock.
Note: For me, the memory speed in the settings is double the actual. Stock speeds are 1500 and nvidia-settings reports 3000. Other programs like the Unigine Benchmarks, however, list the speeds correctly.