Arch Linux

S.D.

Member

Registered: 2017-10-08

Posts: 2

OpenGL applications are freezing when are put offscreen

I have noticed a weird behaviour of at least some OpenGL applications. If you put an OpenGL window (glxgears for example) offscreen (move it to another workspace or just move it down so it's content will not be seen) and if remaining content on your current workspace is mostly static it's framerate drops to about 2-10 fps. Then if you make your current screen to change (open another glxgears or just move mouse cursor) it's fps will start to increase.
Does anyone have this issue too or know how to fix it?
I am using i3wm started through nvidia-xrun. I have nvidia-dkms-387.12-1 driver.

ewaller

Administrator

From: Pasadena, CA

Registered: 2009-07-13

Posts: 20,703

Re: OpenGL applications are freezing when are put offscreen

Welcome to the Arch Linux forums.

Cannot duplicate on Intel graphics.  i3wm, start glxgears in a floating urxvt window, glxgears shows up in a titled window.  ~60f/s.  Move glxgears to different workspace, frame rate remains unchanged.
Is this a problem?  It actually sounds like the GPU firmware is not wasting its time and (literally) energy on something offscreen.

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S.D.

Member

Registered: 2017-10-08

Posts: 2

Re: OpenGL applications are freezing when are put offscreen

Hi. It can be a problem sometimes, because sometimes you need that your application was actually running in background. For example, you are playing a multiplayer game, switching to another application while waiting for your turn, then others start to say that you are lagging (network thread was running fine but graphics still need to process all events).