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hybrid

Member

Registered: 2007-02-05

Posts: 262

nvidia's frame limiter also for linux?

Hi, I was wondering if that pretty darn good fps limiter that's in nvidia's windows drivers (I believe from 290.53 on) is also in nvidia's linux drivers.
Read through basically everything I could find but I couldn't find a hint on the fps limiter for linux.
So I was hoping someone here knows about that.

Zancarius

Member

From: NM, USA

Registered: 2012-05-06

Posts: 207

Re: nvidia's frame limiter also for linux?

Not that I'm aware of. I'd suggest reading the README (/usr/share/doc/nvidia/README) for Linux-specific information and settings. There's also a changelog in there that should document some of the driver-specific changes.

Why would you want to limit the framerate? Games? Vsync should limit the framerate to the refresh rate of your display device, shouldn't it?

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hybrid

Member

Registered: 2007-02-05

Posts: 262

Re: nvidia's frame limiter also for linux?

Checked that, couldn't find it in there. Though that doesn't mean overly much, the docs have always been missing a lot. That's why I was hoping someone here knows more about it.

Well yes, vsync does limit the number frames that are being put out to the refresh rate of the display. But that has it's glitches, for example if the frame rate drops for a moment below that given rate. That's what triple buffering is for but that has it's own downsides amongst losing one frame, losing video memory to the extra backbuffer and in some cases it still doesn't prevent tearing.
The frame limiter though lets me limit the rendering/computing of the frames directly: Instead of computing everything to the max and then discarding the excess frames, this frame limiter (unlike very most limiters in common applications) actually has the graphics card only compute those x nmuber of frames that I set it to. Thus decreasing the load on the graphics card. That is what I'm personally opting for the most.

brebs

Member

Registered: 2007-04-03

Posts: 3,742

Re: nvidia's frame limiter also for linux?

Closest option I've seen in Linux is OGL_MaxFramesAllowed, e.g. in xorg.conf:

Option "RegistryDwords" "OGL_MaxFramesAllowed=0x0; EnableBrightnessControl=1"

That seems to take away a tiny bit of lag, when playing fast first-person-shooter games.

The TripleBuffer option, in my experience, has only resulted in *disabling* vsync

Zancarius

Member

From: NM, USA

Registered: 2012-05-06

Posts: 207

Re: nvidia's frame limiter also for linux?

Checked that, couldn't find it in there. Though that doesn't mean overly much, the docs have always been missing a lot. That's why I was hoping someone here knows more about it.

I suggested the docs because they do occasionally contain useful tidbits (and they've helped me out on occasion in my Gentoo days), and it's hard to tell what you've read when you simply said "everything you could find." It's easy to miss the obvious.

You might have some luck asking here as well, but I'm not sure this is something that the *nix drivers are on feature-parity with the Windows ones yet.

---

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~Confucius on UNIX.

PReP

Member

From: Sweden

Registered: 2010-06-13

Posts: 359

Website

Re: nvidia's frame limiter also for linux?

Try Looking around with:

$ nvidia-settings -q all

(maybe pipe it to something useable like less)

There might be some useable setting there.

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hybrid

Member

Registered: 2007-02-05

Posts: 262

Re: nvidia's frame limiter also for linux?

Zancarius: And I'm glad you mentioned it. I basically lost track on what I read through and where that was at since I've spent quite a few hours searching for information on that over the past couple days. So just as you said, sometimes it's easy to miss the obvious. Unfortunately not in this case though. :> Maybe it would have sounded nicer if I had simply said "nothing in there" instead of what I've actually said. So here we go: It's not in there either, PReP.

Brebs: quite a nice find, but that seems to be to control the max pre-rendered frames and not the frame limiter.

nvnews/forums.nvidia.com would be my next bets. yet another forum registration.. yay.

@op

Member

Registered: 2011-04-05

Posts: 49

Re: nvidia's frame limiter also for linux?

Option         "RegistryDwords" "OGL_MaxFramesAllowed=0x0; EnableBrightnessControl=1"

Did the trick for me. Now quake runs with much less input lag, thank you very much.

hybrid

Member

Registered: 2007-02-05

Posts: 262

Re: nvidia's frame limiter also for linux?

Well that's great for you, but this thread is about something else and that question remains:

Is the nvidia frame limiter also incorporated in nvidia's linux drivers?

@@op: Don't get me wrong, I'm glad you got something useful out of this thread but I'm afraid people will think my question is solved. So I just wanted to bring this thread back to topic.

Katovatzschyn

Member

Registered: 2009-11-02

Posts: 3

Re: nvidia's frame limiter also for linux?

I can't say for sure, but I believe the frame limiter may have been implemented, and enabled by default. On the PSX emulator I was previously able to use the fast-forward functionality to have PSX run at ~200 FPS, whereas with the last set of drivers it is always exactly 60 fps or less, regardless of vblank, etc. I haven't figured out how to get it to stop doing this.

brebs

Member

Registered: 2007-04-03

Posts: 3,742

Re: nvidia's frame limiter also for linux?

exactly 60 fps or less, regardless of vblank

That's SyncToVblank, enabled by default starting with the Nvidia 302.x series - a different issue.

Have you tried:

"SyncToVBlank=0" in your .nvidia-settings-rc file

Katovatzschyn

Member

Registered: 2009-11-02

Posts: 3

Re: nvidia's frame limiter also for linux?

exactly 60 fps or less, regardless of vblank

That's SyncToVblank, enabled by default starting with the Nvidia 302.x series - a different issue.

Have you tried:

"SyncToVBlank=0" in your .nvidia-settings-rc file

I've tried enabling and disabling both of the vblank settings, but haven't had any such luck in getting PSX to run at anything over 60 fps. Thanks though.