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#1 2013-02-26 18:25:52

BoTuLoX
Member
Registered: 2013-02-26
Posts: 7

Worse gaming performance than Kubuntu 12.10?

Title.

I'm using KDE 4.10 (installed kdebase package), Pulse, nVidia propietary drivers with VSync disabled, same programs than on Kubuntu, compositing manually suspended, yet performance is worse on TF2 and Serious Sam 3: BFE. FPS is high... enough, but the games stutter every few seconds, making them extremely annoying to play.

Any ideas why this happens?

And no, nothing strange on the console output.

Not using a low latency kernel on Kubuntu, nor will I use one on Arch. Plus, according to Phoronix benchmarks, those usually reduce gaming performance.

Thanks in advance for any help.

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#2 2013-02-26 19:02:41

AurosGamma
Member
From: San Cristobal,Venezuela
Registered: 2011-02-22
Posts: 132

Re: Worse gaming performance than Kubuntu 12.10?

What are your hardware specs?

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#3 2013-02-26 19:28:44

brebs
Member
Registered: 2007-04-03
Posts: 3,742

Re: Worse gaming performance than Kubuntu 12.10?

Same nvidia driver version as used in Ubuntu?

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#4 2013-02-26 19:40:54

BoTuLoX
Member
Registered: 2013-02-26
Posts: 7

Re: Worse gaming performance than Kubuntu 12.10?

AurosGamma wrote:

What are your hardware specs?

AMD Phenom II X2 555 BE
4 GB RAM
nVidia GTX 560 Ti

brebs wrote:

Same nvidia driver version as used in Ubuntu?

Not RIGHT now, I was using 310 in Kubuntu and now I'm on 313 on Arch. However, back when the Steam beta started, I switched to Kubuntu from Arch because I couldn't bother to fix the stuttering I had back then (much worse than right now) and I was using either 304 or 310 on it.

I don't think the blame's on the driver, really.

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#5 2013-02-26 21:24:36

brebs
Member
Registered: 2007-04-03
Posts: 3,742

Re: Worse gaming performance than Kubuntu 12.10?

A couple of things to try:

Disabling flipping has been smoother, for my 2 PCs. Easy command:

nvidia-settings -a AllowFlipping=0

Also, boot with the kernel commandline option:

pci=nommconf

As recommended in Nvidia's README.

Also, try the 3 setups for __GL_YIELD - unset, "NOTHING" and "USLEEP".

Last edited by brebs (2013-02-26 21:34:05)

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#6 2013-02-26 23:32:38

BoTuLoX
Member
Registered: 2013-02-26
Posts: 7

Re: Worse gaming performance than Kubuntu 12.10?

brebs wrote:

A couple of things to try:

Disabling flipping has been smoother, for my 2 PCs. Easy command:

nvidia-settings -a AllowFlipping=0

Also, boot with the kernel commandline option:

pci=nommconf

As recommended in Nvidia's README.

Also, try the 3 setups for __GL_YIELD - unset, "NOTHING" and "USLEEP".

Nothing worked, haven't tried setting pci=nommconf, but that's not set in Kubuntu, and I've been reading it's a pretty old flag unrelated to what could be the issue, not touching it.

Also, disabling flipping actually did make the stuttering a lot worse. And again, I had it enabled on Kubuntu.

Thanks for trying to help though.

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#7 2013-02-27 03:29:57

frank604
Member
From: BC, Canada
Registered: 2011-04-20
Posts: 1,212

Re: Worse gaming performance than Kubuntu 12.10?

Have you compared processes/services between arch and kubuntu?  Could you monitor cpu for spikes and see if any background processes is causing the stutter? 
when you say nothing useful is output to console do you mean you are running 'steam' command in terminal and watching the output there?
Any cpu frequency scaling?
Double check the archwiki at https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Ga … g_policies
Special highlight to core affinity and schedule daemon/policy.

Sorry I'm not much help, just doing some "what ifs" with you.

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#8 2013-02-27 16:03:08

BoTuLoX
Member
Registered: 2013-02-26
Posts: 7

Re: Worse gaming performance than Kubuntu 12.10?

frank604 wrote:

Have you compared processes/services between arch and kubuntu?  Could you monitor cpu for spikes and see if any background processes is causing the stutter? 
when you say nothing useful is output to console do you mean you are running 'steam' command in terminal and watching the output there?
Any cpu frequency scaling?
Double check the archwiki at https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Ga … g_policies
Special highlight to core affinity and schedule daemon/policy.

Sorry I'm not much help, just doing some "what ifs" with you.

Compared to my laptops' Kubuntu 12.10 (I don't have Kubuntu installed anymore on my main machine) the only extra thing I had was Akonadi since I forgot to disable it. Disabled everything, file indexing, plus a couple of stuff I found I didn't need. No change in performance.

Yup, running steam into terminal. Games launched by steam output on there too.

CPU's not scaling, it's a regular Phenom II X2 on a desktop and nothing's wrong on BIOS.

I did not need to do any scheduling on Kubuntu for the game to run. I am not aware of Kubuntu using some sort of daemon that does that automatically, if there is, I'll install it, but ferk no I will not mess with it for every game I want to play. This is a global issue, plus I've tried running TF2 with multiple multithreading settings and that didn't do anything (plus on Kubuntu I had it set up to use my cores on the most efficient way, and I'm on the same settings on Arch).

Thanks.

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#9 2013-02-27 16:38:32

s1ln7m4s7r
Member
Registered: 2013-02-22
Posts: 262

Re: Worse gaming performance than Kubuntu 12.10?

Just an idea, sometimes it may be an harddrive performance issue instead of graphics. Maybe you could install a disk performance app and see if there is any spike in performance during gameplay.

Also don't forget about this being rolling-release, and sometimes new is not best, sometimes new versions of drivers, etc, brings performance issues.

Last edited by s1ln7m4s7r (2013-02-27 16:42:28)

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#10 2013-02-27 17:12:17

frank604
Member
From: BC, Canada
Registered: 2011-04-20
Posts: 1,212

Re: Worse gaming performance than Kubuntu 12.10?

If it is same drivers same kernel same kde, then my only guess would be a configuration difference somewhere. I do not know where to begin searching. Since there is a working environment through kubuntu my messy but straightforward method of triangulating the cause of your issue would be to do a side by side comparison.

Since kubuntu is top down and arch is ground up, even if it works out of the box in kubuntu you have to understand it is heavily configured kde plus base. Arch is just the base and vanilla kde. My guess is to delve deeper. Compare modules drivers and confs across the board. Would take time and might be fruitless but it would be an adventure.

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