Arch Linux

kas21

Member

Registered: 2014-02-07

Posts: 12

Gnome 3 Performance with Intel Graphics

I have a Dell E6430 with Intel HD 4000 graphics.  Graphics performance overall is pretty decent but I notice when I connect my laptop to two external displays the performance in Gnome drops.  Specifically, when I hit the Super (windows) key to bring up the Window Overlay  the animation is pretty choppy.  It feels like the FPS are dropping off--it's just not smooth like it is when I am using the laptops monitor and no external displays. 

I have messed around with a few settings such as UXA vs SNA and enabling/disabing vsync and I have gotten mixed results.  From what I can tell--SNA gives the best performance overall and appears to be the out of the box config, however, this is where I noticed the choppyness in the animations.  If I revert to UXA "glamor" mode with vsync enabled I get really smooth animations but overall graphics performance in other areas is much worse.  Things like resizing windows and scrolling do not perform as well.

I am trying to have my cake and eat it too.  I want smooth animations and good performance overall in the UI and I cannot seem to achieve that.  It's one or the other.  I also cannot find a way to enable VSYNC in SNA mode.  I could be misunderstanding the settings but when SNA is enabled it seems vsync is not.  If I switch to UXA, vsync then works.

Does anyone have any thoughts on how to improve the performance?

Jodell

Member

Registered: 2009-10-09

Posts: 285

Re: Gnome 3 Performance with Intel Graphics

AFAIK vsync is on by defualt with the intel driver.

kas21

Member

Registered: 2014-02-07

Posts: 12

Re: Gnome 3 Performance with Intel Graphics

What's the best way to tell if vsync is enabled?  I've been using

grep -i vsync /var/log/Xorg.0.log

and seeing what comes back.  When UXA is on I get many, many lines like this:

   252.047] (II) intel(0): Modeline "800x600"x0.0   40.00  800 840 968 1056  600 601 605 628 +hsync +vsync (37.9 kHz e)
[   252.047] (II) intel(0): Modeline "640x480"x0.0   31.50  640 656 720 840  480 481 484 500 -hsync -vsync (37.5 kHz e)
[   252.047] (II) intel(0): Modeline "640x480"x0.0   25.18  640 656 752 800  480 490 492 525 -hsync -vsync (31.5 kHz e)
[   252.047] (II) intel(0): Modeline "720x400"x0.0   28.32  720 738 846 900  400 412 414 449 -hsync +vsync (31.5 kHz e)
[   252.047] (II) intel(0): Modeline "1280x1024"x0.0  135.00  1280 1296 1440 1688  1024 1025 1028 1066 +hsync +vsync (80.0 kHz e)
[   252.047] (II) intel(0): Modeline "1024x768"x0.0   78.75  1024 1040 1136 1312  768 769 772 800 +hsync +vsync (60.0 kHz e)
[   252.047] (II) intel(0): Modeline "1024x768"x0.0   65.00  1024 1048 1184 1344  768 771 777 806 -hsync -vsync (48.4 kHz e)
[   252.047] (II) intel(0): Modeline "800x600"x0.0   49.50  800 816 896 1056  600 601 604 625 +hsync +vsync (46.9 kHz e)
[   252.047] (II) intel(0): Modeline "1152x864"x0.0  108.00  1152 1216 1344 1600  864 865 868 900 +hsync +vsync (67.5 kHz e)
[   252.047] (II) intel(0): Modeline "1280x1024"x0.0  108.00  1280 1328 1440 1688  1024 1025 1028 1066 +hsync +vsync (64.0 kHz e)
[   252.047] (II) intel(0): Modeline "1920x1080"x60.0  172.80  1920 2040 2248 2576  1080 1081 1084 1118 -hsync +vsync (67.1 kHz e)

When SNA is enabled, I get two lines and they reference the resolution of my internal laptop display and I get no hits for my external screens (running at 1920x1080).

cjpembo

Member

Registered: 2008-08-06

Posts: 105

Re: Gnome 3 Performance with Intel Graphics

Get rid of Gnome animations completely

gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.interface enable-animations false

Due to a bug somewhere, this setting wont stick.  So I just add it to my Gnome startup applications, detailed here:

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/GN … logging_in

henriqueleng

Member

Registered: 2014-02-18

Posts: 77

Re: Gnome 3 Performance with Intel Graphics

Get rid of Gnome animations completely

gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.interface enable-animations false

Due to a bug somewhere, this setting wont stick.  So I just add it to my Gnome startup applications, detailed here:

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/GN … logging_in

Try this !

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