Nvidia 340xx/343xx and Gnome 3 issues

SpaceCadet · 2014-10-14 20:24:41

In order to try out Gnome 3, I recently installed Arch on my PC which has an Nvidia card in it (a GeForce GTX 770) and I've been noticing some strange intermittent performance issues with the most recent Nvidia driver in combination with Gnome 3, and I was wondering if this sounded familiar to anyone?

The problems can be described as follows:

The most noticeable thing is that dragging windows in Gnome3 has a rubber band effect to it. When dragging, it feels as if the window is not "glued" to the mouse pointer, but lags it. So if I move the mouse pointer around quickly, the window has to play catch up, as if I'm dragging it around with a rubber band. It's very visible, and it's always present.

A more intermittent one is that sometimes the output of gnome-terminal will lag. For example: I type 'ls' followed by enter and it will pause half a second or so before displaying the result. It's just long enough to be noticeable and annoying. Because this one is so very intermittent, I really thought I was going crazy for a while, with my terminal becoming unresponsive all the time. It can be fine for the first 5-10 minutes and then it starts popping up, and it will generally get worse and be reproducable from then on.

When I was troubleshooting this problem, I started a tmux session and connected to it with both urxvt and gnome-terminal, side by side and I typed commands in both windows. I could clearly see that urxvt always displayed the output immediately, while gnome-terminal lagged. So this convinced me that it was not a problem with my shell or utilities, but rather something graphical.

Another one that is similar to the previous one, is that switching between tabbed pages in Gnome 3 preference panels sometimes lags. For instance, in gnome-terminal you can go into profile preferences, click on the "colors" tab and it will pause for a moment. This problem is intermittent too, like the previous one.

After some more troubleshooting, I managed to narrow down the problem to the graphics driver that is in use:
The problem does NOT occur with: the Nouveau driver, the Nvidia 304xx branch and even on my laptop with a lowly Intel card everything is snappy and perfect.
The problem DOES occur with: Nvidia 340xx branch, Nvidia 343xx branch. It doesn't matter if installed from the Arch repositories or downloaded from the Nvidia site.

I haven't really tried to reproduce the problem with other desktop enviromnents that use compositing, but I don't have any problems with simple window managers like WindowMaker, mwm, twm, openbox, ... nor in simple terminal emulators like urxvt or plain old xterm.

For the time being, I have reverted to the Nvidia 304.123 driver from the repos as it's the most usable of the bunch.

SpaceCadet · 2014-10-18 10:51:16

Just thought I'd update this for anyone who may be experiencing the same issue and finds this thread:

I did some more experimenting with this, and I've found that setting the option RenderAccel to false in my xorg.conf fixed the problem with the lag in the terminal and the UI. It does not fix the rubberband effect. I don't know yet if this breaks anything else, but I've seen no performance regressions anywhere else. The compositing window manager is still fluid, and my games still run properly.

For reference, this is what the nvidia section in my xorg.conf looks like now:

Section "Device"
        Identifier "Nvidia Card"
        Driver "nvidia"
        VendorName "NVIDIA Corporation"
        Option "RenderAccel" "false"
EndSection

Rhythagoras · 2014-10-21 02:52:05

The Nvidia drivers you have 'reverted' to are the correct drivers for your card, the ones you should have used in the first place. They are the drivers for modern Nvidia cards. Here's what the legacy drivers are for...

mrunion · 2014-10-21 17:18:17

Rhythagoras wrote:

The Nvidia drivers you have 'reverted' to are the correct drivers for your card, the ones you should have used in the first place. They are the drivers for modern Nvidia cards. Here's what the legacy drivers are for...

Nope, 343 supports his card. Why is there so much misinformation about what cards are supported?

Go here: http://www.geforce.com/drivers
Search for your card.
See drivers.

GTX770 is supported by 343.xx and 340.xx.

Last edited by mrunion (2014-10-21 17:18:42)

Rhythagoras · 2014-10-21 22:34:53

I apologize, I misread the last line of post #1, I read it as Space Cadet reverted to the Nvidia 343.123 drivers (or something like that) and I incorrectly assumed Space Cadet was using the nvidia package from the official repository. I'm new here. Guess it is a good idea for me to reread my posts before submitting.

What I should have said, is that the drivers you have reverted to are legacy drivers. For your card, you should use the regular nvidia drivers from the official repository.

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/NVIDIA#Installing

- Space Cadet: Have you tried installing the regular nvidia package with

pacman -S nvidia

mrunion · 2014-10-21 23:11:32

Definitely no need to apologize. I wasn't frustrated or nothing. I;ve just seen alot of threads telling people their cards needed older drivers, and they didn't.

It's all good, man!

SpaceCadet · 2014-10-22 19:08:39

Rhythagoras wrote:

- Space Cadet: Have you tried installing the regular nvidia package with
pacman -S nvidia

Thanks for the suggestion, but yes I do know how to switch back and forth between the different drivers, that's not the issue. I'm having an issue with the driver that should be the right one for my card.

Anyways, I'm on 343.22 now, and with RenderAccel turned off I'm not experiencing the lag in gnome-terminal. I haven't discovered anything else breaking, so I guess it's an acceptable workaround.

Rhythagoras · 2014-10-22 19:49:39

The manual download link on nvidia's manual drive selection page listed in the Arch Wiki
(This one)

yields different results for many cards than nvidia's manual driver selection here

Because on the geforce.com page, it lists the 343.13 drivers for the GTX 770

I suppose the wiki link just needs to be changed?

Last edited by Rhythagoras (2014-10-22 20:27:35)

Arch Linux

#1 2014-10-14 20:24:41

Nvidia 340xx/343xx and Gnome 3 issues

#2 2014-10-18 10:51:16

Re: Nvidia 340xx/343xx and Gnome 3 issues

#3 2014-10-21 02:52:05

Re: Nvidia 340xx/343xx and Gnome 3 issues

#4 2014-10-21 17:18:17

Re: Nvidia 340xx/343xx and Gnome 3 issues

#5 2014-10-21 22:34:53

Re: Nvidia 340xx/343xx and Gnome 3 issues

#6 2014-10-21 23:11:32

Re: Nvidia 340xx/343xx and Gnome 3 issues

#7 2014-10-22 19:08:39

Re: Nvidia 340xx/343xx and Gnome 3 issues

#8 2014-10-22 19:49:39

Re: Nvidia 340xx/343xx and Gnome 3 issues

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