Bumblebee wth Intel + NVidia: Problematic performance on Steam games

DVNO · 2015-11-23 00:20:45

The setup

I have bumblebee nicely setup with Intel + NVidia proprietary drivers, everything works fine. I'm running Xfce + compiz with minimal configs plus no 3DCube. Steam and XCOM: Enemy Unknown are both installed correctly. My Laptop is (by design) a Clevo geared with a 4th gen Intel Core2Duo i5, 8GB (2x4GB) Kingston HyperX RAM, Intel (3600?) series shared CPU graphics and a GeForce 750M with 2GB dedicated video RAM card. Hardware-wise, I'm on the clear. So far so good.

The scenario

I open Steam. Run XCOM: Enemy Unknown with

PRIMUS_SYNC=1 primusrun %command%

from my Steam library. What immediately follows is what you'd expect, game running smoothly. 40sec to 1min into game I start getting massive framerate drops, lasting a few seconds each and not even a 2sec interval between each other. Gameplay is positively ruined. Graphics settings are on medium, so that's obviously not it. I start searching around on ArchWiki since I'm clearly missing something.

What I've done so far

Tried running

optirun -b none nvidia-settings -c :8

on a terminal on another desktop and setting PowerMizer to "Prefer Maximum Performance". Seemingly the power level is fixed at 2 (from 0, 1 and 2), which is max. I try running the game again, it starts fine but quickly the problem reappears. With the game still open, I check back on the nvidia-settings window (which I didn't close), and the power level is now floating between 0, 1 and 2, which is undesired. What I previously saw was a false positive, since the discrete card wasn't still in use, anything shown in the PowerMizer had to be ignored. So I can't seem to be able set PowerMizer to max performance through nvidia-settings app. Cool.

Intel and NVidia wiki pages indicate how to properly write X11 config files for each, but Bumblebee's page doesn't indicate on how to write configs for both and get them to work together. I've not found this clearly written anywhere, in fact. I tried writing a 20-intel.conf AND a 21-nvidia-conf, indicating the correct BusID's of each on the files and setting

Option "RegistryDwords" "PerfLevelSrc=0x2222"

as recommended on the NVidia file. Restart everything, and same problem occurs, power-level still floating.

OBS: I have dualboot setup with Arch + Win10 EDU and the game runs smoothly on Windows. I have not tried other games on Arch (don't see how this is a game problem though, XCOM: Enemy Unknown IS natively available on Linux).

Can anyone give me a hint on this? Maybe someone had the same problem? I don't know nor have found a way to correctly approach this. It's really frustrating to have to boot Windows JUST to run Steam games when I have a perfectly functional and nicely customized Arch install. It's really the only reason why I have the dualboot setup. I really really dislike Windows nowadays.

Thanks in advance for the attention.

DVNO · 2015-12-01 15:06:50

Tried other games, tried following tutorials on Gentoo Wiki and official NVidia docs, tried installing nvidia-beta drivers. Problem still persists... I honestly cannot find a way remedy the condition... Anyone?

Perruweb · 2015-12-10 05:25:52

Hi,

Bumblebee is old and garbage. You should switch to a native Optimus solution.

LinuxakSVK · 2015-12-10 18:44:12

native optimus with proprietary nvidia drivers? how?

wwn · 2015-12-10 19:00:40

Perruweb wrote:

Hi,
Bumblebee is old and garbage. You should switch to a native Optimus solution.

Would not sign for DVNO's hardware. I have some old laptops running fine with bb.

Last edited by wwn (2015-12-10 19:01:29)

paden · 2015-12-16 00:07:47

I just tried running KSP with optirun, using optirun %command% and normally, with bumblebee, I have glitchy artifacts and low framerate. The game launched smoothly, ran smoothly, and had no issues at all. Definitely a fan of optirun.

Utini · 2015-12-19 14:54:08

Perruweb wrote:

Hi,
Bumblebee is old and garbage. You should switch to a native Optimus solution.

I am on a Dell XPS15 9530 with NVIDIA GT750M ... what else should I use for optimus technology besides bumblebee ?!

DVNO · 2015-12-21 03:08:59

LinuxakSVK wrote:

native optimus with proprietary nvidia drivers? how?

Utini wrote:

I am on a Dell XPS15 9530 with NVIDIA GT750M ... what else should I use for optimus technology besides bumblebee ?!

The NVIDIA Optimus Wiki page lists your options, and instructs on native optimus usage with proprietary drivers should you choose to do so... It is what Ubuntu does, simply because it acknowledges the faulty integration between Steam and Bumblebee, and Steam games do run on Ubuntu very smoothly (It's also probably related to the fact that Ubuntu is the only Linux distro that receives some degree of official support from Steam development, aside from SteamOS, of course).

wwn wrote:

Would not sign for DVNO's hardware. I have some old laptops running fine with bb.

I don't see why, it's solid. Nevertheless, I found, later, that the problem was with Steam runtime, which I could not remedy, so...

Perruweb wrote:

Bumblebee is old and garbage. You should switch to a native Optimus solution.

...I tried the native solution and ended up running into this problem, to which "Screen 1" fix did not work.

I've switched to Windows 7 (It's still windows, but it's good) with arch on a VMWare virtual machine. I have to say it does fulfill my needs. I'll probably switch back to Arch when I've got a risk-free setup (AKA anything other than a Clevo optimus-eanbled-laptop), but since the laptop is the only machine I have right now, I'm going with full support (for Steam games, at least). Plus, I can play my Origin games, which I've missed (AND are, unfortunately, unavailable for Linux).

It's sad really... But with the rise of free-software business model, some big developers just might, in the near future, widen their sights. By that I mean things like: Steam actually developing for Linux, and not for a crappy limited and useless distro (SteamOS) like they've been doing, NVidia and game devs properly developing for Linux, things like that...

Bumblebee, also, is seriously craving updates. Maybe increasing usage will lead to a more robust and well maintained version...

Last edited by DVNO (2015-12-21 03:15:19)

DVNO · 2015-12-21 03:17:44

paden wrote:

I just tried running KSP with optirun, using optirun %command% and normally, with bumblebee, I have glitchy artifacts and low framerate. The game launched smoothly, ran smoothly, and had no issues at all. Definitely a fan of optirun.

I don't understand... The game ran "smoothly" with glitchy artifacts and low framerate? Can you elaborate?

mrunion · 2015-12-21 15:47:31

@DVNO: AFAIK, there is currently a bug preventing your suggestion form working. Until it's fixed, only Bumblee is a solution as far as I can tell. (See https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/47151)

DVNO · 2016-02-11 13:26:36

mrunion wrote:

@DVNO: AFAIK, there is currently a bug preventing your suggestion form working. Until it's fixed, only Bumblee is a solution as far as I can tell. (See https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/47151)

Yeah, I'm tracking it, also... I'm back on Arch and running Bumblebee, it seems things are functioning properly now (mostly... Bumblebee sometimes doesn't swtich off discrete card automatically after using, etc...). The Nvidia drivers received plenty of updates lately and what broke this time appears to be Source games on native Steam runtime... No perfect solution, I guess but, still, better than not working at all...

Arch Linux

#1 2015-11-23 00:20:45