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gpetruff

Member

Registered: 2016-02-06

Posts: 31

[SOLVED]Doubt if GPU is being used or not.

Hey everyone !
My topic here is just a doubt that I have searched a lot in the internet but so far I have not been able to find any solid answer.
I have a notebook with a GPU and i have bumblebee installed and running correctly.
Particularly I don't play too many games but I use VMWare a lot for work, study and etc.
I try to run the vmware with primusrun to easy the process on the CPU.

$primusrun vmware

The software works fine but when the command nvidia-smi is used  I don't see any process on it but the temperature of the GPU has increased

+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+             
| NVIDIA-SMI 384.59                 Driver Version: 384.59                    |             
|-------------------------------+----------------------+----------------------+             
| GPU  Name        Persistence-M| Bus-Id        Disp.A | Volatile Uncorr. ECC |             
| Fan  Temp  Perf  Pwr:Usage/Cap|         Memory-Usage | GPU-Util  Compute M. |             
|===============================+======================+======================|             
|   0  GeForce GT 635M     Off  | 00000000:01:00.0 N/A |                  N/A |             
| N/A   78C    P0    N/A /  N/A |      0MiB /  1985MiB |     N/A      Default |             
+-------------------------------+----------------------+----------------------+             
                                                                                            
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+             
| Processes:                                                       GPU Memory |             
|  GPU       PID  Type  Process name                               Usage      |             
|=============================================================================|             
|    0                  Not Supported                                         |             
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+      

My doubt is :  The way that I am using the primus command is really being used or if it is pointless to be used like this?

Thank you !
Regards

Last edited by gpetruff (2017-08-03 12:24:59)

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 25,435

Re: [SOLVED]Doubt if GPU is being used or not.

Unless you enable OpenGL support within VMWare I doubt that your GPU will actively be used in any way or shape. You will see the temp rise because you have woken up the GPU and gave it "something to work". How does it look like if you use something that is guaranteed to run on the GPU like

primusrun glxgears

? (There's also a chance that nvidia-smi simply can't correctly query GPU processes in such a way, but I'd assume vmware to be a corner case that really isn't indicative of anything)

You can't magically "ease use on the cpu", your nvidia card isn't a general purpose CPU, and will not be usable as such.

gpetruff

Member

Registered: 2016-02-06

Posts: 31

Re: [SOLVED]Doubt if GPU is being used or not.

Hey V1del .
Using this commad makes the glxgears appear just fine.
I have been able to test some 3D games and see the difference when using a GPU instead of CPU.
One thing thought, you said "Unless you enable OpenGL support within VMWare"  by that you are talking about enablig the 3D support within VMWare or it is something else ?

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 25,435

Re: [SOLVED]Doubt if GPU is being used or not.

Yes that's what I mean, and even then you would likely have to run something that actually attempts to do 3D within the virtual machine itself to see any use there.

If your original question has been answered, please mark the topic as [SOLVED] by editing the title of your initial post.