Arch Linux

Guybrush1973

Member

Registered: 2015-06-01

Posts: 11

XPS 15 9560 - half 2017 - GTX 1050Ti + bumblebee

Hi,
I'm trying to get full working bumblebee station (this is my first experience whit iGPU+dGPU system) and all seems work but performance is unrealistic. With glxgears64 or glxspheres64 i get less fps from NVidia compared to iGPU (Kaby Lake GT2) so dGPU is actually useless. I'm interested in both aspects: start graphical-heavy program over dGPU while whole system use iGPU (gain with poor perfomance) and start Gnome Shell and all others over dGPU (totally not working, iGPU is ever used as primary GPU in all my tests).

I tried all XPS15 dedicated solutions around the web but performance is still really poor.

I'm using clean ArchLinux installation and I'm using Gnome Shell over Wayland (no Xorg). As monitor my configuration is 4K and I'm using a 4K external monitor over USB-C-DisplayPort adapter too, but result is only marginally affected. dGPU is an 1050Ti

Some system info:

laptop: Dell XPS 15 9560
BIOS: 1.3.4 (last from Dell)

kernel: linux-ck 4.11.12 (whit acpi rev ovveride enabled)
kernel params: rw quiet acpi_rev_override=5 acpi_osi=Linux i915.enable_psr=1 i915.edp_vswing=2 i915.preliminary_hw_support=1

driver: nvidia-dkms 384.59

GLXSpheres:

 # glxspheres64 -fs
OpenGL Renderer: Mesa DRI Intel(R) HD Graphics 630 (Kaby Lake GT2)
[...]
55.603901 frames/sec - 461.200993 Mpixels/sec

 # primusrun glxspheres64 -fs
OpenGL Renderer: GeForce GTX 1050/PCIe/SSE2
[...]
45.928422 frames/sec - 380.948704 Mpixels/sec

 # optirun glxspheres64 -fs
OpenGL Renderer: GeForce GTX 1050/PCIe/SSE2
[...]
45.968863 frames/sec - 381.284138 Mpixels/sec

 # nvidia-xrun glxspheres64 -fs
OpenGL Renderer: GeForce GTX 1050/PCIe/SSE2
750~800 fps
(I think this is goal performance I'm looking for)

I tried nvidia-xrun whit gnome-shell too, but with no luck. Many program are unable to start, the others is really slow.

nvidia-xrun gnome-shell --replace

Any other information requests and suggestions will be appreciated ;-)

Bye

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 21,672

Re: XPS 15 9560 - half 2017 - GTX 1050Ti + bumblebee

Don't run wayland, it's not really usable with the nvidia driver and hacking together an XWayland window to run via optirun is likely to not be beneficial to performance. Also obvious disclaimers - glxgears or spheres aren't benchmarks, their framecount isn't really indicative of any potential performance benefits you would notice if you run a real application

From what I know the best way to get max perf out of it is to setup a Xorg session and tell it to use the intel card solely for relaying the image nvidia renders. See https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/NV … ing_nvidia for more information. Also note, that if you use GDM it has a history of this not working correctly (despite disabling the Wayland start and setting up the .desktop file) so you might want to try without a DM (or use one of the other ones where this setup works correctly)

Guybrush1973

Member

Registered: 2015-06-01

Posts: 11

Re: XPS 15 9560 - half 2017 - GTX 1050Ti + bumblebee

Don't run wayland, it's not really usable with the nvidia driver and hacking together an XWayland window to run via optirun is likely to not be beneficial to performance. Also obvious disclaimers - glxgears or spheres aren't benchmarks, their framecount isn't really indicative of any potential performance benefits you would notice if you run a real application

From what I know the best way to get max perf out of it is to setup a Xorg session and tell it to use the intel card solely for relaying the image nvidia renders. See https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/NV … ing_nvidia for more information. Also note, that if you use GDM it has a history of this not working correctly (despite disabling the Wayland start and setting up the .desktop file) so you might want to try without a DM (or use one of the other ones where this setup works correctly)

Ok, so first thing is fix Xorg (I tried using it from GDM out of the box, but after a couple of second of black screen, something goes wrong, gnome-shell is unable to start and GDM raise back again). But I never heard about GDM problem. My system is used by low-profile users too, so I need to start a graphical login at the beginning (at least to get basic performance). What is best choice? LDM or other?

Another couple of questions:
- I'm using GDM with auto-login. Could this affect performance too?
- which is best benchmark could get me reliable info instead glxG/glxS?

Thank's for your help

Regards