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#1 2020-02-06 19:05:05

Polarity
Member
Registered: 2019-05-03
Posts: 32

[SOLVED] Sluggish UI with Gnome and nvidia recently

For a few months now, I experience sluggish UI behavior that wasn't present before. This includes the cursor being stuck for a few moments as well as general unresponsiveness. This usually occurs most often when I start or close applications, most notably those that make use of GPU compute. DaVinci Resolve or Blender for example.

I believe it started around the time Gnome 3.34 was released, but I can't put an exact date on it.
This might or might not have anything to do with Gnome but could also be related to the nvidia driver. I've noticed, when the Performance Level changes (In Nvidia X Server Settings), that can cause some stuttering. Another curiosity is that my GPU idles at around 32%, but as soon as I move a window or do basically anything, it drops down to 3% again.

I have already googled quite a bit, but found nothing useful so far.

My main question here is where can I even begin to debug this? Any suggestions would help.
Thanks!


___

Some system info:

Last full system update was yesterday evening.
AMD Threadripper 1950x
64GB RAM
nVidia 1080Ti with the proprietary driver (440.59)

xorg.conf:

Section "ServerLayout"
    Identifier     "Layout0"
    Screen      0  "Screen0" 0 0
    InputDevice    "Keyboard0" "CoreKeyboard"
    InputDevice    "Mouse0" "CorePointer"
    Option         "Xinerama" "0"
EndSection

Section "Files"
EndSection

Section "Module"
    Load           "dbe"
    Load           "extmod"
    Load           "type1"
    Load           "freetype"
    Load           "glx"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"

    # generated from default
    Identifier     "Mouse0"
    Driver         "mouse"
    Option         "Protocol" "auto"
    Option         "Device" "/dev/psaux"
    Option         "Emulate3Buttons" "no"
    Option         "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"

    # generated from default
    Identifier     "Keyboard0"
    Driver         "kbd"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"

    # HorizSync source: edid, VertRefresh source: edid
    Identifier     "Monitor0"
    VendorName     "Unknown"
    ModelName      "Eizo EV2785"
    HorizSync       31.0 - 134.0
    VertRefresh     29.0 - 61.0
    Option         "DPMS"
EndSection

Section "Device"
    Identifier     "Device0"
    Driver         "nvidia"
    VendorName     "NVIDIA Corporation"
    BoardName      "GeForce GTX 1080 Ti"
EndSection

Section "Screen"

# Removed Option "metamodes" "DP-2: nvidia-auto-select +3840+0, DP-0: nvidia-auto-select +0+0"
    Identifier     "Screen0"
    Device         "Device0"
    Monitor        "Monitor0"
    DefaultDepth    24
    Option         "Coolbits" "4"
    Option         "Stereo" "0"
    Option         "nvidiaXineramaInfoOrder" "DFP-5"
    Option         "metamodes" "DP-2: nvidia-auto-select +3840+0 {ForceCompositionPipeline=On, ForceFullCompositionPipeline=On}, DP-0: nvidia-auto-select +0+0 {ForceCompositionPipeline=On, ForceFullCompositionPipeline=On}"
    Option         "SLI" "Off"
    Option         "MultiGPU" "Off"
    Option         "BaseMosaic" "off"
    SubSection     "Display"
        Depth       24
    EndSubSection
EndSection

Last edited by Polarity (2020-02-10 15:33:49)

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#2 2020-02-07 14:14:41

atrotet
Member
From: Reunion island
Registered: 2010-12-28
Posts: 26

Re: [SOLVED] Sluggish UI with Gnome and nvidia recently

Before going any further find the culprit process that makes your computer slow down .use 'top' next time it happens. Could be anything.The symptoms you describe could be due to heavy disk access like a program spamming a log file...
If after running top you still cant find an anomaly, try the nouveau driver/ intel driver if you have an intel cppu/different DE/different OS to make sure it isnt hardware related.

Last edited by atrotet (2020-02-07 14:22:35)

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#3 2020-02-07 15:08:43

V1del
Forum Moderator
Registered: 2012-10-16
Posts: 21,427

Re: [SOLVED] Sluggish UI with Gnome and nvidia recently

It's generally a pretty big hit to perf to enable any form of composition pipeline while already using a compositing WM. Why did you enable those? Does it help if you do not enable those?

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#4 2020-02-10 15:33:26

Polarity
Member
Registered: 2019-05-03
Posts: 32

Re: [SOLVED] Sluggish UI with Gnome and nvidia recently

Thank you for your answers.
Yes, I checked if other processes were hogging resources but nothing obvious turned up. Thanks for the tip with the drivers.

Regarding composition pipeline: That seemed to do the trick. I turned it off and things got better. I had it on to prevent screen tearing which is really unbearable for me when watching (and checking) video files. (Is there any other way to prevent this?)
When I first turned it on, I can't recall that coinciding with the performance drops I had. Usually when I change something like that, I'm watching out for this. Maybe I didn't this time, or something changed later on.

Thank you for your help! I'll mark as solved. Have a great day!

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#5 2020-02-10 17:04:52

V1del
Forum Moderator
Registered: 2012-10-16
Posts: 21,427

Re: [SOLVED] Sluggish UI with Gnome and nvidia recently

The reason the tearing happens on videos is that mutter unredirs/disables compositing for fullscreen windows by default. Not entirely sure if there is a more accessible setting somewhere in GNOME but i've found https://github.com/kazysmaster/gnome-sh … unredirect that could be tried to disable this.

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#6 2020-02-10 17:35:27

Thorsten Reinbold
Member
From: Germany
Registered: 2011-12-06
Posts: 353

Re: [SOLVED] Sluggish UI with Gnome and nvidia recently

I love this forum. big_smile Problems are solved here almost by accident. Thanks for the link to the Gnome-Shell-Extension, V1del! Finally flicker-free videos again.

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#7 2020-02-11 13:19:52

Polarity
Member
Registered: 2019-05-03
Posts: 32

Re: [SOLVED] Sluggish UI with Gnome and nvidia recently

Thank you V1del for the tip! Seems to work great so far! Awesome!

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