Arch Linux

scippie

Member

Registered: 2019-06-07

Posts: 168

Trouble on my dual gpu laptop system since nvidia 455

As the title says, ever since nvidia 455 came out, I am having strange issues.
I use nvidia prime with prime-run to use the nvidia gpu.

1. I'm a game developer and ever since that update, I no longer seem to have multisampling support. I use SDL2 and it no longer wants to create an SDL window when I enable multisampling. It still works fine on the Intel GPU
2. When I disable multisampling, the frame rate is 'very low' (my current test-project has 9000 fps on my desktop pc with nvidia gtx 1060 (note: that machine still runs on nvidia-440), also an Arch system, and it now only has around 370 fps on this laptop which has an nvidia rtx 2070 and should thus be much better). I can't tell what the frame rate was before the update but I used to get into the thousands before. I also feel like the framerate on the intel gpu went down too, but I can't really prove it. My test project isn't that heavy, but when in full screen, I only get about 47 fps where it should really be much much higher.
3. Steam also has issues ever since, when playing a video in the STORE, my nvidia fan starts spinning up while I don't start Steam with prime enabled!! This did not happen with the 450 driver!
4. Also, Steam sometimes shows empty windows and I need to quit and restart Steam to see anything. Sometimes when someone starts to chat with me, I can't respond as the window is just an empty frame.

Some specs: Arch, up to date, normal kernel, nvidia rtx 2070, intel i9 5Ghz, 4K screen, i3-wm.

I read the news about nvidia 455 and kernel 5.9 support at https://www.archlinux.org/news/nvidia-4 … h-linux-59 but I don't think my problem is related to CUDA or OpenCL (I don't use it).
I still tried using the LTS kernel however, but then nvidia prima no longer works.

I also tried going back to nvidia 450 and 440 from the AUR but I can't get them to work because I seem to miss some 450/440 utils to make prime work. This can be because of my incompetence, but I am usually ok with these things.

Any ideas? Tips? Need more info? Any help is appreciated!

Last edited by scippie (2020-10-25 17:22:45)

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 25,085

Re: Trouble on my dual gpu laptop system since nvidia 455

If you test to go back you indeed need to make sure you get the relevantly matching -utils version, I'm not sure what else to comment here this works like usual, get the matching packages built and install them.

However that huge of a drop does rather read like it's opting for software rendering which can have causes that aren't related to the driver version is

prime-run glxinfo -B

showing that it's properly using the nvidia gpu? FWIW you don't seem to be the first person with this kind of a perf drop https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=259916 though I can't say I've noticed any on my GTX TITAN X GM200

scippie

Member

Registered: 2019-06-07

Posts: 168

Re: Trouble on my dual gpu laptop system since nvidia 455

Sorry, I hadn't seen that post.

$ prime-run glxinfo -B
name of display: :0
display: :0  screen: 0
direct rendering: Yes
Memory info (GL_NVX_gpu_memory_info):
    Dedicated video memory: 8192 MB
    Total available memory: 8192 MB
    Currently available dedicated video memory: 7973 MB
OpenGL vendor string: NVIDIA Corporation
OpenGL renderer string: GeForce RTX 2070/PCIe/SSE2
OpenGL core profile version string: 4.6.0 NVIDIA 455.28
OpenGL core profile shading language version string: 4.60 NVIDIA
OpenGL core profile context flags: (none)
OpenGL core profile profile mask: core profile

OpenGL version string: 4.6.0 NVIDIA 455.28
OpenGL shading language version string: 4.60 NVIDIA
OpenGL context flags: (none)
OpenGL profile mask: (none)

OpenGL ES profile version string: OpenGL ES 3.2 NVIDIA 455.28
OpenGL ES profile shading language version string: OpenGL ES GLSL ES 3.20

Seems fine.

I also forgot to mention that my other machine that has good performance is still running on nvidia 440.

scippie

Member

Registered: 2019-06-07

Posts: 168

Re: Trouble on my dual gpu laptop system since nvidia 455

If you test to go back you indeed need to make sure you get the relevantly matching -utils version, I'm not sure what else to comment here this works like usual, get the matching packages built and install them.

Well, for 450, in the AUR, there doesn't seem to be a utils-version (and it won't work with the 455 utils if I ignore the version, prime-run glxinfo will get errors).
For 440, there is one, but I kept getting conflict-errors. I'm trying again...

Edit: tried again. The nvidia-440xx-dkms needs nvidia-440xx-utils (logical), but it expects nvidia utils 440.100-1 while the package installs 440.100. If I ignore this version check, the dkms module installs, but also here, prime-run glxinfo will get errors, so the nvidia gpu won't work.

Still, I hope there is a solution for the 455 driver of course.

Last edited by scippie (2020-10-25 17:56:44)

scippie

Member

Registered: 2019-06-07

Posts: 168

Re: Trouble on my dual gpu laptop system since nvidia 455

I would be very happy for now if I could get the 440 or 450 driver to work.
Can anyone help me with that? As I mentioned in the above post:

1. nvidia-450xx-dkms (AUR) misses nvidia-450xx-utils (can't find this package on AUR) and if I just install nvidia-utils (455) and ignore the version check, the driver won't work (after reboot).
2. nvidia-440xx-dkms (AUR) will also only work with nvidia-440xx-utils (AUR) if I ignore the version check because nvidia-440xx-utils installs 440.100-1 but nvidia-440xx-dkms expects 440.100 (without the -1). If I ignore the version check, the driver won't work (after reboot).

With "won't work", I mean that if I try 'prime-run glxinfo', I get an error instead of the usual glxinfo output I do get with the 455-driver.

As other are able to do it, I am quite sure that I'm doing something wrong. I don't know much about dkms, but it seems to be listed when I do 'dkms status'.

Any help is appreciated!