Arch Linux

cptkirchhoff

Member

Registered: 2021-08-24

Posts: 3

Nvidia graphics inexplicably horrible performance

I recently started using an arch desktop I hadn't used for 4-5 months. I updated the system without issue (including nvidia drivers going from 460 to 470), but now no game is playable. Games I previously played on this system (i74790k/750Ti/16gb ram) without any issue whatsoever are now getting frame rates below 10 fps. The games I have tested are half life 2, cs:go, some old total war titles, like rome and medieval 2, civ 5, and even assaultcube (if anyone remembers that haha) is only managing ~30 fps. I'm completely at a loss. I'm not playing on some 4k 120 hz crazy monitor--just standard 1920x1080. I have found some mention (https://www.reddit.com/r/linux_gaming/comments/9wjpkz/poor_gaming_performance_is_this_a_cpu_or_gpu/ and https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=242007) that the nvidia drivers are not paging correctly by default, so the cpu is actually the bottleneck, but I have successfully changed the NVreg_UsePageAttributeTable=1 option without any change. I have tried reverting the drivers to the last set I have in /var/cache/pacman/pkg, but x failed to start, so I reinstalled the 470 version which predictably did not help. I've spent all day trying to figure this out, and I have absolutely no idea what to try next. Could this be related to vulkan somehow? Should I try switching to nouveau? Thanks

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 23,951

Re: Nvidia graphics inexplicably horrible performance

Post your xorg.0.log and

pacman -Qs nvidia
sudo journalctl -b

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/List_o … n_services

The usual explanation for this is that you run a broken xorg autoconfig that doesn't load the modules properly or you have an early detection race which would mandate setting up https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/NVIDIA … de_setting including the modules in the initramfs.

cptkirchhoff

Member

Registered: 2021-08-24

Posts: 3

Re: Nvidia graphics inexplicably horrible performance

Thank you for your reply.

First of all, here are the files you requested (thank you for making me reread the wiki, I didn't know about ix.io):

• pacman -Qs nvidia

• journalctl -b

• cat /var/log/Xorg.0.log

I have tried recreating the Xorg.conf file with the nvidia-xconfig command. I also noticed that this command preserves user added changes to the file, so I removed it entirely before recreating. Another thing I tried was moving the /etc/X11/xorg.conf to the /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/20-nvidia.conf.
Regarding the NVIDIA arch wiki link, I did not try adding any hooks to the /etc/mkinitcpio.conf file and remaking the initial ramdisk, but I did try their first suggestion which was to pass the

options nvidia-drm modeset=1

kernel parameter. This did not make any difference. I checked that I successfully modified the modeset by the output of

cat /sys/module/nvidia_drm/parameters/modeset

which changed from no to giving some system information. I passed this option in via /usr/lib/modprobe.d/nvidia.conf. I saw elsewhere people were passing kernel parameters via /etc/modprobe.d/nvidia.conf, but that did not work for me (graphics entirely failed to load at boot). Is that method only acceptable on debian/ubuntu?

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 23,951

Re: Nvidia graphics inexplicably horrible performance

Remove the generated config and do not rerun nvidia-xconfig, it's not necessary. You can definitely pass that option as part of /etc/modprobe.d/. But to fix the early race properly you need to do the entire second part of adding the modules to your initramfs via editing mkinitcpio.conf.

cptkirchhoff

Member

Registered: 2021-08-24

Posts: 3

Re: Nvidia graphics inexplicably horrible performance

Well I added the four modules to the mkinitcpio.conf and that fixed everything
Thank you
What are the processes that are racing? Is there something else trying to get control of the graphics card?

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 23,951

Re: Nvidia graphics inexplicably horrible performance

No the system reaches xorg/graphical target before the graphics card is actually properly/fully initialized, so the bits to set up the screen are present, but whatever's needed to actually enable proper acceleration aren't. This can happen with every graphics card and predominantly if you have your root on a fast SSD or so. It's not quite clear what actually and actively causes this, but since simply loading the graphics modules earlier can avoid these issues that's pretty much the suggestion when you run into this issue.