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Ridwan Rawriet

Member

Registered: 2021-09-28

Posts: 33

[SOLVED] Nvidia only or nvidia-prime for max performance?

I don't care about battery life as I'm always plugged in, I want to use the option which will give better performance. Will using Nvidia only and launching a graphics intensive program using prime-run be any different? The graphics intensive program will be running using the Nvidia card anyway. Will they give the same performance in the game/program ? Which option should I choose for maximum performance? I heard nvidia-prime gives around 5% less performance than Nvidia only. Is that true?

Last edited by Ridwan Rawriet (2022-01-28 12:06:37)

karabaja4

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From: Croatia

Registered: 2008-09-14

Posts: 1,040

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Re: [SOLVED] Nvidia only or nvidia-prime for max performance?

I have a hybrid nvidia/Intel graphics laptop and require 3D acceleration and tear-free rendering without much hassle, don't use Wayland, and don't care about power consumption. Taking that into consideration, I see little benefit in running the Intel card using PRIME.

If you have similar requirements I recommend you try: https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/nvidia-xrun-git to run Xorg on nvidia card alone*.
You can also use DRM mode setting to mitigate tearing issues.

* assuming you don't use Wayland which I assume works poorly or not at all on nvidia blob drivers.

Last edited by karabaja4 (2021-09-28 11:45:34)

Ridwan Rawriet

Member

Registered: 2021-09-28

Posts: 33

Re: [SOLVED] Nvidia only or nvidia-prime for max performance?

If you have similar requirements I recommend you try: https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/nvidia-xrun-git to run Xorg on nvidia card alone*.

Won't this be enough for using Nvidia only?
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/NVIDIA … phics_only

Thank you for helping me decide.

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 25,081

Re: [SOLVED] Nvidia only or nvidia-prime for max performance?

Nvidia-xrun is the same thing as following the nvidia graphics only section. However the "only" is a bit of a misnomer, on setups where this is necessary you always render something on intel, the question is whether you just render the final image produced by nvidia or the normal desktop and then show a single application that has been offloaded to nvidia, the intel gpu is always involved in some form, the question is how involved.

I don't have a system where I can readily test this but from gut feeling I'd assume the nvidia-prime method to be faster however there might also be slowdowns during the copy process into the intel framebuffer that do not show themselves as badly if nvidia renders the entire desktop.

I'd say why don't you just test this? It's trivial to "switch" between the two modes.

Last edited by V1del (2021-09-28 12:38:06)

Ridwan Rawriet

Member

Registered: 2021-09-28

Posts: 33

Re: [SOLVED] Nvidia only or nvidia-prime for max performance?

I'd say why don't you just test this? It's trivial to "switch" between the two modes.

I think I will. I didn't since this needs to be done on bare metal, I can't just fire up a VM. And I'm currently not on arch. I guess I will do this after installing it. Thanks for your time and knowledge.