I accidentally posted this in the wrong forum, so here is my question again.
I'm new to openSUSE an I'm largely sold on it. It's very elegant and polished.
However, something doesn't seem right with my desktop animations. They're sticky and not very smooth, most of the time. For example, if I slide between two virtual desktops, then the animation is jittery. Even simple things like maximising and minimising windows isn't all that smooth.
I have two Nvidia GTX460s running, and I have the Nvidia driver installed. (The latest one.) I can't imagine why my effects aren't smooth. I have enough RAM and an i7 Intel chip, so nothing should be sticky.
What can / should I tweak to smoothen things up, do you think? I'd love some advice.
On Thu, 02 Feb 2012 17:46:03 +0530, Forkjulle
<Forkjulle@no-mx.forums.opensuse.org> wrote:
>
> I accidentally posted this in the wrong forum, so here is my question
> again.
>
> I’m new to openSUSE an I’m largely sold on it. It’s very elegant
> and polished.
>
> However, something doesn’t seem right with my desktop animations.
> They’re sticky and not very smooth, most of the time. For example, if I
> slide between two virtual desktops, then the animation is jittery. Even
> simple things like maximising and minimising windows isn’t all that
> smooth.
>
> I have two Nvidia GTX460s running, and I have the Nvidia driver
> installed. (The latest one.) I can’t imagine why my effects aren’t
> smooth. I have enough RAM and an i7 Intel chip, so nothing should be
> sticky.
>
> What can / should I tweak to smoothen things up, do you think? I’d
> love some advice.
>
shouldn’t be like that. are you using GNOME, KDE, or something else? and
which compositing manager? i’ve been using KDE only, and i’ve heard that
KDE doesn’t work well with compiz – and using compiz isn’t necessary with
KDE, since kwin, KDE’s display manager, does everything required.
if that doesn’t apply to you, i.e., if you use GNOME, or KDE w/o compiz,
you might look into the nvidia settings and see if there’s any settings
that make a difference. for me, i’ve always left them at their default and
never had problems. but then i’m using one nvidia card only, so using two
may make things more tricky.
–
phani.
On Thu, 02 Feb 2012 17:57:15 +0530, phanisvara das
<listmail@phanisvara.com> wrote:
> …and I have the Nvidia driver installed. (The latest one.)
oh, and what do you mean by that? the latest stable (290.10), or beta
(295.09)? i’ve had problems with the latest beta driver and had to go back
to the stable one.
–
phani.
Apologies. I’m using KDE 12.1, I downloaded the “post-release current” Nvidia driver, and installed the package for the latest Nvidia.
I’m using a stock standard openSUSE, otherwise. Maybe with a different wallpaper and desktop theme. But that’s it.
On Thu, 02 Feb 2012 18:26:03 +0530, Forkjulle
<Forkjulle@no-mx.forums.opensuse.org> wrote:
>
> Apologies. I’m using KDE 12.1, I downloaded the “post-release current”
> Nvidia driver, and installed the package for the latest Nvidia.
>
> I’m using a stock standard openSUSE, otherwise. Maybe with a different
> wallpaper and desktop theme. But that’s it.
>
don’t know what “post-release current” means. where did you install it
from? via yast, or the .run file from the nvidia site?
i haven’t used the one from yast in a long time, downloading my drivers
from the nvidia site directly, but haven’t heard anything bad about those
installed via yast.
if the driver isn’t too old or too new (beta), i don’t really have any
more ideas. what i’d do is playing around with nvidia’s settings (“kdesu
nvidia-settings”), and also the advanced desktop effect settings via KDE’s
“systemsettings” (not as root, but normal user).
perhaps others who use two nvidia cards have better ideas…
oh wait…are you sure you’re actually using the nvidia driver? even if
it’s installed, unless you disable the neauveau driver by adding
“nomodeset” to the grub kernel parameters, your system might be using the
free driver instead.
–
phani.
Go to:
Systemsettings > Desktop Effects > Advanced
Make sure you are using OpenGL as Comositing type. Try Smooth as Scale Method instead of Accurate. See if the OpenGL Options do anything for you, like VSync.
Using NVIDIA on openSUSE for years now, never saw a “post-release current” driver. Search the forums for “SDB graphics” or for “NVIDIA Howto”
On 02/02/2012 01:56 PM, Forkjulle wrote:
> I’m using KDE 12.1
with which desktop/version?
KDE 3 or 4.7 or .8
GNOME 2 or 3
LXDE
Xfce
others
and, what happens if you turn off desktop effects?
–
DD
Read what Distro Watch writes: http://tinyurl.com/SUSEonDW
I’m using KDE.
I’ve not turned off Desktop Effects, but I don’t want them turned off. I have enough RAM, a quadcore i7 and twi Nvidia GTX 460 cards. I’m pretty sure that I should not be experiencing sluggish and sticky screen animations.
Am 02.02.2012 16:06, schrieb Forkjulle:
> I have enough RAM, a quadcore i7 and twi Nvidia GTX 460 cards. I’m
> pretty sure that I should not be experiencing sluggish and sticky screen
> animations.
Is your nvidia driver really up and running? Open a terminal and type
glxinfo | grep -i opengl
and post the result here.
–
PC: oS 11.4 (dual boot 12.1) 64 bit | Intel Core i7-2600@3.40GHz | KDE
4.6.0 | GeForce GT 420 | 16GB Ram
Eee PC 1201n: oS 11.4 64 bit | Intel Atom 330@1.60GHz | KDE 4.8.0 |
nVidia ION | 3GB Ram
On Thu, 02 Feb 2012 20:51:41 +0530, Martin Helm
<martin_helm@no-mx.forums.opensuse.org> wrote:
> Am 02.02.2012 16:06, schrieb Forkjulle:
>> I have enough RAM, a quadcore i7 and twi Nvidia GTX 460 cards. I’m
>> pretty sure that I should not be experiencing sluggish and sticky screen
>> animations.
> Is your nvidia driver really up and running? Open a terminal and type
>
> glxinfo | grep -i opengl
>
> and post the result here.
>
i thought the same, but wouldn’t nvidia-settings complain if the nvidia
driver wasn’t active?
–
phani.
Maybe it’s because I have a 2500x1500 screen? I’ve tried everything.
Strangely, Ubuntu / Mint don’t seem to give such noticeable jerkiness.
On Thu, 02 Feb 2012 21:06:03 +0530, Forkjulle
<Forkjulle@no-mx.forums.opensuse.org> wrote:
>
>> OpenGL vendor string: NVIDIA Corporation
>> OpenGL renderer string: GeForce GTX 460/PCI/SSE2
>> OpenGL version string: 4.2.0 NVIDIA 290.10
>> OpenGL extensions:
>
> What does this mean?
>
>
that your nvidia driver is, in fact, active.
–
phani.
Am 02.02.2012 16:36, schrieb Forkjulle:
>
>> OpenGL vendor string: NVIDIA Corporation
>> OpenGL renderer string: GeForce GTX 460/PCI/SSE2
>> OpenGL version string: 4.2.0 NVIDIA 290.10
>> OpenGL extensions:
>
> What does this mean?
>
>
It means that you are using the proprietary nvidia driver, so that is
ok. I do not have a GTX 460, but 4 machines here with nvidia (a GT 420,
an ION, a 9600 GT and a Quadro 2000M) all running with the proprietary
drivers and none has problems with the desktop effects or performance
(the Quadro 200M is the only one which runs openSUSE 12.1 the others are
not updated to 12.1 but also use the 290.10 driver).
So I wonder what is so special in your environment.
It seems in another thread from you I have seen you are using two nvidia
cards at the same time, I am not familiar with such a configuration and
can only suspect that this is somehow your problem and needs some
special treatment.
–
PC: oS 11.4 (dual boot 12.1) 64 bit | Intel Core i7-2600@3.40GHz | KDE
4.6.0 | GeForce GT 420 | 16GB Ram
Eee PC 1201n: oS 11.4 64 bit | Intel Atom 330@1.60GHz | KDE 4.8.0 |
nVidia ION | 3GB Ram
On Thu, 02 Feb 2012 21:06:03 +0530, Forkjulle
<Forkjulle@no-mx.forums.opensuse.org> wrote:
>
>> OpenGL vendor string: NVIDIA Corporation
>> OpenGL renderer string: GeForce GTX 460/PCI/SSE2
>> OpenGL version string: 4.2.0 NVIDIA 290.10
>> OpenGL extensions:
>
> What does this mean?
>
>
some questions come to mind:
-
how many monitors do you have connected to your two nvidia cards? did
you set them up via “separate X screen” or “twinview”?
-
how’s your CPU load, particularly how much CPU cycles does Xorg consume?
you can check that via ksysguard [ctrl+esc] or top.
-
how’s performance in general? programs are responsive, or is there an
unhealthy lag before things happen?
-
what’s the output of “zypper ve”, typed into a root terminal?
–
phani.
- how many monitors do you have connected to your two nvidia cards? did
you set them up via “separate X screen” or “twinview”?
I have one screen. A Dell UltraSharp 27" running at native 2500x1500.
- how’s your CPU load, particularly how much CPU cycles does Xorg consume?
you can check that via ksysguard [ctrl+esc] or top.
It all looks okay. In total, it’s not very high. (In Ubuntu, memory didn’t exceed 50% and processing didn’t exceed 30% or so.)
- how’s performance in general? programs are responsive, or is there an
unhealthy lag before things happen?
Performance is fine. Don’t notice any lag in operations. I use Gimp extensively and it works fine, even with large files.
- what’s the output of “zypper ve”, typed into a root terminal?
I get this:
Loading repository data…
Reading installed packages…
Dependencies of all installed packages are satisfied.
On Thu, 02 Feb 2012 21:36:03 +0530, Forkjulle
<Forkjulle@no-mx.forums.opensuse.org> wrote:
>
>> * how many monitors do you have connected to your two nvidia cards? did
>> you set them up via “separate X screen” or “twinview”?
>
> I have one screen. A Dell UltraSharp 27" running at native 2500x1500.
so what do you have two nvidia cards for??
(the other results look ok to me.)
–
phani.
Am 02.02.2012 16:54, schrieb Martin Helm:
> It seems in another thread from you I have seen you are using two nvidia
> cards at the same time
Sorry it was in this thread I was just confused when I saw somewhat
similar discussions going on.
If I were you I would remove one of the nvidia cards for the moment just
to find out if that has some effect on the behavior. I have no better
idea to find out what the problem is.
–
PC: oS 11.4 (dual boot 12.1) 64 bit | Intel Core i7-2600@3.40GHz | KDE
4.6.0 | GeForce GT 420 | 16GB Ram
Eee PC 1201n: oS 11.4 64 bit | Intel Atom 330@1.60GHz | KDE 4.8.0 |
nVidia ION | 3GB Ram
Okay. I will try that and come back to you. Thanks, thus far, for the help.