Nvidia GTX 580M on Ubuntu 12.10 performace problem.

Question

Hi, First of all the question I have might not sound like it's for this forum, but in my research I was led to believe that the problem could be in my BIOS, so I'm trying my luck here. I have Alienware M17xR3 laptop with i7 2760QM, GTX 580M, 16G(1600) RAM, SSD+HDD. The operation system I'm using is Ubuntu 12.10. As you all know the laptop uses the NVIDIA Optimus technology, so I'm forced to use the Bumblbee Project. Some time ago I decided to buy a game from Ubuntu Software Center and I bought Amnesia and then I noticed that at full resolution with everything high there is a slight lag. After checking NVIDIA's PowerMizer I noticed that from 4 possible performance levels mine goes maximum to the second. Third and forth just exist withou being able to reach them. I tried all sorts of options that I found on the internet to make it work, but none were of any help. Even the ones that force powermizer on a certain performance level couldn't go more than level 2. The obly clue that I got was from the old nvidia forum. There were a few threads that mentioned the problem, but no one was giving an answer, except for one thread: http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?p=2478085 At the begining of the page look at danix's answer. He said that in NVIDIA they managed to reproduced the problem with the mentioned in that bug report hardware(HP EliteBook 8740w) and their investigation showed that the problem is a bug in the BIOS DSDT table. In the thread that danix's give link to there is a workaround to exchange places of two function in the DSDT table. I tried it and I fixed the error and warnings that the iasl compiler gave me but what I got is broken brightness control. I trried upgrading the BIOS to A12 but except for the touchpad that got a little bit faster nothing else changed. Wondering what to do I asked in askubuntu.com and in the new nvidia forum for linux support: http://askubuntu.com/questions/207847/nvidia-powermizer-performance-level-stuck-at-lv-2-from-4-possible https://devtalk.nvidia.com/default/topic/523876/linux/powermizer-39-s-performance-level-goes-max-to-lv-2-from-4-possible-on-gtx-580m/ In the NVIDIA forum one of the administrators answered me that he would check whether they have a Alienware M17xR3 model with mine specifications but since then I got no answers. While waiting for the answer(if I get one) today I decided to let you at DELL know about it and if possible to look at it or at least check if it's a problem with the BIOS or the problem is at the NVIDIA site. Thanks.

ytsolov · Answer

To DELL guys:

If you read the post in NVIDIA devtalk that I gave link to you should know that one of the moderators (Plagman) answered me he will look for the same laptop model as mine to try to observe the issue. Since more than a mount passed I contacted him again asking him whether there is some progress. Unluckily for me he answered me there wasn't any. Here is what he told me:

I have not managed to find an identical laptop yet; that's the extent of my progress. I've contacted a few groups about it, but it doesn't seem like we have one here.

I wondered if you could contact him or NVIDIA so that the problem could be resolved.

Thanks and Happy New Year !

ytsolov · Answer

I'm updating with a little bit more info my problem.

After installing nvidia-313 from xorg-edgers ppa I got a new problem that my BIOS didn't everytime recognize my discrete NVIDIA card. I don't think it's caused by the driver, but it's just a coincidence. So anyway I started researching it and I came accross one of the options in my BIOS in "Advanced" tab "Primary Display". It had two options "SG"(Switchable Graphics) and PEG(Peripheral Graphics). On SG I have Optimus enabled and on PEG I have only my discrete card enabled. On SG I was suffering the problem that my NVIDIA card isn't found each time, while on PEG it was found each time. So after setting Primary Display to PEG I installed again nvidia-313 package and tried PowerMizer. This time it worked. I tested with "Amnesia: The Dark Descend" and the game wasn't lagging anymore. After checking PowerMizer I confirmed that it was moving successfully between all 4 performance levels. There was something that I didn't like about it though. PowerMizer was preffering the loweest and highest performance levels. For example if I'm on the lowwest and started changing desktops, the desktop animations lag a little but PowerMizer statys in lowwest level. When doing the same when in highes level it doesn't go down.

So it looks like when Optimus is enabled PowerMizer isn't working correctly, but when it's disabled PowerMizer can use all performance levels.

I don't know whether the BIOS plays any role in the Optimus sub-system but if it doesn't it would mean that it's the kernel or graphics driver.

Linux General

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