slow performance in bumblebee? about bumblebee

[Lekensteyn]

Have a look at the /etc/bumblebee/xorg.conf.nvidia and compare it with Ironhide's one. Perhaps adding some modelines improves performance or change DFP if /var/log/syslog reports a warning, otherwise I have no idea what makes the difference.

[starks]

Ironhide is defunct and irrelevant. Don't compare against it. Though,
if I recall correctly, it used Xv by default.

The use of VirtualGL itself as a transport is a self-imposed bottleneck.

Once we figure out how to access the Nvidia framebuffer directly,
don't be surprised if there is at least a 5x performance increase
(according to my testing).

[Lekensteyn]

Although Ironhide is deprecated, it uses the virtualgl application too. Did you have 3D
acceleration and a correct resolution when using Ironhide?

[rockorequin]

Yes, I had 3D acceleration with Ironhide (but isn't that required anyway for glxspheres to run?). What do you mean by correct resolution? I'm just running glxspheres in its default window and I have two displays both with 1920x1080 resolution.

I tried using ironhide's xorg.conf.nvidia file (based on https://github.com/MrMEEE/ironhide/blob/master/conf/xorg.conf.nvidia but leaving out the BusID line and using "DFP" as the connected monitor). I saved this file as /etc/bumblebee/xorg.conf.nvidia-ironhide and then modified bumblebeed.conf to use this file. Xorg.8.log reports that it is using it, so it looks like the re-configuration works fine.

However, I get the same framerates as when I use bumblebee's xorg.conf.nvidia file, ie it doesn't look like the modelines make any difference.

syslog reports:

Jan 23 21:56:23 sierra bumblebeed[10909]: [XORG] (WW) NVIDIA(0): No valid modes for "1920x1200"; removing.
Jan 23 21:56:23 sierra bumblebeed[10909]: [XORG] (WW) NVIDIA(0): No valid modes for "1600x1200"; removing.
Jan 23 21:56:23 sierra bumblebeed[10909]: [XORG] (WW) NVIDIA(0): Option "TwinViewXineramaInfoOrder" requested "DFP", but no
Jan 23 21:56:23 sierra bumblebeed[10909]: [XORG] (WW) NVIDIA(0):     such display device could be found, or all display devices
Jan 23 21:56:23 sierra bumblebeed[10909]: [XORG] (WW) NVIDIA(0):     by that name are currently unavailable.
Jan 23 21:56:23 sierra bumblebeed[10909]: [XORG] (WW) NVIDIA(0): Option "TwinViewXineramaInfoOrder" requested "TV", but no such
Jan 23 21:56:23 sierra bumblebeed[10909]: [XORG] (WW) NVIDIA(0):     display device could be found, or all display devices by
Jan 23 21:56:23 sierra bumblebeed[10909]: [XORG] (WW) NVIDIA(0):     that name are currently unavailable.

I also tried changing Option "ConnectedMonitor" to "CRT" instead of "DFP" in xorg.conf.nvidia-ironhide, but syslog still reports the DFP error and there's no change in framerates.

[Lekensteyn]

By "resolution" I meant to ask whether the screen resolution of the primary display was not 1024x768 (vesa). A final change that may improve performance for some machines is VGL_READBACK:

VGL_READBACK=pbo optirun glxspheres

Docs: http://virtualgl.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/virtualgl/vgl/trunk/doc/index.html#VGL_READBACK

[rockorequin]

Thanks! With VGL_READBACK=pbo I get framerates up around 150 fps again.

Can I set this to be the default in a configuration file somewhere?

[Lekensteyn]

Nope, as a workaround you can create a wrapper that sets it:

mkdir -p ~/bin
printf '#!/bin/sh\nVGL_READBACK=pbo /usr/bin/optirun "$@"\n' >> ~/bin/optirun
chmod +x ~/bin/optirun

You may need to re-login if ~/bin did not exist before.

[rockorequin]

Thanks.

[fadying]

My optirun does not seem to work well, and change my screen resolution

$ glxspheres
Polygons in scene: 62464
Visual ID of window: 0x95
Context is Direct
OpenGL Renderer: Mesa DRI Intel(R) Ironlake Mobile GEM 20100330 DEVELOPMENT x86/MMX/SSE2
26.110448 frames/sec - 29.139260 Mpixels/sec
26.335447 frames/sec - 29.390358 Mpixels/sec

$ optirun glxspheres
Polygons in scene: 62464
Visual ID of window: 0x21
[VGL] WARNING: The OpenGL rendering context obtained on X display
[VGL] :8 is indirect, which may cause performance to suffer.
[VGL] If :8 is a local X display, then the framebuffer device
[VGL] permissions may be set incorrectly.
Context is Indirect
OpenGL Renderer: Software Rasterizer
4.899283 frames/sec - 5.467600 Mpixels/sec
4.950187 frames/sec - 5.524408 Mpixels/sec

[Lekensteyn]

VGL_READBACK=pbo will be set in the Ubuntu PPA packages version 3.0-1~...ppa4` and later.