LinuxQuestions.org - Games running REALLY slowly (Starcraft 2 / WoW)

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mentallydull (Post 4171207)

Alright, I finally figured it out...

I had to use

Code:

sudo service gdm stop

In order to kill X before I could run the NVidia script then

Code:

sudo service gdm start

when I was done.

I ran glxgears afterwards but I'm only getting about 44k as opposed to your 60-80k - is there anything I can do to increase this or is it just due to my video card?

Indeed it seems Ubuntu has different ways of shutting down the display managers these days.

I can't explain why your video card has a lower fps than mine, but there's always a slight difference between identical parts. In some cases it can be 20%, but the 44K is very low in comparison to my video card... but 44K is good enough to be able to play games using OpenGL. One of the causes of the lower framerate could be a difference in memory frequency forcing your videocard using an interleave. If you really need more fps you can consider overclocking / underclocking the card, trying to synchronize the memory / bus frequencies. Remember: all warranty will be void if your card doesn't survive it...

Enabling overclocking is very simple. Add the following line in the Section Device part of /etc/X11/xorg.conf, for example the line below "Driver nvidia" is a good spot to put it in:

Code:

Option "Coolbits" "1"

And install the Nvidia overclocking utility:

Code:

sudo apt-get install nvclock

When running your machine after the install you can open two X console windows, one with glxgears running and an other with nvclock altering the settings to see your performance increase / decrease. The following options are available:

Code:

nvclock -s                Show settings of your card

nvclock -r                Reset to default settings

nvclock -n ... -m ...    Set GPU and Memory values

I recommend to be careful when increasing the numbers. If you see white pixels in the rotating gears, alter the gpu speed and/or memory frequency immediatly towards the factory settings to prevent damage to your card. Sometimes when clocking out of line the entire machine can crash in a fraction of a second.

Solving the other problem:

Sometimes, after an upgrade the proprietrary drivers get overwritten by the new files in the downloaded packages. In your case I think this has happened, and then you need to repeat the actions listed above (shutting down the display manager and running the installscript). Unfortunatly NVIDIA hasn't created a script yet to do this automaticly after an upgrade.