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New laptop with performance problems (Nvidia?)
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rodvil Dec 23, 2016
Hello!
I'm in serious need of some tech help. I'm very non technical but I will try to give as much info as possible. I just got myself a new Clevo laptop after my previous one, from a couple of years ago, burned down (almost literally!). However now I can't play games that I was playing quite ok in my previous laptop (Shadows of Mordor, Bioshock infinite, Life is Strange). I was not expecting a big improvement but I never thought it would be this bad performance. In general I feel this is performing worst than before. Now the question is if this is expected with this hardware or is there something I can do? For example: some technical problem that I'm not able to solve not related with hardware, problems with drivers, 3d acceleration, etc.

I'm running Ubuntu 16.10 with Unity.
New laptop:
Clevo P640RF (#Série P600 14")
LCD: 14" FHD (1920 × 1080) IPS
CPU: Intel Core i7 - 6700HQ 2.6GHz, 3.5GHz Turbo
Graphics card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 965M 2GB GDDR5
RAM: 8GB DDR4 2133MHz - Kingston Hyper X
Hard drive SSD M.2: 275GB SSD M.2 Crucial MX300
Hard drive HDD 1: WD Scorpio Black 750GB 2.5 7200rpm 16MB SATA3

Old laptop:
ClevoW230ssit
LCD: 13.3" LED FullHD 1920x1080 IPS Matte
CPU: Intel Mobile Core i7-4710MQ 2.5GHz 6MB
RAM: 1x G.Skill Ripjaws 8GB DDR3 1600MHz CL9
Graphics card: NVidia GeForce GTX860M 2GB DDR5
Hard drive HDD 1: WD Scorpio Black 750GB 2.5 7200rpm 16MB SATA3
Hard drive mSATA 1: Samsung 840 Evo 250GB SATA3 mSATA

I have the 375.26 Nvidia driver, and everything seems to be fine glxinfo and glxgears seams to work (as far as I can tell). Glxgears in full screen as a frame rate of about 300fps.

Any help will be much appreciated!
And let me know if I can give you any more info.
damarrin Dec 23, 2016
I get 200 fps from glxgears in fullscreen from my ancient Radeon HD 2400 and 460 fps from my less ancient Geforce 330M, which is still an order of magnitude less powerful than your 965M. Are you sure you're not running on the integrated Intel graphics?

What does glxinfo | grep OpenGL say?
damarrin Dec 23, 2016
Besides, for comparison purposes try running glxgears without -fullscreen, it's much easier to compare results that way.
rodvil Dec 23, 2016
Thanks for the help. Here is the output:
glxinfo | grep OpenGL
OpenGL vendor string: NVIDIA Corporation
OpenGL renderer string: GeForce GTX 965M/PCIe/SSE2
OpenGL core profile version string: 4.5.0 NVIDIA 375.26
OpenGL core profile shading language version string: 4.50 NVIDIA
OpenGL core profile context flags: (none)
OpenGL core profile profile mask: core profile
OpenGL core profile extensions:
OpenGL version string: 4.5.0 NVIDIA 375.26
OpenGL shading language version string: 4.50 NVIDIA
OpenGL context flags: (none)
OpenGL profile mask: (none)
OpenGL extensions:
OpenGL ES profile version string: OpenGL ES 3.2 NVIDIA 375.26
OpenGL ES profile shading language version string: OpenGL ES GLSL ES 3.20
OpenGL ES profile extensions:

glxgears without fullscreen gives around 3230 fps
Xpander Dec 24, 2016
old system had same distro and desktop environment?
low glxgears framerate suggest that some sort of composite might be doing this. i dunno much about unity desktop though.

also glxgears is not really good to measure stuff, it acts weird and framerates are all over the place.. i can get from 3000fps to up to 28000 fps, depending on the day :D
rodvil Dec 24, 2016
I was running 16.04 with Unity in my previous laptop.
Do you suggest any other benchmark for me to try?
Xpander Dec 24, 2016
Unigine Valley, Heaven are good ones to test, but those dont use too much of the CPU, more GPU.
Maybe its something wrong with ubuntu 16.10 then? i dont use ubuntu but afaik 16.04 is stable release?
rodvil Dec 25, 2016
16.10 is also supposed to be stable :), it just doesn't have long term support.
I'm not so keen on reinstalling completely my system with 16.04 just to see if it works differently. Do you think if I try to benchmark it from a "live cd" it will work? I can also try a Virtual Machine but I never worked with any of that before...

Here are the benchmark results for both Unigine tests:

Unigine Valley Benchmark 1.0
FPS:7.1
Score:298
Min FPS:5.4
Max FPS:11.4

System
Platform:Linux 4.8.0-32-generic x86_64
CPU model:Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-6700HQ CPU @ 2.60GHz (2591MHz) x8
GPU model:GeForce GTX 965M PCI Express 375.26 (2048MB) x1

Settings
Render: OpenGL
Mode:1920x1080 fullscreen
Preset Custom
Quality High

Unigine Heaven Benchmark 4.0
FPS:7.2
Score:181
Min FPS:5.4
Max FPS:13.1

System
Platform:Linux 4.8.0-32-generic x86_64
CPU model:Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-6700HQ CPU @ 2.60GHz (2592MHz) x8
GPU model:GeForce GTX 965M PCI Express 375.26 (2048MB) x1

Settings
Render: OpenGL
Mode:1920x1080 fullscreen
Preset Custom
Quality High
Tessellation:Disabled

Are there any specific settings I should try, or this is good enough info?

PS. Merry Christmas by the way!
Xpander Dec 25, 2016
ok if this was quality at high then those benchmarks show really poor results i think you should be in the 40-50 fps area average with those settings. it seems like you are maybe using opensource nvidia drivers maybe?
rodvil Dec 25, 2016
The additional drivers is telling me I'm using the 375.26 Nvidia driver. Is there any way to double check if this is true?
damarrin Dec 28, 2016
glxinfo says you're using the Nvidia driver and I'd wager it's telling the truth.

My results from the Unigine Valley benchmark:

Unigine Valley Benchmark 1.0
FPS:
7.0
Score:
291
Min FPS:
4.9
Max FPS:
11.7
System
Platform:
Linux 4.8.0-32-generic x86_64
CPU model:
Intel(R) Core(TM) i7 CPU M 620 @ 2.67GHz (2660MHz) x4
GPU model:
GeForce GT 330M PCI Express 340.98 (512MB) x1
Settings
Render:
OpenGL
Mode:
1440x900 fullscreen
Preset
Custom
Quality
High

So your system is marginally faster than my 6yo MBP. There's definitely something wrong with your config.
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