desktop-packages team mailing list archive

[Phillip Susi <psusi@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Well, this doesn't seem to have anything to do with the installer.
Unless using the same nvidia driver without the kde desktop ( i.e. under
gnome or xfce ) shows totally different behavior, then it looks like
this is simply how the proprietary nvidia driver works so there's
nothing we can do about it.  For what it's worth, ATI cards seem to have
always worked the same way, though recently they have gained dynamic
power management so they at least lower their clock rate when not in
heavy use and that saves some power and heat.


** Package changed: ubiquity (Ubuntu) => xorg (Ubuntu)

** Changed in: xorg (Ubuntu)
       Status: New => Incomplete

** Summary changed:

- Nvidia GPU installer misconfiguration Plasma 5
+ Nvidia GPU runs hot

-- 
You received this bug notification because you are a member of Desktop
Packages, which is subscribed to xorg in Ubuntu.
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1394856

Title:
  Nvidia GPU runs hot

Status in “xorg” package in Ubuntu:
  Incomplete

Bug description:
  Originally reported on Kubuntu mailing list, by Mitch Golden

  I am posting this here because I don't know exactly where it should be
  posted.I have installed 14.10 Plasma 5 on my laptop, which is a
  vintage 2011 System 76.

  Of greatest significance is that it has an nvidia 560M graphics card
  in it.

  When I first installed 14.04, I noticed that the PowerMizer report of
  the NVIDIA X Server Settings would report that the graphics chip's
  clock was more or less constantly spun up to its highest clock rate.
  Heat and power use were very high, and I constantly heard the fan
  running.I found there were two ways to fix this:

  
  (1) Add a file called 05-nvidia.conf to /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d containing the lines:

  Section "Device"
       Identifier     "Device0"
       Driver         "nvidia"
       VendorName     "NVIDIA Corporation"
       Option         "RegistryDwords" "PowerMizerEnable=0x1; PerfLevelSrc=0x2222; PowerMizerDefault=0x3; 
       PowerMizerDefaultAC=0x3"
  EndSection

  This pegged the graphics card at its lowest possible clock rate, which
  was adequate for most things but sometimes led to bad playback on some
  videos.

  See: https://forums.opensuse.org/showthread.php/410089-nvidia-
  powermizer-how-tweak

  (2) Revert to the 304 driver.  This still spun up to high clock rates
  a bit more often than it seemed to need to, but was fairly reasonable
  otherwise.

  I expected that this would soon be rectified, since I saw that version
  337.25 of the driver allegedly fixed some issue with performance in
  KDE:

  http://www.nvidia.com/download/driverResults.aspx/76278/en-us

  Jump ahead to yesterday when I installed 14.10 plasma 5 -I noticed that even with the 304 driver the PowerMizer reported the clock at its highest rate.  With nothing moving on the screen at all and my not touching the mouse, it was pegged.I found that even installing the xorg-edgers driver (340 I believe) had no effect.  
  Furthermore, 340 did not respond to the xorg.conf settings file above.  The only way I can get plasma 5 to run reasonably on this machine is to revert to 304 and *also* put the settings file in.  This is of course not optimal.

  Perhaps the installer can be made to configure this stuff properly for
  nvidia machines, or at least instructions can be added.

To manage notifications about this bug go to:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/xorg/+bug/1394856/+subscriptions