Inconsistent Gaming Performance (Intel/NVIDIA Laptop)

[marsh tendon]

I'm getting very inconsistent performance in games, which didn't happen in Windows 10.
One moment, everything will be a nice smooth 60 FPS, then a few moments later 11 fps and a bunch of stuttering that lasts for a few minutes until returning back to 60 fps... and some other games just don't perform well at all.

I've tried multiple things to try to fix it to no avail:

• Xanmod kernel (which actually seemed to help a little, but still stutters)
• low latency kernel
• real time kernel (i f*cked up lol, but was able to eventually recover with help from the forums)
• gamemode
• gamescope
• multiple launch commands
• enabling/disabling shaders in Steam settings
• turning everything to the absolute lowest settings possible
• setting CPU to performance governor
• setting GPU to performance mode (disabling intel iGPU , since this is on a laptop)
• etc.

Specs: Intel Core i7-7700HQ, GTX 1050 (4GB VRAM), 16GB RAM.

[brisk comet]

@marsh tendon I would recommend installing auto-cpufreq, it's an automatic CPU speed and power optimizer for Linux based on active monitoring of laptop's battery state, CPU usage, CPU temperature and system load.

git clone https://github.com/AdnanHodzic/auto-cpufreq.git
cd auto-cpufreq && sudo ./auto-cpufreq-installer

[marsh tendon]

I have Slimbook Battery installed, from this video
https://youtu.be/KcDfNQb8hIo?si=rFgFt6wxuCWkto4j

And it has a performance mode

[brisk comet]

@marsh tendon please remove that

@marsh tendon what game(s)

read the "unofficial" mint wiki about gaming https://github.com/killertofus/mintwiki/blob/main/Gaming/general-guide.md

[marsh tendon]

several games

Ground Branch, SimplePlanes, Toxikk, War Thunder, etc.

[marsh tendon]

is Slimbook Battery bad?

[brisk comet]

¯_(ツ)_/¯

@marsh tendon what version of proton are you using?

[marsh tendon]

Proton 8.0-4

[brisk comet]

try experiential

[marsh tendon]

what version should i set steam's default to?

[brisk comet]

experiential

[marsh tendon]

any other suggestions?

[brisk comet]

start here @marsh tendon

[marsh tendon]

still stutters

[brisk comet]

@marsh tendon show driver manager please

[marsh tendon]

i've tried both 535 and 525, and they both stutter

[brisk comet]

@marsh tendon try the other ones, reboot after testing

[marsh tendon]

i have terrible internet, so it'll be a while

1.5 Mbps 😭

[marsh tendon]

All games with nvidia-driver-470 give me a black screen.

[marsh tendon]

390 does not install

[brisk comet]

@marsh tendon and the open source version?

[marsh tendon]

Nouveau sucks, it's always laggy. lol

[marsh tendon]

I installed Mangohud and found GPU usage to be pretty low.

I guess NVIDIA's drivers are just really that trash.

[brisk comet]

Your GPU needs driver 525 and the inconsistency you are experiencing is due to the fact mint doesn’t support power-profiles-daemon

You can’t even load it or you will break cinnamon

As cinnamon uses TLP

The old power management method

[marsh tendon]

I am currently using 525. Thanks though 🙂

[marsh tendon]

so if i install XFCE, then would I be able to get full performance?

[brisk comet]

Gnome or KDE is your only bets for now

[marsh tendon]

could I install gnome without breaking cinnamon?

[brisk comet]

No

[marsh tendon]

what about KDE?

[brisk comet]

That one I’m not sure about. But yesterday I had to help fix someone’s gnome/cinnamon dependency hell

[marsh tendon]

yikes

[brisk comet]

They were trying to remove each other

[marsh tendon]

would Budgie work?

[brisk comet]

That uses some gnome dependencies so this may happen again

[marsh tendon]

I guess I'm stuck then

[brisk comet]

Could always go with Debian 12

It has newer packages than Mint 21.2

Can choose gnome or KDE

Comes with driver 525 by default

https://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/current/amd64/iso-dvd/

Being on Debian also indirectly helps mint cause LMDE (Linux mint Debian edition) is based on Debian

[marsh tendon]

Do you think the new beta could help performance?

[brisk comet]

No. The problem is, is power-profiles-daemon isn’t supported so the CPU and GPU are clocking shit

You would need something like autofreq to speed it up

[marsh tendon]

Does autofreq work on GPUs?

I already have the CPU set to the performance governor btw

by default 🙃 don't care about battery life as much, since i use the laptop plugged in most of the time

[brisk comet]

https://github.com/AdnanHodzic/auto-cpufreq

Do you still have TLP installed?

If yes your turbo boost has been disabled by it according to auto-cpufreq

[marsh tendon]

i think so

[marsh tendon]

more than likely, yes

[brisk comet]

[marsh tendon]

that's the settings i'm using though

[brisk comet]

[brisk comet]

Does it work? Like if you flick some different options it will start turning them on/off

[marsh tendon]

it does seem to work, at least for CPU

not GPU though

[marsh tendon]

https://youtu.be/KcDfNQb8hIo?si=rFgFt6wxuCWkto4j

I'm not concerned about the CPU, just the GPU having low usage when i'm getting crappy framerates

[brisk comet]

Congratulations it seems you have smacked a bug in the drivers. I looked online and for 2yrs it has been happening to 900M series and GTX 1000 series (also hits some 2000/3000 series cards)

Even happens on windows (more specifically windows 11)

You have 3 choices. Upgrade to the Edge Kernel 6.2 and hope that fix’s it or try Debian 12 @marsh tendon

Or LMDE

[marsh tendon]

I'm using Xanmod kernel, which seems to have helped some... but not entirely.

Do you think the Edge Kernel would work better?

[brisk comet]

What version is Xanmod at?

[marsh tendon]

Kernel: 6.6.4-x64v3-xanmod1

[brisk comet]

Ok cool. I know the problem now. It is the old packages mint ships with

Only way to fix that is move to LMDE which has newer packages

[marsh tendon]

😭

that really sucks

[brisk comet]

This is why I run Debian Sid/unstable. So I don’t get stuck on versions

[marsh tendon]

i have crappy internet... so having to redownload everything is going to be a massive pain

[brisk comet]

I know some tricks that will make it less painful

[marsh tendon]

you got some of that digital morphine? 😆

what are they?

[brisk comet]

Install gamemode preload ttf-mscorefonts-installer and mono-complete

[marsh tendon]

what will that do?

[brisk comet]

gamemode will tell the CPU to prioritise the game

[marsh tendon]

already have gamemode installed

[brisk comet]

You know how to use it?

gamemoderun %command%

[marsh tendon]

how do i enable that globally for every game in steam?

[brisk comet]

In steam properties

[brisk comet]

You have to put it in manually for every game unfortunately

And try adding these options in also

[marsh tendon]

even still, i've tried that and it hasn't helped with my GPU

my CPU seems to be doing fine

[brisk comet]

PROTON_NO_ESYNC=1 PROTON_NO_FSYNC=1 gamemoderun %command%

@marsh tendon try that

Also try uncapping the FPS

Just letting it go as high as it wants

[marsh tendon]

if anything, seems to have gotten worse

[brisk comet]

[brisk comet]

well in a nutshell most of it is nvidia

and could also be intel with also being half baked with api's ie vulkan with wine

personally warthunder always been ootb

[brisk comet]

try this : GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash nvidia-drm.modeset=1 modprobe.blacklist=nouveau"

add that into /etc/default/grub

then update-grub

[marsh tendon]

seems to work like crap

CPU never reaches full speed with that.

fancontrol also seems to not work properly anymore either

[brisk comet]

[marsh tendon]

i fixed fancontrol lol

but with auto-cpufreq, the CPU only goes up to 3.4 GHz, and not the max speed of 3.8GHz

Cinnamon does seem to still work with TLP uninstalled though.

[marsh tendon]

@brisk comet It is possible to get full turbo boost with TLP, using TLP UI (flatpak).

as for the GPU not running full speed, it's probably just NVIDIA's fault.

[marsh tendon]

To completely remove auto-cpufreq:
https://github.com/AdnanHodzic/auto-cpufreq/discussions/487

[brisk comet]

Hmm 🤔

Is your cooling ok?

the only thing I can think of is compared to running Debian and LMDE I found Debian (gnome or KDE) was just faster. Is that the cinnamon’s setup it isn’t allowing max performance

Also Mint 21.2 is based on 22.04 which is older than Debian 12 and LMDE

Try this for some extra performance

https://liquorix.net/

It has a different scheduler compared to the normal kernel that helps with game performance

And has helped me with my nvidia GPU on multiple machines

[marsh tendon]

yes