GeForce 820M fails loading

Graphics / Linux Linux
1

I have a notebook with intel/nvidia graphics cards and so far I have no success to make this machine use nvidia card. So far I have tried many, many solutions I have found on not working 820m in linux, but none have worked for me. Currently I have a freshly installed OS :

$ uname -a
Linux notebook1 5.10.0-14-amd64 #1 SMP Debian 5.10.113-1 (2022-04-29) x86_64 GNU/Linux

$ nvidia-detect
Detected NVIDIA GPUs:
01:00.0 3D controller [0302]: NVIDIA Corporation GF117M [GeForce 610M/710M/810M/820M / GT 620M/625M/630M/720M] [10de:1140] (rev a1)
Checking card: NVIDIA Corporation GF117M [GeForce 610M/710M/810M/820M / GT 620M/625M/630M/720M] (rev a1)
Your card is only supported up to the 390 legacy drivers series.
It is recommended to install the nvidia-legacy-390xx-driver package.

So, I have installed this driver through apt-get and after reboot inxi -G shows that the driver has failed:

$ inxi -G
Graphics:
Device-1: Intel 4th Gen Core Processor Integrated Graphics driver: i915 v: kernel
Device-2: NVIDIA GF117M [GeForce 610M/710M/810M/820M / GT 620M/625M/630M/720M]
driver: nvidia v: 390.157
Device-3: Acer Lenovo Integrated Webcam type: USB driver: uvcvideo
Display: x11 server: X.Org 1.20.11 driver: loaded: modesetting,nouveau
unloaded: fbdev,vesa failed: nvidia resolution: 1600x900~60Hz
OpenGL: renderer: N/A v: N/A

Secure boot disabled in BIOS/UEFI.

nvidia-bug-report.log (283.9 KB)

How to proceed further from here?

2

Since the 390 driver doesn’t support render offload, there is additional config or something like a prime-manager required. I don’t know which display manager peppermint os uses (lightdm?) so it’s difficult to give immediate advice. Please see this for general info about your options:
https://wiki.debian.org/NVIDIA%20Optimus
Currently, you’re stuck in a limbo, nothing really works, it uses half nvidia, half intel.

3

Yes, thats the link I was using during most of my tries so far. I have tried almost all the options from there, if I remember correctly, I did not only try xrun method. But so far I did not have any success.
If it goes for Peppermint OS, yes, it uses LightDM.

4

Looks that page hasn’t been updated for a while so things don’t work. For getting something done fast, please try setting the nvidia gpu to be always used:

  • set kernel parameter nvidia-drm.modeset=1
  • create /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/nvidia-primary.conf
Section "OutputClass"
    Identifier "nvidia-prime"
    MatchDriver "nvidia-drm"
    Driver "nvidia"
    Option "PrimaryGPU" "true"
EndSection
5

And that would be it?
I have followed those steps and after reboot inxi -G shows (looks rather good):

$ inxi -G
Graphics:
Device-1: Intel 4th Gen Core Processor Integrated Graphics driver: i915 v: kernel
Device-2: NVIDIA GF117M [GeForce 610M/710M/810M/820M / GT 620M/625M/630M/720M]
driver: nvidia v: 390.157
Device-3: Acer Lenovo Integrated Webcam type: USB driver: uvcvideo
Display: x11 server: X.Org 1.20.11 driver: loaded: modesetting,nvidia
unloaded: fbdev,nouveau,vesa resolution: 1600x900~60Hz
OpenGL: renderer: GeForce GT 820M/PCIe/SSE2 v: 4.6.0 NVIDIA 390.157

and glxgears -info shows:

$ glxgears -info
Running synchronized to the vertical refresh. The framerate should be
approximately the same as the monitor refresh rate.
GL_RENDERER = GeForce GT 820M/PCIe/SSE2
GL_VERSION = 4.6.0 NVIDIA 390.157
GL_VENDOR = NVIDIA Corporation

So, so far it rather looks rather good (?) but when I run glxgears in one console and in another one I check nvidia-smi, it is not showing any application running nvidia (I hope it will paste properly):

$ nvidia-smi
Wed Feb 14 22:57:47 2024
±----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| NVIDIA-SMI 390.157 Driver Version: 390.157 |
|-------------------------------±---------------------±---------------------+
| GPU Name Persistence-M| Bus-Id Disp.A | Volatile Uncorr. ECC |
| Fan Temp Perf Pwr:Usage/Cap| Memory-Usage | GPU-Util Compute M. |
|===============================+======================+======================|
| 0 GeForce GT 820M Off | 00000000:01:00.0 N/A | N/A |
| N/A 54C P0 N/A / N/A | 107MiB / 1985MiB | N/A Default |
±------------------------------±---------------------±---------------------+

±----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Processes: GPU Memory |
| GPU PID Type Process name Usage |
|=============================================================================|
| 0 Not Supported |
±----------------------------------------------------------------------------+

6

Can not find Edit button for my last post, so I’m attaching latest nvidia-bug-report here:

nvidia-bug-report.log (348.7 KB)

(edit: ok, I’ve found the Edit button, it is almost invincible under the way my notebook screen is currently set up :) too late thou )

7

Looks fine, the log shows it’s correctly working… You can ignore the nvidia-smi output, on old low-end gpus like yours, it simply doesn’t support showing any info. Rather use nvidia-settings (powermizer pane)

8

Great! Thank you so much, nvidia-settings also looks rather good. Its quite late here, so tomorrow I will try something heavier, but it seems promissing.

9

Well, I was too optimistic at the first glance. I have played with this machine a bit with the “more heavy” stuff (games of course) and it seems that its broke to the point that its worse then when only Intel card was in use.

I have installed a few Windows games through wine and even native Linux one (which meets requirements) and none of the games even started (not even 15 years old city builder which requirements are rather low).
I always get a messages regarding problem with graphics, like:

  • Failed to initialize DirectX
  • Error of failed request: BadDrawable (invalid Pixmap or Window parameter)
  • Failed to initialize renderer. Bad Adapter Number or Adapter not found.

And before, when the OS was fresh and working only on Intel card, I could at least start most of those games, but they were just unplayable slow, but started fine.

10

I kind of expected you will hit this. One problem is that Fermi based gpus like yours don’t support Vulkan which is used by proton to translate DirectX.
So you will have to switch the games/wine to opengl. In general, the 820M is too old and weak to use it for gaming.

11

I did not use proton, just “plain” wine, but good point about this Vulkan support, but … I think it does not apply to this case, here is why (I could be completely wrong of course, as I do not much understand what is going on):
I concentrated on one game now (Fallout New Vegas) so I have switched wine to use OpenGL and I still did get a message that it can not start the renderer. In console I have checked the output and from what I understand, it tries to run this binary through Intel card (?):

MESA-INTEL: warning: Haswell Vulkan support is incomplete
011c:err:wgl:init_opengl Failed to load libGL: libGL.so.1: shared library can not be opened, the file does not exists
011c:err:wgl:init_opengl OpenGL support is disabled.
011c:err:d3d:wined3d_caps_gl_ctx_create Failed to find a suitable pixel format.
011c:err:d3d:wined3d_adapter_gl_init Failed to get a GL context for adapter 02118A70.
wine: Unhandled page fault on read access to 00000000 at address 0040E298 (thread 011c), starting debugger…
MESA-INTEL: warning: Haswell Vulkan support is incomplete

So, does it mean that it still tried to use Intel card?

12

points to 32bit graphics support is not installed. https://wiki.debian.org/NvidiaGraphicsDrivers#Installing_32-bit_libraries_on_a_64-bit_system

I suspect wine is just checking for general vulkan support, doesn’t mean it’s using it.

13

points to 32bit graphics support is not installed. https://wiki.debian.org/NvidiaGraphicsDrivers#Installing_32-bit_libraries_on_a_64-bit_system

Close. One of the first things on a new system I always do, is enable 32bit architecture, but thanks to your advice, I looked closer at this and it seems that somehow the links to libraries got broke. Trying to repair those by reinstalling driver/libraries got my X broke even more :)
So I have reinstalled the OS and it seems everything works fine so far. Thank you very much!

14

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