Ubuntu 14.04 - Unity is slower with 337.19 than 337.12

Graphics / Linux Linux
1

I upgraded to the 337.19 driver and noticed that some graphical effects were noticeably slower in unity/compiz than with 337.12. Most significantly, window resizing and window/menu show/hide animations. I went back and forth between the drivers, changing nothing else, and the difference was always there.
nvidia-bug-report.log.gz (244 KB)

2

Same problem with Gnome-Shell 3.10 on ubuntu 14.04

3

Same problem here with kwin 4.11.9 and opengl 3.1 compositing. Doesn’t matter whether I use any combination of triplebuffering and GLX_EXT_buffer_age.

This is true not only for resizing but also for mapping and unmapping windows as well. And in addition to the resizing/mapping being laggy, it also causes anything else that is running (like a video or a game) to drop several frames and sometimes even display an old frame “run backward”)
nvidia-bug-report.log.gz (77.8 KB)

4

I’m also seeing exactly the same behavior w/ KDE 4.13.x on a Gentoo ~amd64 system w/ kernel 3.14.x and a GTX470. All of it is fixed by downgrading to 337.12.

5

I have the same problem on KDE.
nvidia-bug-report.log.gz (224 KB)

6

It seems to affect all compositing window managers with all Nvidia cards on 337.19.

7

I have the same problem.
As a temporary solution, try to disable «Allow Flipping» in nvidia-settings.
It works for me: Ubuntu 14.04 3.14.4 x86_64 i7-2670QM 337.19 GTX560M

8

That works, but it also disables vsync.

9

Thank you for that invaluable tip! The sluggish window animations were driving me nuts.

With flipping enabled the X process maxes out at 100% CPU while moving windows. When disabled it stays at around 10%.

It also doesn’t disable vsync on my box. Ie. glxgears are still synced to refresh rate.

10

glxgears ran at 60fps for me, but I still got pretty bad tearing.

11

Is this latest driver helped to solve this issue? Linux, Solaris, and FreeBSD driver 331.79 (long-lived branch release) - Announcements and News - NVIDIA Developer Forums

12

There are no problems like this in 331 driver family. Only with 334 and 337, at least on my PC.

13

This problem seems to be fixed in 337.25. Thanks!

14

But there are still jittering of graphics when opening menus and when scrolling.

15

That has always been there. The issue here is that it got significantly worse with 337.19. I wish they would improve the jerks when new windows are created too. It can be seen a little bit on systems with Intel graphics, but not nearly as bad as with Nvidia graphics.