After using Nvidia graphics cards for decades, we have abandoned using Nvidia graphics cards for our workstations, because we had too often to exchange working graphics cards in productive use for new ones due to the relatively short support time. We are now using AMD graphics cards or Intel onboard graphics whereever possible because their long-term support. This also fixes the freeze problem that plagues Nvidia graphics cards.
However, we had to put some Nvidia cards into a few workstations which have only PCIE-X8 slots, as in this form factor we currently have no AMD cards.
The Nvidia freezes were less bad a few years ago, then and when maybe 1, maximum 2 seconds. But now the situation has become unbearable: when changing to another active window, open a new window or the like, the computers freeze constantly for some seconds, yield for a second fraction, freeze again, until they sort of “stabilize”, often only after 3-5 minutes.
This freeze problem with Nvidia cards began at about driver version 400 and apparently gets worse and worse the newer the driver is. The pauses are extremely disruptive, which does not get better because one never knows how long it will take until the computer becomes responsive again. These many long freezes were the last straw that initiated the migration to AMD graphics cards.
The freezes occur on Debian, Ubuntu and FreeBSD.
Swapping the Nvidia card for an AMD card makes the issue disappear. But as already mentioned, we have no PCIE-X8 AMD cards here right now.
So my question: Do exist configuration settings that can remove the Nvidia freezes?
Never had this kind of problem on any of my NVIDIA systems.
The worst I’ve had was barely noticeable stutter when running on X11 instead of Wayland back in the day. I recall that enabling Force Composition Pipeline fixed it back then. You can find that in the advanced section of the NVIDIA settings app if you use X11. But I suggest you just try Wayland instead if you haven’t switched to it already.
If you want NVIDIA to seriously look into your issue, I suggest you provide a bug report after reproducing the issue, as per their instructions: https://forums.developer.nvidia.com/t/if-you-have-a-problem-please-read-this-first/
I also suggest you change the title to something more specific, like “System freezing when manipulating windows”
And lastly, I would remove the random unrelated complaints from the post to make it quicker and easier to read your main issue that you’re trying to solve.
@sblachmann, good decision on ditching Nvidia: it’s not suitable for any desktop purposes, especially on Linux.
PCIe slots are compatible between widths: you can always put a shorter card into a longer slot and if a shorter slot has on open end, you can put a longer card into it (of course the speed will be limited to the shorter width in both cases).
If your mobo’s x8 slots are not open-ended, you can buy a simple and cheap adapter, so then you can insert your x16 AMD/Intel card into it. See for example this ADT-Link model (you can definitely find cheaper, I’m just a big fan of ADT’s stuff).
Just added to xorg.conf this in the Screen section:
Option "metamodes" "HDMI-0: nvidia-auto-select { ForceCompositionPipeline = On }"
Now the freezes have almost disappeared!
What is pretty interesting also, the windows now get built in orderly way,.
Before this setting the windows’ rects tiles were updated in a random order, making the screen painting look pretty chaotic, disorderly, just unprofessional.
Furthermore the frame rate in videos has almost doubled!
The adapter is quite interesting, unfortunately there is no much space in the cases for this.
But, I noticed that some AMD graphics cards actually are only X8 connected. I consider dremel off the X16 part, where there are no vias, just naked PCB :)
Luckily these are no black screen freezes. The usual reaction is that FVWM paints the desktop and window frame, and then the cursor freezes, until the computer “stabilized” again.
@sblachmann you probably won’t need it now that both ForceCompositionPipeline solved you immediate issue and that you’ve found x8 GPUs, but just in case and for the future readers:
you can use such adapter also as an extension (in case of PCIe gen3 even up to several meters, in case of gen4 up to ~80cm, gen5 probably ~30cm) and keep your graphic card outside of the case as a “semi-eGPU” (you can put it in a bracket like this or this for better stability).
Unfortunately, now the freezes are back for some reason, and even worse than before.
X now even crashes if one goes on a virtual console (ctl-alt-Fn) during an Nvidia freeze because it apparently thinks the Nvidia driver stopped working (e.g. Nvidia freezes longer than internal X window timeouts).
My gut feeling is that there are some benchmark optimizations in the Nvidia driver that are causing problems. So I´d like to ask, Is there an option to deactivate any and all optimizations in the Nvidia driver?
