Lower performance on Ubuntu 8.04 than on XP same machine.

[Aztek]

I'm running the following setup:

Dual Core Opteron 165 OC to 2.4GHz
Geforce 8800GTS 640MB
2GB OCZ Performance RAM
500GB SATA HD

I'm dual booting XP and Ubuntu. I prefer to use Ubuntu, but the performance for Spring doesn't seem to be the same. I'm getting lower framerates, the scroll-zoom is choppy, I can't turn AA up as high, textures don't seem as smooth (almost looks pixelated), etc.

I followed the instructions to disable one CPU core for XP with no noticeable increase in performance (didn't check FPS), but didn't see similar instructions for Linux. Is there a way to accomplish the same thing?

Any ideas/common issues with geforce cards on linux?

Thanks,
Aztek

[aegis]

are you using the latest nvidia driver with envy-ng?

[Aztek]

Yep I ran envy-ng yesterday.

I just fixed the mouse problem using the instructions in the wiki to run:

echo 'export SDL_MOUSE_RELATIVE=0' >> ~/.bash_profile

Shouldn't I have seen some output from that since it's an echo (didn't see any)?

[aegis]

the >> pipe the output into a file

[Aztek]

Ah ok thanks for explaining.

I noticed that envy-ng appears to have installed Forceware 169, but the latest Linux binaries from NVIDIA are version 173.

I think the framerate is my last issue to solve. I just did a side-by-side of the image quality and it's very close to the same so must be in my head.

As for framerate, Ubuntu does seem to be lower. I'm thinking maybe this can be attributed to the dual-core issue?

[aegis]

are you running compiz, compiz-fusion or any desktop effects?

[Aztek]

Nope I disabled all of those.

[YokoZar]

How much lower are we talking about here?

[Aztek]

I will do a comparison, but I asked someone else (may have been aegis) and they said they were getting better performance using Ubuntu.

[aegis]

for a dual-processor computer, try irqbalance
I also got higher fps after compiling spring myself

[Vadi]

Ubuntu already does the balanced scheduling, irqbalance won't do anything.

There was some command to check this but I forgot. But in short, ubuntu already has this some else enabled by default that balances fairly.

[HAARP]

cat /proc/interrupts ?

[LordMatt]

169 is a fast driver for me. I haven't updated to anything newer yet. Do you have the graphics settings the same in both versions (including not having ground decals set high in either)?

[clericvash]

Ubuntu already does the balanced scheduling, irqbalance won't do anything.

There was some command to check this but I forgot. But in short, ubuntu already has this some else enabled by default that balances fairly.

CFS, completely fair scheduler, included into the Linux Kernel, so ubuntu should use it. (if its not CFS its the other one as i know there was two).