Video Slow Issue

[securitymeddler]

All,

Just installed Ubuntu 12.04 x64 on a new dell T5500. Things run okay in Unity 2d. But in regular mode keyboard response feels like it's almost a second delay. Hitting the Windows key takes a good second for the Unity launcher thing to come up.

I am pretty new to all this and really don't know where to start. I tried the base Ubuntu driver and two different ones in the additional drivers program.

if this helps:
lspci | grep -i nvid
03:00.0 VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation G98 [Quadro NVS 295] (rev a1)

[msammels]

It's probably nothing to do with your video. Can you run:


sudo top

And find out what's using the most CPU?

[securitymeddler]

Thanks for the reply.

I've restarted the whole system clean and still the same issue. nevertheless here is my top



top - 12:43:55 up 3:01, 3 users, load average: 0.61, 0.65, 0.67
Tasks: 291 total, 2 running, 287 sleeping, 0 stopped, 2 zombie
Cpu(s): 0.7%us, 0.8%sy, 0.0%ni, 98.5%id, 0.0%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.0%si, 0.0%st
Mem: 24684704k total, 8199228k used, 16485476k free, 82176k buffers
Swap: 25161724k total, 0k used, 25161724k free, 5469112k cached

PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND
3263 danwilso 20 0 2473m 644m 589m S 15 2.7 40:18.72 VirtualBox
3667 danwilso 20 0 1168m 257m 38m S 8 1.1 7:07.08 firefox
2532 root 20 0 349m 244m 49m S 7 1.0 5:27.27 Xorg
4500 danwilso 20 0 583m 19m 11m S 1 0.1 0:02.90 gnome-terminal
2707 danwilso 20 0 659m 16m 11m S 1 0.1 0:32.02 metacity
3235 danwilso 20 0 616m 10m 7240 S 0 0.0 0:24.24 VBoxSVC
1 root 20 0 24424 2412 1348 S 0 0.0 0:04.56 init
2 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 kthreadd
3 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.12 ksoftirqd/0
6 root RT 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 migration/0
7 root RT 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.02 watchdog/0
8 root RT 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 migration/1
9 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.02 kworker/1:0
10 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.04 ksoftirqd/1
12 root RT 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.02 watchdog/1
13 root RT 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 migration/2
14 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 kworker/2:0

[3Miro]

How much video RAM do you have and how much have you assigned to Virtual Box? Do things work faster if you close Virtual Box?

I have seen video performance decrease with virtual box simply open on another workspace.

[securitymeddler]

I can confirm the video issue happens when VirtualBox is or isn't running. Just happened to be working in Office at that moment.

I had a recommendation to switch to Gnome from Unity, but same issue. In 2d envionments things are great though.


Video RAM is
256 MB GDDR3

[3Miro]

Unity 3D and Gnome-shell both use OpenGL effects from your video card. Unity 2D and Gnome classic use the CPU and generally run faster. My guess is that the problem is with the video card. You can try to install Compizconfig-Settings-Manager and turn some of the Unity effects off, but if Gnome-shell doesn't work very well either, then you may be better off sticking to 2D.

For 2D environment, you can also use KDE (disable effects), XFCE or LXDE.

[securitymeddler]

That's what I have read on a couple forums too. It's disappointing as I was under the impression this was a supported video card.

Any recommended video cards? I don't need anything fancy at all I just prefer a visually appealing interface. The 2d interface isn't something I want to look at for 8 hours a day.

[LHammonds]

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/HardwareSupportComponentsVideoCards

https://www.linux.com/news/hardware/drivers/8203-is-my-hardware-linux-compatible-find-out-here

http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/9553/how-do-i-choose-a-graphics-card-for-linux

[3Miro]

I had reasonable performance on Nvidia GT 210 (with 1GB of RAM). I also have used Unity 3D with great success on GTX260, GTX250, GTX570. My guess is that GTX550 will work great too as well as the 400 series (430, 450, 460 ... ).