GT650m underclocked Ubuntu

Razyre · 6 Apr 2013 at 22:42

Hi there.

So, I've recently been playing with Linux and after the painful process of getting bumblebee installed (Optimus completely buggers over Linux, even though it's useless and achieves nothing because it doesn't work) find out that the GT650m in my laptop doesn't appear to be clocking properly.

Apparently there's some bug in the driver software that reports the wrong speeds on cards. However, having played Mirror's Edge (Yes through Wine, not optimal) the performance was really quite lackluster. Being rated platinum for Wine, and everything working flawlessly other than performance, this leads me to think that the reported 405MHz on the card is true.

I'm on 304.84 at the current moment, the driver that defaults when I install Bumblebee. Other than this clocking issue, it seems fine.

So, you can't overclock a Kepler graphics card apparently because no utilities exist, I'm stuck in a rut.

Is there a newer driver that fixes this? Is there a way to upgrade Bumblebee?

Thanks

melvis · 15 Apr 2013 at 14:23

cant say ive any experience with optimus/bumblebee, but you can overclock with nvidia-settings on any nvidia card ive tried, but nvidia made it so you need to add an option to xorg.conf first

Option "Coolbits" 1

then launching nvidia-settings you should see frequency and fan changing options.

even without that, you could turn off adaptive clocking to run the gpu at high clocks regardless of load.

FirebarUK · 15 Apr 2013 at 16:42

Some laptop cards are purposefully under-clocked anyway.

Razyre · 15 Apr 2013 at 17:57

melvis said:
cant say ive any experience with optimus/bumblebee, but you can overclock with nvidia-settings on any nvidia card ive tried, but nvidia made it so you need to add an option to xorg.conf first

then launching nvidia-settings you should see frequency and fan changing options.

even without that, you could turn off adaptive clocking to run the gpu at high clocks regardless of load.

This is where we begin to see my problems.

I don't believe "Coolbits" works on any newer cards in Linux. I've already tried that as is, should have detailed that.

Even if I select "Maximum Performance" mode, all Linux supposedly does is up the memory clock to 905MHz, otherwise leaving the core clock at a pitiful 405MHz. There were reports of the driver just displaying this wrong, but I'm not so sure.

Basically, I need to try and install the latest driver I can through Bumblebee, how to do that? No idea. This is where I need help.

FirebarUK said:
Some laptop cards are purposefully under-clocked anyway.

Lol, this card is stock clocked at 835MHz and can happily go up to 1200-1300MHz under Windows. 405 is taking the ****. Even 700 or something would be nicer.

melvis · 15 Apr 2013 at 18:42

hmm, i have no problem with kepler clocking on my desktop chip at least, and i have no experience with optimus, have you tried the 319.12 nvidia drivers? seems they have some built in optimus support depending on how new xrandr is in your distro
http://www.webupd8.org/2013/04/nvidia-releases-linux-graphics-drivers.html

Razyre · 15 Apr 2013 at 19:23

melvis said:
hmm, i have no problem with kepler clocking on my desktop chip at least, and i have no experience with optimus, have you tried the 319.12 nvidia drivers? seems they have some built in optimus support depending on how new xrandr is in your distro
http://www.webupd8.org/2013/04/nvidia-releases-linux-graphics-drivers.html

Oh this is great news, Nvidia is finally starting to take Linux seriously. Seriously hate that company so much.

Main problem I see is getting me, a linux noob, to install those drivers properly. I seriously hate working with Linux for the reason that you have to do everything via terminal and that there is next to 0 documentation for specific hardware.

Oh and also looks like it doesn't work with Ubuntu very well, if at all. I'm currently on 12.04, the only version I could get bumblebee working well on, and the latest version without all of that amazon branding crap they put on the OS as Canonical made the transition to sell outs.

Now, I've tried getting 313.30 on the system and it installed to some degree, but it appears as if they've changed a whole bunch of stuff that means I'd have to configure the xorg.conf differently which obviously, I don't know how to do. There is no specific documentation that I can find to installing 313.30 either. I managed to mess up my install of Bumblebee trying to install 313.30 as I suspected I would.

Going to /try/ and use the "310-experimental" driver, no idea what driver that actually is. There is no logical naming as there is on Windows, in some places driver have specific names, but in repos they have stupid names like the above.

Thanks very much for being a help and posting this, never thought I'd even get a reply

melvis · 16 Apr 2013 at 11:57

no problem

theres no need to use nvidias text installer, theres a ubuntu repo with the latest drivers available its at

https://launchpad.net/~xorg-edgers/+archive/ppa

you can add it graphically using the software-properties-gtk thing then install it via the software center

or run the commands below

Code:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:xorg-edgers/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install nvidia-graphics-drivers-319

I seriously hate working with Linux for the reason that you have to do everything via terminal and that there is next to 0 documentation for specific hardware.

to be fair, theres a graphical way to do almost everything in linux nowadays, its just a heck of a lot easier to communicate a command across the internet than explaining it by "click here, then here, then over there"

Number_25 · 16 Apr 2013 at 13:59

Razyre said:
I seriously hate working with Linux for the reason that you have to do everything via terminal and that there is next to 0 documentation for specific hardware.

But in all seriousness, Linux is awesome for installing stuff - whether it be using software-managers or the terminal.

Once you get to sudo apt-get install/update etc it becomes quicker than manually looking around.

* Provided that the right PPA's are available that is.

Razyre · 16 Apr 2013 at 16:16

melvis said:
no problem

theres no need to use nvidias text installer, theres a ubuntu repo with the latest drivers available its at

https://launchpad.net/~xorg-edgers/+archive/ppa

you can add it graphically using the software-properties-gtk thing then install it via the software center

or run the commands below

Code:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:xorg-edgers/ppa sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install nvidia-graphics-drivers-319

to be fair, theres a graphical way to do almost everything in linux nowadays, its just a heck of a lot easier to communicate a command across the internet than explaining it by "click here, then here, then over there"

Oh awesome, thanks very much

May have buggered over my Ubuntu build now... I find once I break the video drivers they are very difficult to get back with little experience lol.

I can always re-install at the end of the day.

Number_25 said:
But in all seriousness, Linux is awesome for installing stuff - whether it be using software-managers or the terminal.

Once you get to sudo apt-get install/update etc it becomes quicker than manually looking around.

* Provided that the right PPA's are available that is.

Once again, thanks for the help.

Nice to know there are /some/ linux users at least out there who actually want to help me xD