Severe system slow down with NVIDIA driver (openSUSE 11.2, Quadro FX 2700M)

euromonkey · 08-23-10, 09:55 AM

Hi all,

I have a Dell M6400 laptop with a Quadro FX 2700M running openSUSE 11.2 with KDE 4.4.4.

When my system starts up, everything works fine and performance is good. However, after a while I experience severe slowdown and can see in top that the Xorg and kwin processes are consuming ~20% CPU each.

If I reinstall the NVIDIA driver, the problem clears up for a while but soon returns without any system changes being made. I have seen this with driver versions 195,36.15, 256.44 and 256.35 (current). It seems to be worse if I configure twinview for my two LCD monitors rather than running with just the notebook display.

The output of nvidia-bug-report.sh is attached. What can I tweak/change/upgrade to cure this please?

Many thanks!

gisl · 08-23-10, 01:35 PM

Can you try removing the power supply for a few seconds, and plugging it in again?

euromonkey · 08-23-10, 05:06 PM

Ok, the symptoms occurred, I unplugged AC power and top immediately showed the CPU usage return to normal for Xorg/kwin. Within a couple of minutes (I was running a CPU intensive task), it happened again, I yanked the power and saw the same immediate improvement.

So, it seems you are on to something! I'm guessing this is something to-do with when the system has to adjust fan/clock rates in response to heat? Note that I am running with CPUFREQ=no on the boot line. nvidia-settings shows the GPU temperature as ~78 degrees with maximum performance being used in Powermizer with clock rates 530/799 MHz for the GPU/memory clock respectively.

I'm hoping there is a fix or tweak for this since flicking the power continuously is a nice workaround but a little inconvenient!

gisl · 08-24-10, 08:09 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by euromonkey

I'm hoping there is a fix or tweak for this since flicking the power continuously is a nice workaround but a little inconvenient!

I reported this problem in http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/show...8&postcount=28 and the comment #29 in that thread suggests that a newer version of the driver contains some fixes regarding the driver's "Powermizer". I haven't tried the newer driver yet, though.

08-23-10, 05:06 PM	#3
euromonkey Registered User Join Date: Aug 2010 Posts: 5	Re: Severe system slow down with NVIDIA driver (openSUSE 11.2, Quadro FX 2700M) Ok, the symptoms occurred, I unplugged AC power and top immediately showed the CPU usage return to normal for Xorg/kwin. Within a couple of minutes (I was running a CPU intensive task), it happened again, I yanked the power and saw the same immediate improvement. So, it seems you are on to something! I'm guessing this is something to-do with when the system has to adjust fan/clock rates in response to heat? Note that I am running with CPUFREQ=no on the boot line. nvidia-settings shows the GPU temperature as ~78 degrees with maximum performance being used in Powermizer with clock rates 530/799 MHz for the GPU/memory clock respectively. I'm hoping there is a fix or tweak for this since flicking the power continuously is a nice workaround but a little inconvenient!

08-23-10, 01:35 PM	#2
gisl Registered User Join Date: Jul 2010 Posts: 6	Re: Severe system slow down with NVIDIA driver (openSUSE 11.2, Quadro FX 2700M) Can you try removing the power supply for a few seconds, and plugging it in again?