# [SOLVED] Problems with Nvidia card after kernel upgrade

## pvh1987

Earlier this year I upgraded my kernel to version 4.1.12 from version 3.16.5. After that, I noticed that my Nvidia GTX 970 is not working like it should. If I open an OpenGL game like Urban Terror, the video and audio is stuttering like crazy and the mouse cursor moves very slowly in a frame rate of about half a second. Video playback is smooth, but the mouse cursor disappears in VLC when moving the mouse into the video area and full screen mode is not working. Other players like mplayer works as it should. Still, something is clearly wrong.

glxgears is at about 650 fps in the default small window. In full screen mode it drops to about 40 fps...

After rechecking kernel setup, various config files, rebulding the kernel, nvidia drivers, xorg-server and so on as described in the Gentoo Wiki, I gave up. The problems is still there.

My card is working like it should in Windows 7, allthough my Intel Core 2 Quad 2.4 GHz is quite a bottleneck. Linux performance used to be bad compared to Windows, but now it is terrible and totally unusable. 

Yesterday, I upgraded to kernel 4.4.6 and the problems are still there. It is quite annoying, so I would like some ideas to what can be wrong. 

Thanks in advance  :Smile: 

I have installed these versions of the nvidia-drivers and xorg-server:

x11-drivers/nvidia-drivers 361.28

x11-base/xorg-server 1.17.4

The first few lines of the ouput of "glxinfo":

```

name of display: :0.0

display: :0  screen: 0

direct rendering: Yes

server glx vendor string: SGI

server glx version string: 1.4

```

Last edited by pvh1987 on Tue May 10, 2016 10:25 pm; edited 1 time in total

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## Buffoon

```
name of display: :0

display: :0  screen: 0

direct rendering: Yes

server glx vendor string: NVIDIA Corporation

server glx version string: 1.4

```

See the difference?

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## pvh1987

Oops... I guess you found the problem. Thanks a lot. So, now I need to find the solution as well   :Very Happy: 

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## pvh1987

It gets even worse:

```

glxinfo | grep vendor

server glx vendor string: SGI

client glx vendor string: Mesa Project and SGI

OpenGL vendor string: VMware, Inc

```

VMware? This is not a virtual machine, nor have I installed VMware. I have absolutely no idea what is going on.

Somehow a wrong driver gets loaded instead of the Nvidia driver I have installed. I have checked my xorg.conf and that the nvidia kernel module is loaded:

Here is a portion of the output of "lspci -v":

```

01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation GM204 [GeForce GTX 970] (rev a1) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])

   Subsystem: ASUSTeK Computer Inc. GM204 [GeForce GTX 970]

   Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 31

   Memory at fd000000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16M]

   Memory at d0000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=256M]

   Memory at ce000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=32M]

   I/O ports at ac00 [size=128]

   [virtual] Expansion ROM at fe800000 [disabled] [size=512K]

   Capabilities: [60] Power Management version 3

   Capabilities: [68] MSI: Enable+ Count=1/1 Maskable- 64bit+

   Capabilities: [78] Express Legacy Endpoint, MSI 00

   Capabilities: [100] Virtual Channel

   Capabilities: [250] Latency Tolerance Reporting

   Capabilities: [258] L1 PM Substates

   Capabilities: [128] Power Budgeting <?>

   Capabilities: [600] Vendor Specific Information: ID=0001 Rev=1 Len=024 <?>

   Kernel driver in use: nvidia

   Kernel modules: nvidia

```

Here is the nvidia-related output from "lsmod":

```

nvidia_modeset        724137  1

nvidia               9956255  32 nvidia_modeset

```

Below are the graphics related sections in my Xorg.conf:

```

Section "Device" 

    Identifier     "Device0" 

    Driver         "nvidia" 

    VendorName     "NVIDIA Corporation" 

    BoardName      "GeForce GTX 970"

    BusID          "PCI:1:0:0"

EndSection

Section "Screen"

    Identifier     "Screen0"

    Device         "Device0"

    Monitor        "Monitor0"

    DefaultDepth    24

    Option         "Stereo" "0"

    Option         "nvidiaXineramaInfoOrder" "DFP-1"

    Option         "metamodes" "nvidia-auto-select +0+0 { ForceFullCompositionPipeline = On }"

    Option         "SLI" "Off"

    Option         "MultiGPU" "Off"

    Option         "BaseMosaic" "off"

    SubSection     "Display"

        Depth       24

    EndSubSection

EndSection

Section "dri"

  Mode 0666

EndSection

Section "Extensions"

    Option "Composite"   "Enable"

EndSection

Section "Module"

    Load "extmod"

    Load "glx"

EndSection

```

I think the problem must be somewhere else than in my xorg.conf, since it used to work just fine, even with tear free video and so on. I think that there is a problem with the Nvidia driver and somekind of "fallback" driver is loaded instead. My X logs does not seem to show any useful information. Is there another way to check if this is the case?

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## Buffoon

eselect opengl list ?

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## pvh1987

Thanks a lot! That solved the problem. Somehow the opengl selection was set to "xorg-x11" instead of "nvidia". I do not know why it was set to "xorg-x11" - hopefully my system will keep the new setting at next reboot.

Now OpenGL runs smoothly but the VLC problems regarding the mouse cursor and full screen mode is still present. Maybe it is a VLC or Qt related bug and not related to this problem at all. During the earlier kernel upgrade, I might have updated other software as well.. I will have to figure that out soon...

Thanks again   :Very Happy: 

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## Buffoon

What video output VLC is configured to use?

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## SDNick484

What version of VLC are you using?  There's a report in another thread of a similar cursor issue that was resolved by going to VLC 2.2.2 (currently in ~).

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