Whole system lagging on Nvidia mode on optimus-manager

General system Kernel, boot, graphics & hardware
1

Hello! I’ve been using EndeavourOS on my gaming laptop for a while now. My laptop is uses NVIDIA Optimus and is hybrid intel/nvidia, and doesn’t have a BIOS switch for the GPUs. My solution was to use optimus-manager, and switch to NVIDIA mode to play games.

That has worked excellently until I updated my system recently and now on NVIDIA mode the whole system is lagging. It appears the drivers are being correctly loaded, and also that the lag is related to display: on loading a game the FPS read a stable 60, even though the whole system is running at 2-3 fps.

I have the same issue using envycontrol, and I tried switching from nvidia-open-dkms, and associated packages, to nvidia-580xx-dkms (the other supported driver set for my GPU), and have the same issue.

On hybrid/intel mode the system runs as usual, but unfortunately I’m having issues with using prime-run for games requiring dxvk, so that isn’t working as a solution.

Unfortunately I’m not even sure how to diagnose the issue, as the drivers and mode switching all seem to be working correctly, so any help would be appreciated! Thanks so much.

Specs:

  • Intel i5-12500
  • Nvidia GTX 4050
  • Linux 6.18.3-arch1-1
2

Small update: I was able to fix this by reverting to my cached version of the nvidia-dkms-580.105.08-5 driver, removing nvidia-open-dkms. Not an ideal solution though.

I also believe the bug to be an instance of https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/NVIDIA/Troubleshooting#Extreme_lag_on_Xorg, although the suggested fix did not work for me.

3

You should be using the nvidia-open-dkms drivers 590xx version. Your gpu is an RTX 4050 not an GTX 4050 as posted. There are other methods of switching gpu. The issue may be caused by optimus-manager which can happen.

4

Which desktop environment are you using? The new nvidia-open drivers don’t seem to play well with certain compositors; on Xfce turning off the compositor seemed to fix a similar issue on my end.

5

Very late response, but this was the issue! Disabling Picom fixed the problem. Thanks so much! I’m using i3 for reference.