Any FPS Increase Tips?

[osmanakar312]

I am using LDME 5 with 5.10.113 Xanmod kernel. I have NVIDIA 950M GPU and configured as PRIME. Are there any tweaks i can apply for increasing FPS?

[MiZoG]

Native games? Proton / Wine? Never mind.
1. Stick with distro packages of nvidia proprietary drivers. Avoid at all events the Linux drivers nvidia offers on their site.
2. sudo apt install libvulkan1 libvulkan1:i386 vulkan-tools in case you haven't already installed those packages
3. Use "gamemode" (default with Steam Proton or Lutris launcher) though Xanmod kernel provides most of the same utility.
4. Disable "compositing" with full-screen windows in Cinnamon (System settings-->General settings on LM20.3). This nulls all unnecessary debate on which Linux DE is best for gaming
5. Trust ProtonUp-Qt (flatpak) for management of custom Proton builds (all the rage now on Linux gaming)
6. Protondb! for tricks and tips
7. Linux gaming community gathers at gamingonlinux, lutris, heroic launcher and other discord channels these days. You can seek and find more expert help over there.

You have to keep your expectations at a realistic level. 950M was more than decent at its prime-days but modern games have started to require more video ram than your system can provide. An average 10-15% decrease in performance between Windows and wine/proton is to be expected though things are getting slowly better. You may have more success with some games and less with others. The more you are into AAA, online, modern titles the more you'd want to consider keeping a.. (shush, don't tell anyone here I fathomed this obscenity) Windows partition in your disks.

[osmanakar312]

Firstly thanks for answering. I am using official CUDA repos provided by NVIDIA. I have latest driver 515. I did most of things you said. Seems only decreases shutters and increases stability. I know i cant play latest games but i can play oldish titles. I want squize my device's potential. And i dont think install any "bloatware" on my computer and i dont have to, so DXVK works near bare-metal performance.

I want asked might i can find any tip or setting may increase my performance. PRIME makes bottleneck cuz it uses iGPU for transfering data to screen. Some people said more ram decreases these bottleneck.

[MiZoG]

I am using official CUDA repos provided by NVIDIA

I don't run LMDE5 on my main comp and I let myself experiment a little bit so I -once- added that nvidia repo. I wouldn't have done that on my 'daily driver' but Valve announced that they won't support Proton Experimental on anything but the latest stable nvidia drivers, 470x at the time. Suddenly I found myself with the 510 (number might not be accurate) beta driver, an odd thing for Debian stable, which repeatedly crashed my web browsers and Steam app in particular. I had no problems with games though. Well, if your current driver behaves right for you, you may want to "hold' future updates from that repo and think twice before installing em.

..oldish titles

There has never been a better time for playing that kind of games in the history of Linux.

[osmanakar312]

I am using 515.65.01 version of NVIDIA driver. Seems work without issues. Only i suffered Vulkan Loader selector but it fixed by adding a global variable.

[ThaCrip]

I suggest generally using Lutris paired with GloriousEggroll runner for Lutris ( https://github.com/GloriousEggroll/wine ... m/releases ; currently 'wine-lutris-GE-Proton7-28-x86_64.tar.xz' which was released two days ago now) as it's offline and works well as that generally offers better support for games than stock Wine.

I am currently on Mint 21.0-Xfce (which is 5.15 kernel by default) and NVIDIA v515.65 driver.

p.s. a example of a solid increase in performance on a older game would be Mafia (2002) (my #1 video game experience to date) as just by using the 'd3d8.dll' from 'crosire' over on github gives a rather big boost to frame rates vs stock game (I also use widescreen fix etc to). so you know that file alone is legit because my setup (i5-3550/1050 Ti 4GB) should EASILY handle that game since it's a 20 year old game and given the frame rates are noticeably lower than you would expect, but just by getting the game to use that file (copy it to root of game directory and then 'configure wine' on 'Libraries' section to use 'd3d8') gives a obvious performance increase. but this stuff appears to be for older games, prior to DirectX9 basically, which basically converts that games DirectX8 to DirectX9 and then, I think, Lutris etc converts that to dxvk (as you can see some cache files it creates in the Mafia folder, a "Game.dxvk-cache" file and a 'GLCache' folder) which is basically Vulkan.

Play not on high settings. I'm not particularly picky about graphics, so everywhere I put, either low or medium settings. If you think the problem is my weak PC, you are wrong as I have a Legion 5 with a 3060 configuration and Ryzen 7. This is all done for the smoothness of the picture, as my monitor has 165 hertz.

While I do agree I am not super picky on graphics either... personally I am of the mindset that once the frame rate reaches a certain point I would rather have the increase in graphics, especially for single player games. I get opinions might vary a bit here though as some might not mind sacrificing graphics a bit further to gain in frame rate.

so while I get higher frame rates (60fps+) are generally optimal/preferable, for single player games I generally would rather have the increase in graphics as long as I can maintain good enough frame rates (i.e. about 30fps+) because once your frame rate reaches a certain point, you are not getting a big enough improvement in smoothness of gameplay to justify the hit in graphics, especially for single player.

so in short, it's about finding a good balance of frame rate/graphics basically as once I reach a playable frame rate (i.e. about 30fps) I would generally rather have the increase in graphics as high as I reasonably can. although if I am going to lose a decent amount of frame rate for negligible/small graphics increase, in that case ill probably opt for the increased frame rate over the graphics improvement.

I got a 144Hz monitor but my GPU (1050 Ti 4GB), which is still decent enough at 1080p or so, is not going to give me 144fps (as it seems you need the frame rate to match the screens refresh rate for optimal effect of the high refresh rate monitors) with 'maybe' a exception on old/older games. but regardless of monitors refresh rate, the 30fps/60fps rule (i.e. 30fps or so is playable, 60fps+ is pretty much perfect/liquid smooth) is ALWAYS a standard guideline since that's been the standards for ages now and will never change since you are going to get the most obvious differences in overall gameplay with those two frame rates. but even taking into account as low of frame rates as you can reasonably go I might even say about 25fps+ is still playable, but is pushing it as by the time you get to about 20fps the games playability is pretty much shot. because if a person can fairly consistently float around 30fps, or say at least high 20's, and only slightly dips below the mid-20's or so once in a while, a person can 'get-by' with that, although I would easily understand if a person would rather sacrifice graphics here to squeeze out some more frame rate as when you start getting into the lower range of playable frame rates you don't have much room for error and performance(fps) starts to become a lot higher priority outright because you must have a bare minimum standard otherwise the game won't be playable regardless of graphics.

so with your NVIDIA 3060 and that level of CPU it don't make much sense to me to use unnecessarily low graphics simply because the increased frame rates you get is not a big enough of a real world difference to justify killing the visuals (especially on single player games), unless of course you don't care about graphics much at all outright. still, it's the thought of it, as even for someone who's more performance than graphics minded... why get a powerful GPU and kill the graphics for no real reason as once you hit 60fps+ your getting pretty much max performance already at which point you might as well increase graphics as high as you can as long as you maintain that 60fps+ standard etc. basically with your hardware you can likely get the best of graphics and frame rates where as on my GPU (1050 Ti 4GB) ill have to sacrifice on some level for sure. but I don't mind 1080p with 30fps or so as by this standard I am usually still good enough, or thereabouts (and can use other tweaks like mentioned below and other things like say on RDR2 I use a unofficial FSR 2.0 mod which gave me 10fps more on 'Performance' mode by using the games built-in 'DLSS' which is really using FSR 2.0 after the mod was applied, which is a solid increase considering my frame rates are close to the edge when I got graphics more on the ultra/high settings in general with a bit in the medium and lower range which keeps me noticeably safer with performance because of that mod).

but speaking of this stuff on Linux, if you want more performance you can even use 'FSR 1.0' in GloriousEggroll's runner for Lutris which basically inputs a custom res into the game and then it upscales it to your monitors native res etc. while I do occasionally use this on my 1080p monitor (when I need more performance on games with no native FSR support and have a harder time running on my PC at native 1080p etc), I heard it's mostly beneficial for higher res monitors like 1440p/2160p(4k) etc.

[ThaCrip]

so with your NVIDIA 3060 and that level of CPU it don't make much sense to me to use unnecessarily low graphics simply because the increased frame rates you get is not a big enough of a real world difference to justify killing the visuals (especially on single player games), unless of course you don't care about graphics much at all outright.

The fact that the quality of the picture in the new games do not change much from the parameters of graphics, even on YouTube there are many comparisons of graphics. I have a laptop, under load it starts to get warm and noisy and all because of the compactness, so to prolong the life of a laptop, I try not to load it. These are other reasons why I do not put high graphics in games.

Ahh, I see. I did not realize you were on a laptop, so I get your reasoning here a bit better now as that makes more sense now

still, I never really understood gaming on a laptop in general because the hardware is more fragile/costs more/smaller screen etc. so unless portability is paramount, one is better off with a desktop in general since you get more power, higher reliability (don't have to worry about overheating), bigger screen etc for less money.

[ThaCrip]

Laptops have their own advantages. First is its portability, secondly, the price is not higher than the PC, given the high price of graphics cards, I am sure you do not take into account the price of the monitor, as well as the keyboard so it is not really. + Laptop was a great alternative at a time of shortage of graphics cards. I was comparing prices and it came out that one video card cost 80% of the price of a laptop. Third, the presence of the monitor is an advantage for those who are engaged in such things as streaming or processing photos, video, or engaged in modeling, as at any time you can connect a second monitor, which will work as the main, and that the laptop, will work as a subsidiary, such as chat or program with textures to work with modeling.

Yeah, in recent times you seem to have a legitimate point as I get the whole GPU pricing has been a bit steep on PC since about late 2017 or 2018+. but I typically avoid high end GPU's as I usually go for bang-for-the-buck to keep prices a bit more reasonable in general as putting aside all of the insanely high pricing in recent memory, you used to be able to get a pretty good GPU for around $200 or less, maybe $300-ish on the high end.

but historically desktops are just all-around better than laptops (since you generally get more power/reliability for less $ etc) unless portability is a high priority for the user as that's the only obvious advantage laptops have over desktops. but to me that portability advantage is not enough to overcome desktops generally being superior.

personally there is no way I could use a laptop over a desktop as a general rule for my primary use system as the screen smaller (I am used to 24" 1080p range monitors which is a pretty common thing on desktops for a while now) and using a standard keyboard/mouse is so much better to for the general use experience as without a more standard keyboard/mouse alone makes laptops a bit of a chore to use right off the start.

but thanks for the info

p.s. I don't plan on upgrading my 1050 Ti 4GB anytime soon because back when I bought mine it was just before the prices started to go sky high back in July 2017 as I got mine for $135 (which was probably a slight deal as they were often in the $145-150 or so range) and that was a decent GPU and still is on some level today. although the NVIDIA 1060+ gives you a bit more room to breathe as if I had one of those today I would still be comfortable. I use a two screen setup on my desktop... 24" 1080p monitor for general use and if I play movies I typically turn on my TV (HDMI) and then load up a video on PC side and play it on TV side. I just hope by the time I do need a GPU upgrade, prices come back to pre-bitcoin levels as then you can get plenty fast enough GPU's for about $200 tops, maybe less.

[sainishwanth]

Native games? Proton / Wine? Never mind.
1. Stick with distro packages of nvidia proprietary drivers. Avoid at all events the Linux drivers nvidia offers on their site.
2. sudo apt install libvulkan1 libvulkan1:i386 vulkan-tools in case you haven't already installed those packages
3. Use "gamemode" (default with Steam Proton or Lutris launcher) though Xanmod kernel provides most of the same utility.
4. Disable "compositing" with full-screen windows in Cinnamon (System settings-->General settings on LM20.3). This nulls all unnecessary debate on which Linux DE is best for gaming
5. Trust ProtonUp-Qt (flatpak) for management of custom Proton builds (all the rage now on Linux gaming)
6. Protondb! for tricks and tips
7. Linux gaming community gathers at gamingonlinux, lutris, heroic launcher and other discord channels these days. You can seek and find more expert help over there.

You have to keep your expectations at a realistic level. 950M was more than decent at its prime-days but modern games have started to require more video ram than your system can provide. An average 10-15% decrease in performance between Windows and wine/proton is to be expected though things are getting slowly better. You may have more success with some games and less with others. The more you are into AAA, online, modern titles the more you'd want to consider keeping a.. (shush, don't tell anyone here I fathomed this obscenity) Windows partition in your disks.

Wow! Thanks a lot, this really helped!