Slow/laggy desktop effects with Nvidia card

Question

I've installed Oneiric from scratch (didn't upgrade), and I'm having troubles with desktop effects: Unity is very slow - whenever I click on the workspaces icon, I either get no animation, or the animation just hangs for a second or so before it's completed. Other behaviors feel similarly unresponsive. For example, whenever I try to move a window on the desktop, it will lag behind for a while before it catches up with the mouse pointer. Gnome Shell feels slightly better, but not by much.

The CPU is an AMD Athlon II X2, I have 4 GB RAM, and the video card is is an Nvidia GeForce 6150SE nForce 430.

I've tried playing around with nvidia-settings; I've installed/removed every single Nvidia driver in the repositories (currently using nvidia-173); I've changed the Compiz settings following solutions for similar issues (unchecked "Detect refresh rate", and so on), without any success - in fact, I didn't even manage to make things worse. ;)

glxgears looks great, and it feels like the driver is working really well for everything except desktop effects. Unity 2D is fine, and I'm using it right now.

Solution

I have the same nvidia card (GeForce 6150SE nForce 430) and experienced the exact same problem as WPBloyd (desktop effects were very slow, but it was otherwise fine) using the nvidia driver.

I followed the instructions on this page in order to use the "Nouveau" driver (open-source driver for nvidia cards).

Problem: Need to fully remove -nvidia and installing or reinstall -nouveau from scratch

Here is a recipe which removes all old video drivers, and reinstalls nouveau:

sudo nvidia-settings --uninstall
sudo apt-get remove --purge nvidia*
sudo apt-get remove --purge  xserver-xorg-video-nouveau
sudo apt-get install nvidia-common
sudo apt-get install xserver-xorg-video-nouveau
sudo apt-get install --reinstall  xserver-xorg-core
sudo dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg

(I copied what I used; it is the same as on the last link, except that I suppressed server-xorg-video-nv, libgl1-mesa-glx and libgl1-mesa-dri because they did not seem to exist anymore)

It worked for me, I hope this can help somebody else :)

Comments

[Admin]

@WPBloyd Have you also tried out the nouveau driver to see if you get better support there?

[Admin]

I did; but all I got using the nouveau driver was a black screen, I had to restore the nvidia driver from the console. I might try it again, though... it certainly won't hurt ;) I'm not sure why only Unity (or Gnome Shell) would be slow...

[Admin]

I'd say that you might be affected by the same bug as I am. Take a look at: 850649

[Admin]

Well, in my case gnome-terminal is just as good as it was in 11.04... even using Unity 3D or Gnome Shell

[WPBloyd]

Thank you; I haven't tried playing DVDs yet, but full HD videos (1080p) play flawlessly in full screen. Everything I've tried so far works really great - everything, except desktop effects.

[Bruno Pereira]

Have huge issues with that, in the end I just stoped using 3d effects. Now I can play games on wine, watch movies, no lag in interface. Did you had to do anything to watch movies or all played well after driver install? The nouveau drivers are known to support the 3d effects better + reduce the lad on the desktop. If you dont use wine or any other programs for 3d you can try them, else just use 2d.

[WPBloyd]

I'm afraid I'll have to give up 3D effects as well, but I needed to ask here just in case... about nouveau, I tried it but it didn't work at all.

[Bruno Pereira]

Good info, thats saves me the trouble of testing them ;)

[Twirrim]

This worked for me under Precise. Unity is far faster under Nouveau than the proprietary drivers.

[Alix Axel]

This made it worse for me.

[Gordon]

This is a problem with unity, not the proprietary nvidia drivers. nouveau is vastly inferior to the nvidia drivers; suggesting their replacement just because Canonical fails to provide a window manager capable of working properly under the proprietary drivers (or chooses to do so, just to make a point), is not really an answer to the problem, unless you are willing to consider removing Unity and replacing it with another DE as an equally useful 'solution'.