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Asked: 2018-05-29 11:11:33 +0800 CST

(NEVERMIND) Recent Ubuntu update causes graphical performance issues

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Nevermind! I checked on 16.04 in the display settings prior to installing 18.04 and couldn't find a solution in there, so if anyone is using that and has the same issue, I'm not sure what you can do. However, going into the display settings and changing the refresh rate to 120Hz works like a charm in 18.04. As to why 60Hz has such issues, I'm not sure. Further information is included in my answer.

A recent issue I experienced on Ubuntu MATE 16.04 x64 after installing updates pushed me to performing a fresh installation of 18.04... but the same issues are here too! The window manager doesn't seem to make any difference, but for the record I am using Compiz.

The exact issue is hard to say. The most prominent one is that my mouse cursor runs at a lower frame rate than my display refresh rate - perhaps 30fps. The second issue is that video playback is jittery, similar to if you were to view 24fps content on a 50Hz display but less consistent. Another effect of this is the audio is several frames ahead of the video. YouTube videos played on Google Chrome are affected, DVDs played on VLC are affected, and based on the fact system menus and moving windows about feels less responsive than before, I reckon it's system-wide.

I'm not sure what information is relevant so all I'll include for now is the output of sudo lshw -C video. And yes, I have installed the latest updates, no, I haven't done much other than switch to Compiz to get rid of the awful screen tearing.

  *-display                 
       description: VGA compatible controller
       product: HD Graphics 5500
       vendor: Intel Corporation
       physical id: 2
       bus info: pci@0000:00:02.0
       version: 09
       width: 64 bits
       clock: 33MHz
       capabilities: msi pm vga_controller bus_master cap_list rom
       configuration: driver=i915 latency=0
       resources: irq:48 memory:b1000000-b1ffffff memory:c0000000-cfffffff ioport:4000(size=64) memory:c0000-dffff
performance 16.04 mate ubuntu-mate 18.04

1 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    It turns out there is now a 120Hz display option available. Why this should make 60Hz such an issue, I'm not sure, and I also have no way of telling if it is actually outputting 120Hz since I use my laptop's built-in screen. Anyway, changing it from 60Hz to 120Hz in System -> Preferences -> Hardware -> Displays seemed to fix this. Not sure why, but I'm happy that it's solved. Using xrandr is not an option as out of the options it gives of 60.00, 59.97, 59.96, 59.93 and 40.00, only 60 and 40 are deemed to be valid, and both of those are jittery.

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