Home / ubuntu / Questions / 210264
In Process
Martin Ueding
Asked: 2012-11-01 13:30:36 +0800 CST

Less graphics power all the sudden (Intel HD 3000)

  • 772

I have a Intel Sandy Bridge i5 with the HD 3000 graphics card. I used to be able to play Urban Terror and Nexuiz comfortably with 85 and 60 frames per seconds until mid/end of October 2012, the former even on a full HD display with that many frames.

Now I have around 30 to 45 on the smaller laptop screen and around 20 to 30 on the external monitor. Did something happen to Kubuntu 12.04 so that it has less graphics performance than previously?

Update

I looked into the system monitor and could not detect anything being at the maximum. The four CPU cores were pretty much bored, the 8 GB RAM were filled with maybe 2 GB. And I ran intel_cpu_top and did not notice anything at its limit. See the output.

after Kernel bisecting

I now did a kernel bisect and tried 3.2.0-23, 3.2.0-27, 3.2.0-29 and 3.2.0-30 and all had full graphics power. Interestingly, I then had full power when I just booted back into the regular 3.2.0-32 kernel. This does not make sense to me …

the hardware

  • Lenovo ThinkPad X220
  • Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-2520M CPU @ 2.50GHz
  • Intel HD 3000 Graphics Card (in the CPU)
  • 8 GB RAM
  • Kubuntu 12.04 LTS
kubuntu

2 Answers

  1. I know Intel has had a number of issues with the Linux kernel driver, As these articles will show.

    Tweaks To Extend The Battery Life Of Intel Linux Notebooks

    RC6 power savings Disabled For Linux 3.2

    however if you are comfortable with adding kernel command-line parameters you might try using the i915.i915_enable_rc6=1 or the pcie_aspm=force option to get your graphics back up to par. Just be on the lookout for possible overheating and/or lockups.

    • 1

  2. It happens when your cores are dormant , Sometimes your cores do not know when to wake up so they basicly fall asleep , They ussually wake up when you launch a heavy duty application or restart then launch it , It happens even on windows

    On windows , When you launch a application it starts with all cores , Then as it gets used to it being open , It only uses the core it needs and the rest "Hibernate" to save energy and also to not overheat your system , Same logic works in Kubuntu , Ubuntu , and other Linux Distro;s

    Question to the asker : Should I upgrade to Kubuntu from Ubuntu?

    Note - The Cores are never always on , They are only on when your running a game like World Of Warcraft on a low-end computer exceeding your RAM limit so your cores turn on to try to stabilize the amount , Computers have multile backup plans , When your computer can't stabize , It goes into Core Recovery mode so it either gives you a warning , Dormants your laptop , Or your processor get "errored out" since your processes are causing a chaotic mess of your computer!

    • -4