Before upgrading from saucy to trusty, I was happily using nvidia drivers for my GeForce GT 635M GPU. The heating and battery draining rates were under check. and the fps were high.
After the upgrade, I got (for the first time) list of Nvidia drivers in the Settings >> Softwares & Updates >> Additional Drivers section.
I selected the 331.38 proprietary drivers and ubuntu tells me that the device is using the recommended driver.
The fps are high, and the heat and batt drainage is better than when the GPU was always on (before installing the drivers and bumblebee), so I know that the GPU is working as expected.
But comparatively, I still feel that the heat generation and battery drainage is more than what I used to get in saucy.
Any ideas how I can check/improve the performance?
I run an app from Ubuntu Software Center called Psensor to measure system temperatures. It will give you the temp readings on the GPU and CPU (including individual cores). Here's the developer's website: http://wpitchoune.net/psensor
As far as improving performance, Bumblebee is what I use as well. I don't know of any other utilities other than Bumblebee.
I have installed the beta version of the Nvidia proprietary driver in the past but the process is difficult and every time there's a kernel update the beta driver has to be reinstalled. The beta version increases graphics performance for me, but I think it was actually worse for heat and battery.