Accelerate 2D graphics in Ubuntu for nVidia 8/9 series cards

0) Downloading the beta driver distribution

At the time of writing, the last one is this (June, 17)
www.nvidia.com/object/linux_display_ia32_177.13.html


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Put the driver for the video for the first time? Do not forget to install the packages,
they will be needed to compile the kernel module.

linux-headers-`uname -r`
xserver-org-dev
build-essential

1) Remove the official nvidia drivers

- file / etc / modules, add “nvidia” to the end of the file
- file / etc / default / linux-restricted-modules-common, add “nv” if it is not there yet

2) Depending on what you installed the previous drivers, we perform

sudo envy --uninstall-all
sudo dpkg -P envy
sudo apt-get remove --purge nvidia*
sudo rm /lib/restricted-modules/.nvidia*
sudo nvidia-installer --uninstall

I installed the previous drivers from the distribution downloaded from the nvidia site, so only the last command was enough.

Edit /etc/X11/xorg.conf and add the following options to the “Device” section:

Option "PixmapCacheSize" "300000"
Option "OnDemandVBlankInterrupts" "True"

3) Install the new driver

Switch to another console (CTRL + ALT + F1)
Stop gdm / kdm (/etc/init.d/gdm stop)

Run the root driver installation file NVIDIA-Linux-x86-177.13-pkg1.run, setting its permissions to run (+ x).
The request to update the configuration file is refused.
Reboots.

4) Additional optimization

Add a command to the system startup (graphic).
In gnome - can be done in the session manager.

nvidia-settings -a InitialPixmapPlacement=2 -a GlyphCache=1

Total

The performance of 2D applications has increased markedly!
I did not try the fourth KDE, in gnome with compiz everything runs more than quickly, compared to the previous driver.
But the speed of 3D fell (judging by glxgears). What is not important to me.

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