nvidia-xrun

These utility scripts aim to make the life easier for nvidia cards users. It started with a revelation that bumblebee in current state offers very poor performance. This solution offers a bit more complicated procedure but offers a full GPU utilization(in terms of linux drivers)

Usage:

1. run nvidia-xrun [app]
2. enjoy

Currently sudo is required as the script needs to wake up GPU, modprobe the nvidia driver and perform cleanup afterwards. For this we use bbswitch.

Structure

• nvidia-xrun - uses following dir structure:
• /usr/bin/nvidia-xrun - the executable script
• /usr/bin/nvidia-xrun-core - the script core
• /etc/X11/nvidia-xorg.conf - the main X confing file
• /etc/X11/xinit/nvidia-xinitrc - xinitrc config file. Contains the setting of provider output source
• /etc/X11/xinit/nvidia-xinitrc.d - custom xinitrc scripts directory
• /etc/X11/nvidia-xorg.conf.d - custom X config directory
• [OPTIONAL] ~/.nvidia-xinitrc - user-level custom xinit script file. You can put here your favourite window manager for example

Setting the right bus id

Usually the 1:0:0 bus is correct. If this is not your case(you can find out through lspci or bbswitch output mesages) you can create a conf script for example nano /etc/X11/nvidia-xorg.conf.d/30-nvidia.conf to set the proper bus id:

Section "Device"
    Identifier "nvidia"
    Driver "nvidia"
    BusID "PCI:2:0:0"
EndSection

Also this way you can adjust some nvidia settings if you encounter issues:

Section "Screen"
    Identifier "nvidia"
    Device "nvidia"
    #  Option "AllowEmptyInitialConfiguration" "Yes"
    #  Option "UseDisplayDevice" "none"
EndSection

Automatically run window manager

For convenience you can create nano ~/.nvidia-xinitrc and put there your favourite window manager:

openbox-session

With this you do not need to specify the app and you can simply run:

nvidia-xrun

Aur package

The aur package can be found here: https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/nvidia-xrun/

Troubleshooting

Steam issues

Yes unfortunately running Steam directly with nvidia-xrun does not work well - I recommend to use some window manager like openbox.