Hello, I have been running Plasma on Arch for an year on Intel IGPU with 1GB memory assigned and it was working fairly OK. With increased browser window/tab count the machine was getting sluggish but I though this was due to the older processor with only 4 cores (I run gaming VM so it was expected).
Recently I jumped to Ryzen with GT1030 GPU 2GB RAM and the behaviour was the same. While checking the NVIDIA control center I noticed the GPU usage and GPU memory utilization is really high (or is it?).
The GPU utilization is around 30% after restart and another 20-30% due to enabling "Full composite pipeline".
When I open more windows (15+) the GPU memory is getting full and all effects and workspace actions are getting stuttering. Very often I can not wake up the monitors after sleep. Switchen the terminals (CTRL+ALT_Fx) resets the environment I can resume.
In the attachment is screenshot from nvtop and you can see the main culprits are.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1J4ubL4d41MjPakwjKB19kdKEbA3Ve36I/view?usp=sharing
System settings:
- X11 server (up to date Xorg, kernel, drivers)
- Compositor settings (OPenGL 3.1; Scale method - Accurate; vsync - automatic)
- 2 monitors 1080p and 1440p
- Full composite pipeline enabled
- default kWin animations and effects

My questions are:
- is this normal? I mean I like the fancy desktop with graphics and effects but I though the GPU should be enough for basic desktop usage.
- Is this NVIDIA issue or I need 4GB to run the desktop smoothly?
- Will switching to AMD GPU solve the mem usage issues?
- Any optimization advices? Any additional logs that can provide insights to the issues? I understand not much can be done for the browser GPU process but what about the X server and kWin?

How much SWAP space do you use?

GPU Memory on a discrete card is not swapped (and I guess that GPU memory on a shared card is not swapped either).

I use a intel card, I have 3 gig of video memory reserved for that. Unfortunately I do not see how much video memory is actually used. I use 3 monitors, lots of windows, just like you (arch too) and have never had problems like this.

Regards,

Andreas

Mamarok wrote:How much SWAP space do you use?

I have 48GB RAM and swapoff. As the post below suggested I don't think this is relevant.