We are having a problem on ubuntu systems with nvidia graphics cards. We have seen this now on our development system with Dapper Drake with an nvidia quadro fx 560, and on Hardy Heron with nvidia quadro fx 570 and nvidia quadro fx 3700. The application was developed a decade ago on SGI IRIX and from 2004 to 2006 on redhat linux. The problem we see is a sudden loss of graphics performance, such as the displaying of an image after some exercise of the program displaying images. Existing windows continue to display as they had before. But in a new window the graphics is real slow. You can watch the system draw the image from the bottom up (using an Open GL call). If we restart the application all new windows continue to draw slowly. We have to reboot the computer to restore the prior graphics performance but once again after a short time the problem reoccurs. It is as if hardware acceleration is turned off or something. I don’t know where to begin to figure out what is happening. The program displays medical CT scans.
We don't see the problem with redhat. It was the same computer. nvidia driver was 180.44 in both cases. Which makes me think it is a bug with ubuntu. But that is all the evidence I have to go on. I continue to see the problem with ubuntu 9.04 and the nvidia driver 180.44 on a nvidia quadro fx 3700. If I do all two dimensional drawing with only X calls instead of OpenGL calls, the problem goes away. Switching to X calls at least solves my immediate problem. I am only submitting this if there is any interest on determining if this is in fact a ubuntu bug. I would not know how to go about proving it.
A newer version of -nvidia is available packaged for jaunty in this PPA:
https:/
Please test that, and if the problem still exists attach your /var/log/Xorg.0.log and the output of 'lspci -vvnn'.