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**dibl** · Jun 14, 2010, 04:41 AM

Re: Nvidia driver slows down Gimp, causes boot hang on second HD

You may be right about the Nvidia driver, or there may be some other resource hog slowing down the system when you run gimp. If you open a Konsole window and run "top", while using gimp, you can observe which process(es) are consuming the most CPU resources. If it is entirely xorg, then probably it's all about video and the Nvidia card.

I don't know the GT240 or your MSI card -- I wonder if the GPU clock and onboard memory are up to the task. It sounds like it worked well with the (default) nouveau driver, which is 2D only. Maybe it would be worth trying that again, although I'm surprised at the notion that it would be noticeably superior to the Nvidia proprietary driver. You didn't say how much onboard memory your computer has, which also may be relevant to gimp performance.

So, you've actually got 3 or 4 different issues tangled here, and I would advise picking them apart and going after them one at a time:

1. Nvidia driver vs. nouveau -- I'd make my own little benchmark test, using whatever video thingy is most important to you -- maybe a series of gimp tasks. Try both drivers with the same tasks, and see which works best.

2. Booting issues -- probably a framebuffer issue, try boot options vga=785, 788, or 791, or try the xforcevesa option. My boot screen is pretty ugly too -- that's Plymouth, and you can close your eyes for 10 seconds to fix it.

3. Rescue Cd ... ?. I'm not sure what problem this is related to. My Kubuntu system has /sbin/init dated 2010-04-01. What are you rescuing?

4. Audio -- well, I'm seeing two audio chips on your PCI list, an Intel ICH 7 HDA, and an Nvidia HDA. You probably need to pick one, and disable the other, so they're not fighting for resources and causing confusion.

Those are my suggestions.

**joneall** · Jun 14, 2010, 08:26 AM

Re: Nvidia driver slows down Gimp, causes boot hang on second HD

Thanks for your reply.

Originally posted by dibl

You may be right about the Nvidia driver, or there may be some other resource hog slowing down the system when you run gimp. If you open a Konsole window and run "top", while using gimp, you can observe which process(es) are consuming the most CPU resources. If it is entirely xorg, then probably it's all about video and the Nvidia card.

During a perspective-tool execution (which is horrible slow), I see Xorg using up to 90% of CPU! I had noticed this before from the system monitor, which I left running. I have 4GB of RAM, of which current usage is about 12%.

The guy who sold me this computer (last week) said that handling photos was CPU-bound and nothing to do with the Video card. Is this true or not? Does a better video card enhance photo-treatment by programs like Gimp?

I'll try the other driver ... as soon as I have re-installed the system...

So, you've actually got 3 or 4 different issues tangled here, and I would advise picking them apart and going after them one at a time:

1. Nvidia driver vs. nouveau -- I'd make my own little benchmark test, using whatever video thingy is most important to you -- maybe a series of gimp tasks. Try both drivers with the same tasks, and see which works best.

Will try the boot options now and see if I can boot the system. Otherwise, I will have to re-install it again.

2. Booting issues -- probably a framebuffer issue, try boot options vga=785, 788, or 791, or try the xforcevesa option. My boot screen is pretty ugly too -- that's Plymouth, and you can close your eyes for 10 seconds to fix it.

3. Rescue Cd ... ?. I'm not sure what problem this is related to. My Kubuntu system has /sbin/init dated 2010-04-01. What are you rescuing?

Trying to boot the system. I'm currently on my backup system, which also has the Nvidia driver installed.

4. Audio -- well, I'm seeing two audio chips on your PCI list, an Intel ICH 7 HDA, and an Nvidia HDA. You probably need to pick one, and disable the other, so they're not fighting for resources and causing confusion.

Funny, System Settings just shows "HDA Intel (ALC883 Analog)". If I click on "Show advanced devices", I also see "HDA Intel (ALC883 Digital)" and "HDA Intel, ALC883 Digital (IEC958 (S/PDIF) Digital Audio Output", but the test button gives silence for those two. THey are above "HDA Intel (ALC883 Analog)" in the list.

More later after I try the reboot. Thanks again.

**dibl** · Jun 14, 2010, 09:16 AM

Re: Nvidia driver slows down Gimp, causes boot hang on second HD

Originally posted by joneall

The guy who sold me this computer (last week) said that handling photos was CPU-bound and nothing to do with the Video card. Is this true or not? Does a better video card enhance photo-treatment by programs like Gimp?

Not being a software engineer, I thought the easy way to test this would be to fire up gimp, grab a photo, and watch my conky, which has a nice display of CPU usage for my X6800. I had never used Tools > Perspective before, so I opened a photo file (EXIF says 2560 x 1920 resolution), set the view at 50% (of my 1600 x 1200 desktop), and proceeded to yank it around. Bottom line -- your buddy is correct, that maneuver cranked up both CPU cores from about 10% to about 70%, while I was moving the image.

I'm running the new 256.29 Beta driver from Nvidia, and I haven't seen any bugs from it yet. I run my GTX260 overclocked:

2D -- GPU @300MHz, memory @300MHz
3D -- GPU @713MHz, memory @1230MHz

So, CPU speed is very relevant. What CPU are you using?

**joneall** · Jun 14, 2010, 09:56 AM

Re: Nvidia driver slows down Gimp, causes boot hang on second HD

Originally posted by dibl

Not being a software engineer, I thought the easy way to test this would be to fire up gimp, grab a photo, and watch my conky, which has a nice display of CPU usage for my X6800. I had never used Tools > Perspective before, so I opened a photo file (EXIF says 2560 x 1920 resolution), set the view at 50% (of my 1600 x 1200 desktop), and proceeded to yank it around. Bottom line -- your buddy is correct, that maneuver cranked up both CPU cores from about 10% to about 70%, while I was moving the image.

Yes, I have my system re-installed now sans Nvidia. Pushing Gimp, I can get CPU up to 99%.

I'm running the new 256.29 Beta driver from Nvidia, and I haven't seen any bugs from it yet. I run my GTX260 overclocked:

2D -- GPU @300MHz, memory @300MHz
3D -- GPU @713MHz, memory @1230MHz

So, CPU speed is very relevant. What CPU are you using?

Intel DC 5400.

$ lscpu
Architecture: i686
CPU op-mode(s): 32-bit, 64-bit
CPU(s): 2
Thread(s) per core: 1
Core(s) per socket: 2
CPU socket(s): 1
Vendor ID: GenuineIntel
CPU family: 6
Model: 23
Stepping: 10
CPU MHz: 1200.000
Virtualization: VT-x
L1d cache: 32K
L1i cache: 32K
L2 cache: 2048K

Don't understand why it mentions 32-bit and 64-bit op-modes. Can it actually run either way?

When I started with micro-processors, you chose between an 8088 or a Z80! I can't keep up with the plethora of models Intel has now.

**dibl** · Jun 14, 2010, 10:42 AM

Re: Nvidia driver slows down Gimp, causes boot hang on second HD

Try issuing

Code:

cat /proc/cpuinfo

so we can see the model name of your CPU. Then we can look it up and see whether it really supports a 64-bit OS.

1200 MHz strikes me as a bit on the puny side to be doing image processing work -- sorry to be blunt.

**joneall** · Jun 14, 2010, 11:05 AM

Re: Nvidia driver slows down Gimp, causes boot hang on second HD

processor : 0
vendor_id : GenuineIntel
cpu family : 6
model : 23
model name : Pentium(R) Dual-Core CPU E5400 @ 2.70GHz
stepping : 10
cpu MHz : 1200.000
cache size : 2048 KB
physical id : 0
siblings : 2
core id : 0
cpu cores : 2
apicid : 0
initial apicid : 0
fdiv_bug : no
hlt_bug : no
f00f_bug : no
coma_bug : no
fpu : yes
fpu_exception : yes
cpuid level : 13
wp : yes
flags : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm pbe nx lm constant_tsc arch_perfmon pebs bts aperfmperf pni dtes64 monitor ds_cpl vmx est tm2 ssse3 cx16 xtpr pdcm xsave lahf_lm tpr_shadow vnmi flexpriority
bogomips : 5399.78
clflush size : 64
cache_alignment : 64
address sizes : 36 bits physical, 48 bits virtual
power management:

and the same thing for cpu 1. Don't undestand why it says 2.7GHz in one place and 1200MHz in another.

**dibl** · Jun 14, 2010, 11:22 AM

Re: Nvidia driver slows down Gimp, causes boot hang on second HD

OK, well that's nice dual-core CPU that will support 64-bit OS if you wish:

http://ark.intel.com/Product.aspx?id=40478

(and subject, of course, to the motherboard also having a 64-bit memory bus, etc.). In the information, on the line that says "flags", the "lm" flag is the one that indicates the 64-bit architecture, FYI.

And 2.7GHz is much better for image processing than 1.2GHz.

So, depending on any oddball characteristics of your motherboard or BIOS, it looks to me like your E5400 and 4G of RAM should let you run gimp like a champ. Which means something is a little "off", somewhere in your system.

If you would like to try the 64-bit OS, may I suggest a clean new installation, on an ext4 formatted partition of not less than 10GB? Here are a couple of checks to do first:

- check for a BIOS flash update, and get it if it is available
- go ahead and run memtest86 for a few hours, or overnight, from a booted Live CD, just to be sure we don't need to worry about any issues there
- burn a 64-bit Alternate Install CD, at the slowest speed you have available, after download and md5sum check the ISO

Make sure your disk drives are set in BIOS in the sequence you want (i.e. the one with the "boot" flag set in the first partition is the first hard drive on the list of devices in "Boot Device Sequence".

**joneall** · Jun 15, 2010, 01:31 AM

Re: Nvidia driver slows down Gimp, causes boot hang on second HD

Thanks a lot for all this info. I'll maybe try the 64-bits later after checking on the motherboard.

In the meantime, I have split off the Nvidia part of this into another topic with some new observations at

http://kubuntuforums.net/forums/index.php?topic=3112453

Please look at that. And thanks again.

**joneall** · Jul 21, 2010, 09:03 AM

Re: Nvidia driver slows down Gimp, causes boot hang on second HD

Eureka! Thanks to http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1262679&page=1 I understand that part of the problem with the slowness of Gimp's perspective tool comes from the default preview option now chosen. Apparently before the option was "Grid" but is now "Image". Setting it on "Grid" speeds up Gimp enormously. This option is not as useful, but can be lived with.

I see some discussion of whether Gimp will be phased out of Kubuntu. If it is, I certainly hope there will be a similar replacement.

Thanks to all who have helped with this.

**dibl** · Jul 21, 2010, 09:16 AM

Re: Nvidia driver slows down Gimp, causes boot hang on second HD

Originally posted by joneall

I certainly hope there will be a similar replacement.

I don't know that a "similar replacement" exists. But gimp is in Debian and is free/open source, so I don't see how they can "take it away" from us. If (for some reason) they choose not to include it in the standard *bunto repos, we can just get it from Debian.

**linuxforall** · Jul 22, 2010, 01:41 AM

Re: [RESOLVED] Nvidia driver slows down Gimp, causes boot hang on second HD

GIMP has been excluded from the install CD to save space but its very much in the repos and will remain so for Ubuntu/Kubuntu in the near future from what I read on the dev mailing lists. Also try out Digikam, its an excellent alternative that integrates well with our KDE environment.

**joneall** · Jul 22, 2010, 04:30 AM

Re: [RESOLVED] Nvidia driver slows down Gimp, causes boot hang on second HD

Originally posted by linuxforall

GIMP has been excluded from the install CD to save space but its very much in the repos and will remain so for Ubuntu/Kubuntu in the near future from what I read on the dev mailing lists. Also try out Digikam, its an excellent alternative that integrates well with our KDE environment.

Problem with Digikam is first that it wants to organize my photos for me. I have already organized them and want it to leave them alone where I have put them.

As far as fixing up digital photos goes, Digikam looks to be way behind Gimp. I make frequent use of colors>levels and unsharp mask, just to name two very useful tools in Gimp.

**linuxforall** · Jul 23, 2010, 09:44 PM

Re: [RESOLVED] Nvidia driver slows down Gimp, causes boot hang on second HD

http://www.digikam.org/drupal/about/features9x

Feature for feature it matches gimp and runs and looks far better in KDE. Also photo management can be turned off, unsharp mask is basic and is included in digikam. GIMP is great, a true Adobe PS equivalent but it needs a better equivalent and more uploading service features.

**joneall** · Jul 23, 2010, 11:53 PM

Re: [RESOLVED] Nvidia driver slows down Gimp, causes boot hang on second HD

Originally posted by linuxforall

http://www.digikam.org/drupal/about/features9x

Feature for feature it matches gimp and runs and looks far better in KDE. Also photo management can be turned off, unsharp mask is basic and is included in digikam. GIMP is great, a true Adobe PS equivalent but it needs a better equivalent and more uploading service features.

Not sure what you mean by "better equivalent" or "uploading service features", I use Filezilla for uploading. But I gave digikam a brief try yesterday and I could not find any resharp mask. I just looked again and found it is "hidden" as a subset of "sharpen", which is not quite what it is, really.

I cannot find any selection tools. Where are they?

Showfoto seems to be a standalone of the edit part of digikam, right? Gimp is quite good for that.

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[RESOLVED] Nvidia driver slows down Gimp, causes boot hang on second HD

[RESOLVED] Nvidia driver slows down Gimp, causes boot hang on second HD

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