Knowledge Base (Posts about nvidia)

AoE2DE FPS limit affects benchmark rating

bgstack15 — Thu, 02 Oct 2025 13:24:00 GMT

For the past number of months, my Age of Empires 2: Definitive Edition game would start lagging in larger ranked team games.

I re-ran the benchmark test, and I ranked 971.2, which is too low for ranked team games (1000)! So that greatly concerned me, as this is the only game with serious requirements that I run. So I spent time investigating all the graphics settings, and rebooting and running only steam and AoE2DE.

The moment I reached out to a friend who plays way more games than me, my next change solved the problem. I had set my fps limit down to 15, in the hopes of increasing game performance. Come to find out, it limits network performance when you lower the fps, and it also lowers the benchmark performance.

So that test I had run, with 65 fps, ranked nice and high (1138.2) and then I am eligible to play ranked team games again!

Here is a chart, for the curious. (This is the first time I am using the charting features in my ssg, nikola!)

The system I tested has these characteristics.

OS: Devuan GNU+Linux Ceres
RAM: 64 GB
Graphics card: GeForce GTX 1050 Ti

Found! Oneliner for nvidia display settings

bgstack15 — Sat, 09 Dec 2023 13:53:30 GMT

tl;dr

I finally found a oneliner method for controlling which monitors are actively used for my NVIDIA graphics card after using it for years. Xrandr doesn't cut it when using nvidia.

nvidia-settings --assign "CurrentMetaMode=DPY-4: nvidia-auto-select @1920x1080 +1920+0 {ViewPortIn=1920x1080, ViewPortOut=1920x1080+0+0}, DPY-1: nvidia-auto-select @1920x1080 +0+0 {ViewPortIn=1920x1080, ViewPortOut=1920x1080+0+0}"

Of course the exact settings depend on your setup. You need all the contents after the colons, ::, from this command:

$ nvidia-settings -q CurrentMetaMode

  Attribute 'CurrentMetaMode' (pcb-009:0.0): id=50, switchable=no, source=nv-control :: DPY-4: nvidia-auto-select @1920x1080 +1920+0 {ViewPortIn=1920x1080, ViewPortOut=1920x1080+0+0}, DPY-1: nvidia-auto-select @1920x1080 +0+0 {ViewPortIn=1920x1080, ViewPortOut=1920x1080+0+0}

That's it. I've pondered this ease of use for years, and had actually started an xdotool wrapper but one final Internet search led to this great discovery.

File listings

I of course wrote a script that takes a limited input, "both" or "right" to use those monitors.

files/2023/12/listings/switch-monitors.sh (Source)

#!/bin/sh
# File: switch-monitors.sh
# Location: /usr/local/bin
# Author: bgstack15
# SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-3.0
# Startdate: 2023-12-05-3 16:15
# Title: Switch monitor config for NVIDIA graphics card
# Purpose: easily switch between 1 monitor and 2 monitors on pcb-009.
# History: attempt 2. The first was attemping to read nvidia-settings -q dpys and parsing enabled/connected, but I didn't know how to use the derived values
# Usage: Called by tray icon
# Reference:
#    https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/NVIDIA#Using_nvidia-settings
# Improve:
# Documentation:
#    Configure `nvidia-settings` as desired. Print metamode value with following command.
#    nvidia-settings -q CurrentMetaMode
#    Use everything after the `::`

test -z "${DESIRED}" && test -n "${1}" && DESIRED="${1}"
desired="$( echo "${DESIRED}" | tr 'A-Z' 'a-z' )"
case "${desired}" in
   "both"|"left+right"|"left,right","double")
      echo "Using both monitors."
      nvidia-settings --assign "CurrentMetaMode=DPY-4: nvidia-auto-select @1920x1080 +1920+0 {ViewPortIn=1920x1080, ViewPortOut=1920x1080+0+0}, DPY-1: nvidia-auto-select @1920x1080 +0+0 {ViewPortIn=1920x1080, ViewPortOut=1920x1080+0+0}"
      ;;
   "one"|"right"|"single")
      nvidia-settings --assign "CurrentMetaMode=DPY-4: nvidia-auto-select @1920x1080 +0+0 {ViewPortIn=1920x1080, ViewPortOut=1920x1080+0+0}"
      ;;
   *) echo "Unknown option: ${desired}. Aborted." ;
      exit 1 ;
      ;;
esac

And then I wrote a tray icon so it's easy to get to these.

files/2023/12/listings/switch-monitors-trayicon.sh (Source)

#!/usr/bin/env sh
# File: switch-monitors-trayicon.sh
# Location: /usr/local/bin
# Author: bgstack15
# SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-3.0
# Startdate: 2023-12-05-3 16:29
# Title: Trayicon for switching monitor config
# Purpose: Provide easy drop-down for pcb-009 for monitor control
# History:
# Usage:
# Reference:
#    Heavily ripped keyboard-leds-trayicons
# Improve:
#    There is no loop, so manually touching the kill file does not stop the process like it should.
# Dependencies:
#    raw: mktrayicon, awk, switch-monitors.sh
#    devuan: mktrayicon, mawk | gawk, x11-xserver-utils

# CONFIG FILES
test -z "${SWITCH_MONITORS_CONF}" && SWITCH_MONITORS_CONF="${HOME}/.config/switch-monitors.conf"

# FUNCTIONS

get_conf() {
   # Ripped from framework.sh
   # call: get_conf "${conffile}"
   local _infile="$1"
   local _tmpfile1="$( mktemp )"
   sed -e 's/^\s*//;s/\s*$//;/^[#$]/d;s/\s*[^\]#.*$//;' "${_infile}" | grep -viE "^$" | while read _line ;
   do
      local _left="$( echo "${_line}" | cut -d'=' -f1 )"
      eval "_thisval=\"\${${_left}}\""
      test -z "${_thisval}" && echo "${_line}" >> "${_tmpfile1}"
   done
   test -f "${_tmpfile1}" && { . "${_tmpfile1}" 1>/dev/null 2>&1 ; }
   /bin/rm -rf "${_tmpfile1}" 1>/dev/null 2>&1
}

clean_switch_monitors_trayicon() {
   { test -e "${switch_monitors_icon}" && echo "q" > "${switch_monitors_icon}" ; } 1>/dev/null 2>&1 &
   sleep 1 && rm -f "${switch_monitors_icon}" "${SMT_KILLFILE}"
}

# LOAD CONFIGS
# order is important! The last one called gets precedence.
# instead of simply dot-sourcing the conf file, pass it to get_conf which only applies new values, so this process's environment is preserved
for thisconf in "${SMT_CONF}" "${SMT_USER_CONF}" "${SMT_GLOBAL_CONF}" ;
do
   test -r "${thisconf}" && get_conf "${thisconf}"
done

# DEFAULTS in case configs did not have these values
test -z "${SMT_ICON}" && SMT_ICON=display
test -z "${SMT_KILLFILE}" && SMT_KILLFILE="/tmp/kill-all-switch-monitors-trayicons"

# INITIALIZATION

switch_monitors_icon="/var/run/user/$( id -u )/${$}.switch_monitors.icon"

mkfifo "${switch_monitors_icon}"
mktrayicon "${switch_monitors_icon}" &
{
   echo "i ${SMT_ICON}"
   echo "t pcb-009 easy display settings"
   echo "m right,switch-monitors.sh right|both,switch-monitors.sh both|-----|quit,echo 'q' > ${switch_monitors_icon} ; touch "${SMT_KILLFILE}""
} > "${switch_monitors_icon}"

rm -f "${SMT_KILLFILE}"

trap 'trap "" 2 ; touch "${SMT_KILLFILE}" '  2 # CTRL-C
wait %1

# safety shutoff
clean_switch_monitors_trayicon

References

Weblinks

NVIDIA - ArchWiki#Using_nvidia-settings

Linux: Fluxbox on Nvidia driver: Fonts are huge

bgstack15 — Tue, 06 Sep 2022 12:34:19 GMT

I installed Devuan GNU+Linux on a desktop computer with a Nvidia graphics card. Once I used the nvidia-driver dpkg and rebooted, everything worked correctly. Fluxbox had a problem where its size 8 fonts were gigantic! Investigating revealed that the Nvidia settings utility shows a DPI of 304x305. An Internet search for nvidia fluxbox large font showed a very useful solution from the FreeBSD forum

Inside the generated xorg.conf (which I placed in /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/hostname.conf), add to the "Monitor" section:

Option         "UseEditDpi" "false"
Option         "DPI" "96 x 96"

Also, I learned that lspci -v will show you what kernel module is in use for a given PCI device. Here is my graphics card with the proprietary Nvidia driver.

01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation GP107 [GeForce GTX 1050 Ti] (rev a1) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller]) Subsystem: Gigabyte Technology Co., Ltd GP107 [GeForce GTX 1050 Ti] Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 30, IOMMU group 1 Memory at f6000000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16M] Memory at e0000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=256M] Memory at f0000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=32M] I/O ports at e000 [size=128] Expansion ROM at 000c0000 [virtual] [disabled] [size=128K] Capabilities: Kernel driver in use: nvidia Kernel modules: nvidia

References

Internet searches

nvidia fluxbox large font

Weblinks

https://forums.freebsd.org/threads/fluxbox-fonts-are-huge.22849/

update 2024-04-13

While you might be tempted to place a file, /etc/X11/Xresources/dpi with contents:

! bgstack15 2023-07-16-1 17:29
Xft.dpi: 96

Which tends to help most of the time, it doesn't fix the "hardware" dpi that this post helps with. See also https://old.reddit.com/r/archlinux/comments/gsq0ix/nvidia_drivers_ruins_my_resolution_and_dpi/ which indicates to place this in a file, e.g., /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/hostname.conf:

Section "OutputClass"
    Identifier "nvidia dpi settings"
    MatchDriver "nvidia-drm"
    Option "UseEdidDpi" "False"
    Option "DPI" "96 x 96"
EndSection