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We just got new Lenovo Thinkpad T460s laptops at work.

Processor:  4x Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-6200U CPU @ 2.30GHz, 
Graphics:   Intel HD Graphics 520
Memory:     8055MB DDR4
Harddisk:   256 GB SSD (Samsung)

I installed Ubuntu 15.10. alongside Windows 7. So far everything works; apart from the docking station, but that's another story. (I am not sure whether it is relevant, however, a second screen is connected to the laptop via hdmi-to-dvi.)

However, it seems like the system does not use its full potential. The windows under Ubuntu do not move smoothly. Furthermore, it feels like every action has a certain latency (it's not much, but enough to notice). I installed the gnome-session-flashback package. However, both under compiz and metacity I got the same problems. I even tried to remove all relevant effects using the Compiz config settings manager as well as the Unity tweak tool. Still the same problems.

I am not sure what to look for.

So first thing we did was to get a glmark2 benchmark score. It is only 79 (the whole output can be found here). This seems to be quite low (see here for comparison; furthermore a five year old T410 -- without a dedicated GPU and a i7-M620 @ 2.6GHz CPU -- got a score of 146). It seems that something with the graphic acceleration does not work right.

The glxinfo dump can be found here.


Edit:

I did not mention that I run glmark2 under metacity because I thought it shouldn't make any difference. However, it does! glmark2 under unity gives a score of 1009. However, the windows still do not move as smoothly under unity as they could (in my opinion).


Is there any idea what to do or where to look next? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Do not hesitate to ask if you need more information from me.

Summary:

  • Ubuntu 15.10 GUI does not run smoothly on a high performance laptop
  • Very low glmark2 score: 79 (at least under metacity)

Ps.: I just ran the Win 7 internal performance benchmark and got an overall score of 6.7 (max score you can get is 7.9). However, I also find that the windows are somehow lagging when moved around. I wonder whether this is either a general problem of T460s laptops or my exaggerated expectations.

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    A good test of this is pressing the "full screen" button on a YouTube video - the fancy fade that it does is very, very slow - it's several seconds before the video shows up full screen, and also several seconds lag occur between moving the mouse and the video controls appearing on screen. It seems like anything involving a "fade" is very very slow - including the fade out when you close a detail view of a tweet on the Twitter web app.
    – Adrian
    Apr 17, 2016 at 11:37
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    Ok, so I tried the advice I'd seen elsewhere - removing the Intel driver and thus falling back on the modesetting driver built into Xorg. Upside : the YouTube "fade" transition is much faster. Something has changed. It is still, however, not smooth or fast. Downside : Not sure if this just because I restarted a browser session with about 30 windows in it shortly after removing the driver and rebooting, but it provoked the first time this laptop has actually built up enough heat to start the fan. Going to try this out for a while to see if this is a general trend.
    – Adrian
    Apr 17, 2016 at 11:56
  • Thanks for all the info. What kernel version are you using? I am just waiting to upgrade to Ubuntu 16.04 and kernel 4.4. I am rather risk avers since this is my productive system I use at work at the moment. I am not sure whether it is really necessary to switch to the newest mainline kernel. There are some threads that indicate that manifold problems could occur.
    – phx
    Apr 19, 2016 at 11:10
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    Possible duplicate of Laptop freezes after connecting external monitor, since 16.04 update
    – Lucio
    May 11, 2016 at 3:51

2 Answers 2

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My T460s shipped with the graphics memory turned down to 256MB in the BIOS setup. Go in there and crank it up to 512. When I did that, the UI sluggishness I experienced went away.

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I suggest updating to latest-ish kernel. I also had to add "intel_pstate=no_hwp" to my grub cmdline

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    The most recent kernel fixes the "close the lid and it crashes" bug that the no_hwp line worked around - but does this have any other impact on the performance problem mentioned?
    – Adrian
    Apr 17, 2016 at 11:35

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