Does the stuttering happen when you run from the Live USB session?
Try unplugging all your peripherals except for the mouse, keyboard and monitor to see if the stuttering reduces or goes away. This includes hubs and docks.
If using wireless network, mouse, keyboard, etc. do you have wired equivalents you can use for testing? If so, does the problem go away? If so, then time to look at bluetooth and wifi drivers and configuration.
If using wired peripherals, trying different USB ports in case you have a bad port.
If using bluetooth and Wifi might they be interfering with each other - using the same frequency?
Essentially, reduce your system to the most simple hardware configuration possible in hopes the problem goes away then build the configuration back out until the issue appears.
Check that your desktop/system is using the GPU driver and not rendering using software. On one of my older systems, although I installed the intel driver, the desktop was using software rendering rather than the GPU's native hardware acceleration. Softare rendering killed performance and made the CPU a bottleneck.
Run glxinfo | grep -i "opengl renderer" to see the actual GPU being used for rendering.
Notice that the NVIDIA drivers introduce HDMI audio devices allowing for sound playback through HDMI monitors.
I suspect whatever weird relationship is going on between your Soundblaster card and your onboard audio is messing with the NVIDIA GPU through the HDMI sound drivers.
Without providing the commands here (I'll research), what I would do is run the "aplay -l" command on the PC then mask any sound devices that are not required.
I would specifically look at masking your soundblaster card (if detected) and any NVIDIA HDMI audio devices then see if that has an effect on the stuttering.
Being a long-term Windows user myself, I've experienced mis-behaving sound devices/drivers causing interrrupts and stuttering within Windows - so why not Linux as well.
You'll see in my soundcard output that I have a Soundblaster X4 external sound card. Unfortunately, Creative does not create a Linux driver for it so I can only receive unprocessed sound through it.
It's possible that your X4 (internal, I assume) is being detected but then through a mismatched native Linux driver is generating interrupts that interferes with the NVIDIA GPU through the HDMI out drivers, or there is some resource conflict between the NVIDIA sound and Creative sound.
RECOMMENDATION
So my next port of call would be to:
Disable (mask) both the Soundblaster and NVIDIA sound devices/functionality so the operating system doesn't try to talk to them.
If the stuttering goes away, we know that the problem is with the device drivers and/or firmware of those sound devices causing havoc and interrupts.
Makes sense? We've seen all this stuff on Windows as well, however being Windows receives all the love from third-party vendors in regards to kernel level drivers, we are where we are with Linux.
I suspect the Soundblaster card is the prime mover for the havoc happening on your system due to lack of proper driver support and that is in turn interferring with the NVIDIA graphics card because it is affected by events on the sound bus.
Again, this is just a theory.
If you're wondering what I do with my expensive Soundblaster SXFi X4 external soundcard, I'm forced to use software-managed sound profiles because I lack a Linux driver to make use of the hardware fuctionality.
Yet it is still pretty and looks quite techy on my desk.
I'll find the commands that allow masking and test them out on my system before providing them here.
There are multiple Ways: You could go in the BIOS and take a Look in the Settings there and look if You can disable iGPU or choose for Output PCIe (which would be the dedicated GPU).
In Zorin, You can try when a Nvidia Driver is installed the Command sudo prime-select nvidia for setting Your Nvidia Card as primary Output.
Hi Joe,
Here are the commands to temporarily disable sound card devices to see if they are linked to the stuttering. I'll wait to hear back from you.
If the stuttering and performance issue(s) occur when booted to Zorin OS Pro from USB (a Live session), then you need not wait until you fully reinstall Zorin OS on your PC.
Assuming your sound cards are PCI-based, you can disable the sound devices to see if the stuttering goes away by running the bolded commands in the output from my system below (adjusting the card number - card0/1/2/3/4/etc. as required to match your system's sound cards.
The high-level workflow is the following:
list enabled PCI devices with Audio in the title (case-sensitive - adjust the pattern matching as needed as your sound cards may be named differently)
list the card numbers of audio devices to determine the card number to disable
temporarily disable the supplied card0/1/2/3/etc using the 'tee' command
list enabled PCI devices to confirm the targeted card is no longer listed
Note: These changes do not persist across reboots.
I found that after entering: sudo prime-select nvidia
I had to log out and back into the desktop for the GPU change to be reflected as the OpenGL renderer.
For example,
mike@zlb16:~$ glxinfo | grep "OpenGL renderer"
OpenGL renderer string: Mesa Intel(R) Graphics (RPL-S)
mike@zlb16:~$ sudo prime-select nvidia
[sudo] password for mike:
Info: selecting the nvidia profile
Deleting /lib/modprobe.d/nvidia-runtimepm.conf
Updating the initramfs. Please wait for the operation to complete:
Done
I've just realised that I've been running Zorin Pro 18 using XOrg as the display protocol, rather than the newer Wayland.
To see which display protocol you're using in a session, run at the command-line:
mike@zlb16:~$ echo $XDG_SESSION_TYPE
wayland
Note: my variable returns "wayland" because I've switched over to Wayland now to see if performance differs greatly.
To switch between the two display technologies, as you are prompted for a password during initial Zorin OS login, switch between XOrg and Wayland by clicking on the small cog in the lower right-hand corner of the display before entering your password.
I've been perfectly happy running my desktop under the old XOrg display protocol, but am going to run under Wayland now to see if my day to day experience changes drastically (if at all).
Right: Immediate feedback
Unless you need a feature only offered by the Wayland dispaly protocol, save yourself a headache and use XOrg (X11), especially given you're using an NVIDIA graphics card as Wayland and NVIDIA are known not to play nice together.
Here's a YouTube video on the various issues one may encounter with Wayland which includes stuttering (posted a year ago, but likely still relevant):
"Will These Wayland Problems Still Exist in 2100?"
Wow, thanks for all input! There is a lot to think of when you are coming from Windows Gaming Computer and Nvidia Card......
Ok, just saved my old Qnap Server and changed to a new one... took me 5 days including data switching....
Not happy about it, but after 16 years the old 219P had some storage issues but my backup HDD saved me here.
So now is the time to prepare the BIOS UEFI of the GIgabyte Z790 Gaming AX for Zorin OS and delete all drives. After than I can install Zorin Clear and maybe I don't have any issues .
Took the keyboard and mouse USB to other Ports....
So I hope I can start installing Zorin on Friday.
See you soon, I will update later and try your helplines.
When I start from USB Stick without Nvidia driver there is no stuttering!
If I make the decision with Nvidia driver the stuttering begins directly.
So I'm now installing without Nvidia driver ....
Let's see what we get..
The system now is running without the Nvidia driver and it's fine.
Cool. Keep us updated.
Like yourself, I come from a Windows Gamer background with lots of experience deep tinkering and optimisation. I think I may enjoy it more than playing the actual games themselves.
I do not remember if I have already suggested this, but if you haven't already, be sure to install TimeShift which allows you to take snapshots of your system so you can restore to a known good configuration should you go too far down the rabbit hole and get lost.
I left Windows because of Microsoft's stance of pushing AI and tracking everything we do.
The only thing I feel I have sacrificed as a gamer going to Linux are games like Call of Duty and Battlefield which make use of kernel-level anti-cheat drivers.
I played the games too much anyway.
Let me know if you are able to test the stuttering with various sound devices disabled.
If you have completely wiped your desktop machine, it may be worth pulling the Soundblaster card out of the system until you get NVIDIA humming on Zorin.
BTW: On other distros, I did have to try several NVIDIA drivers from various sources until things began to magically work, but at the same time, I didn't really know what I was doing and was throwing things at the wall until something stuck.
My recommendation still stands: remove and simplify your setup to isolate variables and devices that may be interferring and conflicting with each other.
Ideally, physically detach/remove devices, or barring that masking the devices from being detected and thereby interacting with the operating system (think 'disable in the Windows device manager'
Since NVIDIA and Soundblaster play nice when booted to Windows, I think the problem is at the LInux driver layer causing the hardware to misbehave.
And I'd first start with getting things working using the tried and true X11 display stack, rather than dealing with wayland.
I'll try to log in everyday to see how things are going.
I've fascinated by this stuff.
Stay strong!
Check out my post from 10 days ago in which I talk about using TimeShift to inch your way towards progress (for another Zorinista having troubles with MangoHud). Installing mangohud - #5 by HungryPooch
If you still get stuttering in X11, try temporarily disabling the NVIDIA HDMI sound output sub-devices (outputs) and Soundblaster device using the tee device remove method I talked about earlier. You can do it whilst booted to the LIVEUSB session stick.
I've just discovered that my external Soundblaster X4 unit has bluetooth, so although I cannot control the USB soundcard within Linux, I can change the effects using an Apple iOS app. Sorry, this doesn't help you but I wanted to share my pleasant surprise of getting around Creative's non-existent Linux support. I had consigned mysef to accept that my X4 was no more than a brick with Linux, but thankfully bluetooth to the rescue.
so i have tried to use x11 instead.... but same situation.
Changed different USB connectors .....
In my Gigabyte UEFI Bios (Z790 Gaming AX)I could not find a section to disable the integrated Intel GPU, either to disable the integrated sound.......
The HDMI from Nvidia is turned of....but it does not help.
Crinch..
So since I am not playing so far anymore, I let it be Standard by now. Have much software running for office and banking etc pp.
So I try it softly and not to deep in the system to avoid crashes.....
