Disable vertical sync for glxgears

vblank_mode=0 glxgears

For Intel graphics and AMD/ATI opensource graphics drivers

Find the "Device" section of /etc/X11/xorg.conf/etc/X11/xorg.conf which contains one of the following directives:

  • Driver "intel"Driver "intel"
  • Driver "radeon""radeon""radeon""radeon"Driver "radeon"
  • Driver "fglrx"Driver "fglrx"

And add the following line to that section:

Option "SwapbuffersWait" "false"

Option     "SwapbuffersWait"       "false"

And run your application with vblank_mode environment variable set to 0:

vblank_mode=0 glxgears

 

For Nvidia graphics with the proprietary Nvidia driver

$ echo "0/SyncToVBlank=0" >> ~/.nvidia-settings-rc

The same change can be made in the nvidia-settings GUI by unchecking the option at X Screen 0 / OpenGL Settings / Sync to VBlank. Or, if you'd like to just test the setting without modifying your ~/.nvidia-settings-rc file you can do something like:

$ nvidia-settings --load-config-only --assign="SyncToVBlank=0"  # disable vertical sync
$ glxgears  # test it out
$ nvidia-settings --load-config-only  # restore your original vertical sync settin