3D hardware acceleration improves gaming performance by providing higher frames per second (FPS) and smoother animations in everyday applications. It also enhances power efficiency since the GPU processes graphics more effectively.
Most modern Linux distributions automatically enable 3D hardware acceleration for compatible graphics cards. Although Linux drivers typically support a wide range of current graphics cards, some virtual devices within virtualization software like QEMU / KVM and VirtualBox may not be as well-supported.
To determine if 3D acceleration is enabled in Linux, you can use the standard tools glxinfo and glxgears, which are part of the mesa-utils package. While CentOS and SUSE include this package by default, Ubuntu does not.
$ sudo apt update && sudo apt install --assume-yes mesa-utils #Ubuntu and other Debian derivatives
$ glxinfo | grep "direct rendering" direct rendering: Yes
The value should be Yes to indicate 3D acceleration is enabled.
$ glxgears Running synchronized to the vertical refresh. The framerate should be approximately the same as the monitor refresh rate. 218 frames in 5.0 seconds = 43.545 FPS 291 frames in 5.0 seconds = 58.012 FPS 291 frames in 5.0 seconds = 57.831 FPS 270 frames in 5.0 seconds = 53.988 FPS 290 frames in 5.0 seconds = 57.817 FPS 282 frames in 5.0 seconds = 56.078 FPS 290 frames in 5.0 seconds = 57.989 FPS 284 frames in 5.0 seconds = 56.620 FPS 299 frames in 5.0 seconds = 59.733 FPS
The frame rate will not exceed the screen's refresh rate if vertical sync is enabled. Disable vertical sync by setting vblank_mode (or __GL_SYNC_TO_VBLANK if you're using NVIDIA's proprietary driver) environment variable to 0.
$ vblank_mode=0 glxgears
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