I'd like to know whether I can run compiz on my Nvidia card to speed things up. It's a Dell XPS15 laptop but I'm mostly using it as a desktop, so battery life is not important. Apparently my Intel integrated card is able to run unity 3D, but my Nvidia GT 420M is not. Here's the output of unity_support_test, both with optirun and without it:

manuhalo@Ubuntu-XPS-L501X:~$ optirun /usr/lib/nux/unity_support_test -p
OpenGL vendor string:   NVIDIA Corporation
OpenGL renderer string: GeForce GT 420M/PCI/SSE2
OpenGL version string:  4.1.0 NVIDIA 280.13

Not software rendered:    yes
Not blacklisted:          yes
GLX fbconfig:             yes
GLX texture from pixmap:  no
GL npot or rect textures: yes
GL vertex program:        yes
GL fragment program:      yes
GL vertex buffer object:  yes
GL framebuffer object:    yes
GL version is 1.4+:       yes

Unity 3D supported:       no

manuhalo@Ubuntu-XPS-L501X:~$ /usr/lib/nux/unity_support_test -p
OpenGL vendor string:   Tungsten Graphics, Inc
OpenGL renderer string: Mesa DRI Intel(R) Ironlake Mobile 
OpenGL version string:  2.1 Mesa 7.11

Not software rendered:    yes
Not blacklisted:          yes
GLX fbconfig:             yes
GLX texture from pixmap:  yes
GL npot or rect textures: yes
GL vertex program:        yes
GL fragment program:      yes
GL vertex buffer object:  yes
GL framebuffer object:    yes
GL version is 1.4+:       yes

Unity 3D supported:       yes

Any ideas of why this is happening? Thanks in advance to anyone able to shed some light on this.

What I have tried:

Installed the v290 drivers from the x-stable PPA.

Tried forcing Unity-3D to work by telling Unity to ignore the unity-support-test results

i.e.

gksudo gedit /etc/environment

add the following UNITY_FORCE_START=1 to the end of the file.