Unlike Windows, Ubuntu so far does not have real-time GPU usage info displayed in its system monitor application. If you want to check how much your graphic card is in use, then this simple tutorial may help!

Check Intel GPU usage in Ubuntu:

For the integrated Intel graphics card, there’s a command line tool intel_gpu_top can do the job.

1. First, press Ctrl+Alt+T on terminal to open a terminal window. When it opens, run command to install the package:

sudo apt install intel-gpu-tools

Type user password when it asks (no asterisk feedback) and hit Enter.

2. Then, run command to start it:

sudo intel_gpu_top

As you can see, it shows real-time IMC read and write speed, power usage, as well as percentage usage of 3D/Render, Blitter, Video, and VideoEnhance.

Monitor AMD/NVIDIA GPU usage in Ubuntu

For NVIDIA and AMD graphics card, there’s a htop like task monitor called nvtop (Neat Videocard TOP).

It shows real-time GPU and GPU Memory usage in both total and per process basis, along with temperature, power usage, and graph information.

nvtop, image from https://github.com/Syllo/nvtop

nvtop also supports Intel GPU, however, it does not work in my case with i5-4590 (HD4600), and i3-6006U (HD 520).

Install nvtop in Ubuntu:

The tool is available in Ubuntu system repository, but old. For the latest version, it has an official PPA contains the packages for Ubuntu 20.04, Ubuntu 22.04, Ubuntu 22.10, and next Ubuntu 23.04

1. First, press Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard to open terminal. Then, run command to add the PPA:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:flexiondotorg/nvtop

Type user password (no asterisk feedback) when it asks and hit Enter to continue.

2. Then, run command to install the tool:

sudo apt install nvtop

For Linux Mint, run sudo apt update first to refresh package cache.

Finally, either search for and launch it from ‘Activities’ overview (or start menu), or run nvtop command to start monitoring your GPU.

(Optional) Remove nvtop

To remove the PPA repository, open terminal and run command:

sudo add-apt-repository --remove ppa:flexiondotorg/nvtop

And remove nvtop if you want via command:

sudo apt remove nvtop