Arch Linux

Father

Member

From: Australia

Registered: 2004-06-01

Posts: 209

Nvidia nforce driver Vs Standard Kernel driver modules

Has anyone compared the drivers for nforce chips?

im currently using the in-kernel drivers and am not having in trouble.. with the exception of the crappy onboard sound chip that doesnt have a hardware mixer..

im wondering if switching to the nforce drivers might help with the sound.. or provide any benefits at all, be it speed / stability / etc.

Father

Member

From: Australia

Registered: 2004-06-01

Posts: 209

Re: Nvidia nforce driver Vs Standard Kernel driver modules

apparently the nvidia binary only includes OSS sound drivers and not ALSA drivers... peh.. so i guess theres not much point changing for the sound.. but what about the other things?

my nforce mobo is a shuttle 95G5B which doesnt actually use the nforce network chip.. it includes a second one.. for some stupid reason.. so theres no point in getting the nforce drivers for the networking..
is there anything else?
are the IDE drivers any good? any point in me changing to them?

Meshuggin

Member

From: /home/meshuggin

Registered: 2005-03-23

Posts: 137

Re: Nvidia nforce driver Vs Standard Kernel driver modules

The in-kernel drivers work fine for me, a few months ago I installed the nforce official driver and a I didn't notice any difference in sound at all. And I don't need the networking drivers, 'cause I use a D-Link card

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Arch GNU/Linux 0.7.1 (Noodle)
Linux 2.6.14-archck1

iBertus

Member

From: Greenville, NC

Registered: 2004-11-04

Posts: 2,228

Re: Nvidia nforce driver Vs Standard Kernel driver modules

I had problems with the kernel audio driver giving me static filled output, plus the software-only mixing problem. Word is that nvidia won't share enough of their hardware secrets with the ALSA devs to allow proper hardware mixing. I also never was able to pin down the static problem but it did not occur with the nvidia OSS modules, so I must assume it was a problem with the ALSA driver. I finally switched to a Via chipset because I needed ALSA and had a spare Via KT880 sitting around. Everything works greats on this board with included ALSA modules, including hardware mixing.