Arch Linux

tmiddleton

Member

Registered: 2016-03-29

Posts: 28

[SOLVED] Nouveau + mesa gl on GTX 960

I have a GTX 960 and I thought I would try out the nouveau drivers. They worked amazingly well - having the right 4K resolution set on boot and with virtual terminals is great, and 2d graphics on the desktop was, if anything, actually faster and smoother than the nvidia drivers. But opengl is very, very slow. Minecraft is almost unplayable. So I switched back to the nvidia driver, which is fairly fast.

But now I'm wondering - was I actually using hardware accelerated 3d with nouveau? When I switched back to using the nvidia xorg server, I forgot to also get the nvidia-gl package, and I was using the mesa-gl package for a bit. It was, of course, very very slow - just as slow as with nouveau. Was nouveau using 3d acceleration?

Is there some way I can verify that the nouveau/mesa arrangement is actually using 3d acceleration? Does this make any sense to anyone? I'd really prefer to use the nouveau drivers - they're a lot smoother with 2d in general - but the 3d gaming was terrible. Or is it?

Last edited by tmiddleton (2016-09-02 23:46:22)

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 21,645

Re: [SOLVED] Nouveau + mesa gl on GTX 960

Nouveaus OpenGL performance  for more complex  usecases has always been slow. You can use

glxinfo | grep OpenGL

to know if you have 3D acceleration (if you really had mesa-libgl installed that answer tends to be "yes"). If "2D" acceleration in the desktop was fast (which desktop? most of the complex ones use compositing with OpenGL and therefore require a 3D accelerator.) chances are your OpenGL was working.  There's also a good chance that nouveau hasn't gotten the firmware blobs they need for proper acceleration for this card yet and the fact that the driver has been plagued with reclocking issues (it can't clock up to higher frequencies that would be needed for 3D performance)

tmiddleton

Member

Registered: 2016-03-29

Posts: 28

Re: [SOLVED] Nouveau + mesa gl on GTX 960

OpenGL vendor string: nouveau
OpenGL renderer string: Gallium 0.4 on NV126
OpenGL core profile version string: 3.3 (Core Profile) Mesa 12.0.1
OpenGL core profile shading language version string: 3.30
OpenGL core profile context flags: (none)
OpenGL core profile profile mask: core profile
OpenGL core profile extensions:
OpenGL version string: 3.0 Mesa 12.0.1
OpenGL shading language version string: 1.30
OpenGL context flags: (none)
OpenGL extensions:
OpenGL ES profile version string: OpenGL ES 3.0 Mesa 12.0.1
OpenGL ES profile shading language version string: OpenGL ES GLSL ES 3.00
OpenGL ES profile extensions:

So I'm going to guess that this means that OpenGL is in fact working?

If "2D" acceleration in the desktop was fast (which desktop? most of the complex ones use compositing with OpenGL and therefore require a 3D accelerator.) chances are your OpenGL was working

Gnome

tmiddleton

Member

Registered: 2016-03-29

Posts: 28

Re: [SOLVED] Nouveau + mesa gl on GTX 960

So in minecraft, with nouveau and mesa-libgl, in a particular situation in minecraft, I get 15fps. When I switch the display server over to nvidia but keep mesa-libgl (presumably this is completely software opengl rendering at this point?) I get 5fps in the same situation (same screen resolution, same level, same location, same view direction, basically the same objects in the view frustum). So it seems that nouveau is getting at least a bit of hardware acceleration?

With the nvidia-libgl installed, in the same scene in minecraft, with vsync turned off, I get 120fps. You can understand why I was wondering whether 3d-acceleration was actually turned on or not.

I hope the reclocking work goes well - I'd really like to have virtual terminals that aren't completely messed up someday.

Last edited by tmiddleton (2016-09-02 23:51:22)

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 21,645

Re: [SOLVED] Nouveau + mesa gl on GTX 960

You could try this, but afaik from a little googling support for that on Maxwell might be pending for kernel 4.9