Nouveau-drm Drivers vs. nVidia's closed source drivers

LeoSolaris · 2009-03-25 12:05:16

Has anyone tested out the Nouveau drivers for nVidia cards? Other than being FOSS (Which is nice) are they as stable? I see from their webpage that they are not as feature rich, but that is to be expected.

I am just curious how well they perform vs. the closed drivers. Do any of your games in wine get a little weird?

My needs are fairly modest for graphics. I'm running Openbox with transset-df and xcompmgr, and rarely ever switch my games on. Till recently I did not even have wine installed, and I may be uninstalling it soon because the one program that I wanted to run does not function. (Starts up, but gives an odd error and quits. no big deal, I wasn't holding my breath.)

I would like to have as much FOSS supporting software as I can without compromising the stability of my laptop. (Only other thing that is closed source on my laptop that I know of is my Intel Wireless 4965 module, and I would carve that out if it wouldn't neuter my wireless.)

Thanks,
Leo S.

.:B:. · 2009-03-25 15:56:21

I have the git version that's in the AUR running in 2D on my brother's laptop. His screen is 1680x1050, and the xf86-video-nv driver was so slow it would drive me mad (I set up Linux on it, he usually just uses Windows ). You could see the screen refresh and it would take like 10s or more every time to do so. Running a transparent terminal (pseudo transparency) did not work *at all*.

With nouveau the refresh performance is better, but still not 'normal'. I read its 2D performance is better than the nv driver (and they claim it to be better than that of nVidia's own driver). I am planning on compiling a more recent git version and see how it goes. The one in AUR now gives me no artefacts in X, but the ttys are all garbled and impossible to use.

LeoSolaris · 2009-03-26 12:03:26

Alright, that's what I figured.

I know it's a difficult task, creating a driver from scratch for such a diverse set of hardware. I do hope that they manage to make it usable, nVidia never does quite make the 3d in Linux run as smooth as the 3d on Windows.

Thank ya for the status report, I wasn't even aware that the graphics driver had anything to do with the tty's.

buttons · 2009-03-26 12:08:19

LeoSolaris wrote:

Has anyone tested out the Nouveau drivers for nVidia cards? Other than being FOSS (Which is nice) are they as stable? I see from their webpage that they are not as feature rich, but that is to be expected.
I am just curious how well they perform vs. the closed drivers. Do any of your games in wine get a little weird?

At present, 3D support does not work *at all*.

2D support, as B mentions, is merely iffy.

Also, 9x series cards are better supported. The older your card is, the worse nouveau gets, in general.

Ranguvar · 2009-03-26 15:02:05

9x cards are _barely_ supported, actually -- I just got support recently.

I like Nouveau a lot, and run it when I don't need 3D. No 2D glitches at all, no speed issues either. 3D works somewhat (440fps in glxgears, haven't bothered trying a real benchmark, likely this is in part software rendering) -- enough for basic xcompmgr stuff for me at 1920x1200. 3D works better on some other cards from what one dev told me, but I doubt you'll want to game on it right now. Kernel mode setting is one thing I'm looking forward to that they should have very soon now that I don't think binary NVIDIA can have since they don't use the open source GEM in the kernel (IIRC they have the code in Nouveau, they just need a kernel that supports it).

Anyways, if you have an NVIDIA card you're not using, donate it to the project (ask on IRC), and there's instructions on their wiki for submitting RENouveau dumps and MMIO traces, which help them out, so do that if you can't donate hardware They're not accepting monetary donations last I checked.

Last edited by Ranguvar (2009-03-26 15:03:09)

.:B:. · 2009-03-26 16:43:49

My brother's laptop has a 8600 GM card - I think I forgot to mention that.

LeoSolaris · 2009-03-27 15:36:48

I wish I did have a secondary card, but this little laptop is just running a 8400GS. Unfortunately, this is the only laptop I have, and if I make it go boom, I will be out of a computer for quite a while. I will jsut have to be content to keep an eye on the project, and wish them the best of luck.

Ranguvar · 2009-03-27 15:38:53

LeoSolaris wrote:

I wish I did have a secondary card, but this little laptop is just running a 8400GS. Unfortunately, this is the only laptop I have, and if I make it go boom, I will be out of a computer for quite a while. I will jsut have to be content to keep an eye on the project, and wish them the best of luck.

Submit a RENouveau dump and an MMIO trace then Instructions on their wiki, and I already did it in Arch, so I can help if you post. There's no risk of these tools making your lappy go boom They both are clean-room reverse engineering tools; you run them with the binary NVIDIA driver and they dump info about it as it runs.

AndyRTR · 2009-03-28 08:11:58

I'm running nouveau all time on my desktop. Stable. The only issue I have is slow terminal speed when compiling stuff with fast output (OOo,...) in Gnome/LX/Xfce-Terminals. That makes high load on /usr/bin/X. Using "aterm" does it much better. Nouveau devs don't have a solution. Maybe my gf6200 card is simply too slow, and it's even running in a bad even slower "power saving mode" reducing the clock spped for gpu+memory. No idea how to increase it for all time. nvclock doesn't work.

LeoSolaris · 2009-04-03 13:22:42

For the moment, I am buried under a pile of work, and it will have to be a project to play with this summer. (I'll stick it on my TODO list so I know it will get done)

I'll revive this thread and poke y'all in a couple months.

Thank ya!

Arch Linux

#1 2009-03-25 12:05:16

Nouveau-drm Drivers vs. nVidia's closed source drivers

#2 2009-03-25 15:56:21

Re: Nouveau-drm Drivers vs. nVidia's closed source drivers

#3 2009-03-26 12:03:26

Re: Nouveau-drm Drivers vs. nVidia's closed source drivers

#4 2009-03-26 12:08:19

Re: Nouveau-drm Drivers vs. nVidia's closed source drivers

#5 2009-03-26 15:02:05

Re: Nouveau-drm Drivers vs. nVidia's closed source drivers

#6 2009-03-26 16:43:49

Re: Nouveau-drm Drivers vs. nVidia's closed source drivers

#7 2009-03-27 15:36:48

Re: Nouveau-drm Drivers vs. nVidia's closed source drivers

#8 2009-03-27 15:38:53

Re: Nouveau-drm Drivers vs. nVidia's closed source drivers

#9 2009-03-28 08:11:58

Re: Nouveau-drm Drivers vs. nVidia's closed source drivers

#10 2009-04-03 13:22:42

Re: Nouveau-drm Drivers vs. nVidia's closed source drivers

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