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NVIDIA's Latest CineFX Card Under Linux
Nvidia Lacky writes "Ran across a new article from LinuxHardware.org that goes through NVIDIA's new driver release and also takes a first look at a CineFX-based NVIDIA card, the Quadro FX under Linux. Should be a good read for those that have been frustrated with Linux drivers in the past or that are looking to get a new workstation video card."
Video Card Reviews Monday, NVIDIA took the next step in their strive to own the Linux video market with the release of their 1.0-4349 drivers. These drivers represent a first in the Linux driver market, a utility that not only installs the drivers on any distribution, but also keeps the driver up-to-date. We now take a look at this new utility and the drivers themselves. We'll walk you through the installation of these new drivers, the capabilities of the new utility, and the performance of the drivers. Included in this review is the first look at a CineFX architecture card, the Quadro FX 2000 workstation graphics adapter.
I recently installed the new nvidia driver for mandrake 9.1. The good thing about this new driver is that it automatically figures out what all relevent stuff needs to be installed. (Earlier u had to download specific drivers based on your distribution version). But after installing the new driver, I found out that it *did not* modify the xfree86 config file, which I had to go and manually change. Although it was not difficult, but still it can be complicated for an newbie.
Monday, NVIDIA took the next step in their strive to own the Linux video market with the release of their 1.0-4349 drivers. These drivers represent a first in the Linux driver market, a utility that not only installs the drivers on any distribution, but also keeps the driver up-to-date. We now take a look at this new utility and the drivers themselves. We'll walk you through the installation of these new drivers, the capabilities of the new utility, and the performance of the drivers. Included in this review is the first look at a CineFX architecture card, the Quadro FX 2000 workstation graphics adapter.
./NVIDIA-Linux-x86-1.0-4349.run --help ./NVIDIA-Linux-x86-1.0-4349.run [options]
./nvidia-installer installation utility.
./NVIDIA-Linux-x86-1.0-4349.run, but do not
./nvidia-installer
The New Utility
Let's start this review by pointing you to a Bjorn3D article that talks about the Linux advantage. Their article basically takes you through a press briefing that the media received from NVIDIA. It's a good article that talks about NVIDIA's stance on Linux and what they hope to accomplish in the Linux sector. It would have been the intro here but they did such a good job....
Now let's get into the hard stuff and show you the goods. The new NVIDIA installer, based on the Loki installer, is designed to make driver installation painless. Let's walk through a standard installation:
Grab the Linux driver from NVIDIA's website here: http://download.nvidia.com/XFree86/Linux-x86/1.0-4 349/NVIDIA-Linux-x86-1.0-4349.run
Run the utility by typing "sh NVIDIA-Linux-x86-1.0-4349.run".
You'll be greeted with the screen shown below. This screen simply displays the license and asks you to either accept or deny it.
Once you've accepted the license, the utility will check for a kernel module that has been pre-compiled. If it does not find one, it will then ask if you want to check the NVIDIA ftp site for a module.
If you say "Yes" to the above question, the utility will go check and will return with either a module or a statement that you will need to build a module from scratch. Since we were working with a custom compiled kernel, we got the later.
When you select "OK", the utility will then go to work and compile the new module and proceed to install the rest of the driver package.
That's it. You will finally receive a screen stating that installation was a success and now all you need to do is configure your XF86Config file.
Now that you've seen how easy this installation can be, we'll now show you all the options that the installer has:
glacier src #
This program will install the NVIDIA Accelerated Graphics Driver for
Linux-x86 1.0-4349 by unpacking the embedded tarball and executing
the
Below are the most common options; for a complete list use
'--advanced-options'.
--info
Print embedded info (title, default target directory) and exit.
--check
Check integrity of the archive and exit.
--extract-only
Extract the contents of
run 'nvidia-installer'.
The following arguments will be passed on to the
utility:
-a, --accept-license
Bypass the display and prompting for acceptance of the NVIDIA
Software License Agreement. By passing this option to
nvidia-installer, you indicate that you have read and accept
the License Agreement contained in the file 'LICENSE' (in the
top level directory of the driver package).
--update
Connect to the NVIDIA ftp server 'ftp://download.nvidia.com'
and determine the latest available driver version. If there is
a more recent driver available, automatically download and
install it. Any other options given on the commandline will be
passed on to the downloaded driver package when installing it.
-v, --version
Print the nvidia-in
That vendor doesn't exist, sorry. Matrox dropped the ball with Parhelia, and S3/VIA has never had an accelerated DRI driver to the best of my knowledge.
Here's the problem: nVidia and ATI make professional and consumer versions of their cards with the same hardware. The only difference is a resistor telling the BIOS which one it is. The _drivers_ are what tell the card to use certain features. While I'm not sure exactly how much is BIOS, and how much is driver, I'm betting having access to the driver source gives you a way to enable those professional features on the consumer cards.
Hence, not only are there no vendors like you want, but it becomes increasingly unlikely that they will pop into existence. Sorry.
-Erwos
Plausible conjecture should not be misrepresented as proof positive.
Good God man, are you still running that two year old hardware?
Seriously, though, your complaint seems a bit flat, as NVidia has done a huge amount of work on fixing this. I haven't had an NVidia driver issue with any of my systems in recent memory. In fact, we've been getting superb performance and easy installs for well over a year now.
The drivers work great on my RH8 machine with my Geforce2 card. But I've switched back to the XFree86 drivers right after. Why? They still don't support power management. All I want is for my monitor to turn off after a while. Not possible. From the README:
KNOWN LAPTOP ISSUES
o Power Management is not currently supported.
*sigh*
I have an A7N8X Deluxe and I have Mandrake 9 running just fine on it.
0 -0248
c e
It took a few minutes of searching the web, but the sound fix is on Mandrake's site.
Oh! after a little googling, I found NVidia has mandrake specific drivers that apparently work like a rested engineer.
http://www.nvidia.com/view.asp?IO=linux_nforce_1.
Anyway, here's the patch that worked on my system incase the new NVidia drivers work like a monkey on acid:
http://www.linux-mandrake.com/en/errata.php3#nfor
Hope this helps.
-Derick
SuSE 8.1 or below should use the FTP site to download the RPM's for the driver, I believe it has something to do with interoperability of the new Loki style installer and Sax2.
:). But in the US 8.2 won't ship until mid-april.
SuSE 8.2 users should be fine
StarTux