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GPL'ed Drivers For NVIDIA nForce Ethernet Devices

Posted by timothy on from the makes-sff-even-more-attractive dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Manfred Spraul has released a GPLed driver for the ethernet device found in motherboards based on the Nvidia Nforce/Nforce2/Nforce3 chipsets. Drivers provided by Nvidia on the other hand, are closed. Andrew Morton has integrated this driver in the 2.6.9-mm2 release of his mm tree. And if you are using a 2.4x kernel, you may want to check out this post."

3 of 33 comments (clear)

  1. Built-in-chipset devices don't "skip" the PCI bus. by Ayanami+Rei · · Score: 3, Informative

    The transactions occur across a much faster interconnect (which can go by different names according to the chipset design), but it's still linear and you still access resources in a PCI-like manner. Just faster.

    The only bus that was different was ISA.

    --
    THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
  2. Re:Woo-Hoo by Crazy+Eight · · Score: 2, Informative

    `glxinfo | grep direct'
    If that shell command returns, "direct rendering: Yes" then you've got hardware GL.

  3. Re:Woo-Hoo by mickwd · · Score: 2, Informative

    If you desperately need Serial ATA support on an NF7-S, it's available in 2.4 kernels.

    Mine works pretty well under Mandrake 9.1, perfectly under Mandrake 9.2, and perfectly under Gentoo if your use the Alan Cox kernel sources (not the "standard" Gentoo kernel, unless it's been updated since I last tried it).

    My SATA transfer rates are actually quicker (timed using "hdparm -tT") under 2.4 than 2.6.