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Open-Source NVIDIA Driver Steps Up Its Game & Runs Much Faster

Posted by timothy on from the when-factors-combine dept.

An anonymous reader writes "With the Linux 3.16 kernel the Nouveau driver now supports re-clocking for letting the NVIDIA GPU cores and video memory on this reverse-engineered NVIDIA driver run at their designed frequencies. Up to now the Nouveau driver has been handicapped to running at whatever (generally low) clock frequencies the video BIOS programmed the hardware to at boot time, but with Linux 3.16 is experimental support for up-clocking to the hardware-rated speeds. The results show the open-source NVIDIA driver running multiple times faster, but it doesn't work for all NVIDIA hardware, causes lock-ups for some GPUs at some frequencies, and isn't yet dynamically controlled. However, it appears to be the biggest break-through in years for this open-source NVIDIA driver that up to now has been too slow for most Linux games."

8 of 143 comments (clear)

  1. No overclocking by dutchwhizzman · · Score: 4, Informative

    This isn't about overclocking. Most GPUs get set to a power saving speed for boot that is way below their maximal factory rated capacity. A 1GHz GPU could well be clocked at 300MHz or even lower during boot by the BIOS settings.

    --
    I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
    1. Re:No overclocking by drinkypoo · · Score: 3, Informative

      This isn't about overclocking. Most GPUs get set to a power saving speed for boot that is way below their maximal factory rated capacity. A 1GHz GPU could well be clocked at 300MHz or even lower during boot by the BIOS settings.

      And it's a damned good thing, too. When clocked lower and only displaying text the GPU is using the absolute lowest amount of power. If you're having problems with PCIE VRM (badcaps!) then the system will often come up to the GUI and then fail, but you can still use the text interface to troubleshoot, for example changing BIOS settings around and the like while chasing the problem.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
  2. Re:THIS is a potentially "huge score" for Linux by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    I'm against the rampant indiscriminate prescription of drugs, driven by money thirsty bigpharma.

    but I can tell the truth/how it is (from my perspective @ least), you're in need of drugs

  3. Performance vs Closed source driver? by nonsequitor · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Kudos to the Nouveau team for reaching this exciting milestone!

    If they tested side by side with the closed source driver from Nvidia, where does this put them in terms of performance?

    How long until an average user will chose the nouveau driver over the closed source driver, if said user doesn't care about licensing or building from source, but is looking for out of the box performance? Where does that put them in comparison with the Nvidia driver on Windows?

    Personally, this project is not very relevant to me since I have no qualms about using the closed source driver which is good enough for my purposes, but I'm not a gamer. I really hope someone like Valve is sponsoring this development because it sounds like a lot of tedious, hard work to be doing pro bono.

    1. Re:Performance vs Closed source driver? by Savage-Rabbit · · Score: 3, Interesting

      How long until an average user will chose the nouveau driver over the closed source driver, if said user doesn't care about licensing or building from source, but is looking for out of the box performance?

      When it is stable? The damn thing kept crashing on me one or two times a day which is why I switched to the proprietary driver. Now I'm back to using the Nouveau driver with a new Nvidia card and it only crashes one or two times a month which is just about stable enough to not make me bother with the proprietary one.

      Where does that put them in comparison with the Nvidia driver on Windows?

      The Windows driver is somewhat more stable, I regard stability as an aspect of performance.

      --
      Only to idiots, are orders laws.
      -- Henning von Tresckow
  4. Re:THIS is a potentially "huge score" for Linux by PopeRatzo · · Score: 5, Funny

    The "year of Linux on the Desktop" we've all heard for a decade++ here isn't out of the question now because of this... you get the games ported to Linux now, more?

    Does your choice of operating system preclude your ability to construct sentences in English?

    Clearly, you are a native English speaker. What happened to you, lad?

    --
    You are welcome on my lawn.
  5. Re:THIS is a potentially "huge score" for Linux by drinkypoo · · Score: 4, Funny

    Clearly, you are a native English speaker. What happened to you, lad?

    His speech double-plus good.

    Obviously, the language of the future will in fact have the double-plusses in it, but it will be missing some articles. This lad is a time-traveler!

    --
    "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
  6. Re:THIS is a potentially "huge score" for Linux by thsths · · Score: 3, Insightful

    No, the year of the Linux desktop is over.

    We used to have Gnome 2, KDE 2 and 3, OpenOffice, Mozilla, Flash Player and many useful tools against Windows XP. It was superior technology, but the impact was limited (LiMuX?).

    OpenOffice is in ruins (and hardly better than 10 years ago), the Gnome community is split, and KDE keeps getting fatter. Meanwhile Windows 7 is a half decent operating system, and Office 2007 has upped the game considerably. Even Google targets Linux only for some of their products.

    The battle for the desktop is over and lost.