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phoronix
06-17-2008, 10:00 AM
Phoronix: NVIDIA 173.14.09 Display Driver

NVIDIA has released the 173.14.09 binary display driver. However, support for the GeForce GTX 200 series is not part of the change-log, unfortunately...

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=NjUzMA
M1AU
06-17-2008, 12:34 PM
...a regression that prevented the X driver from starting on some GeForce FX/6/7 series...

I got this one, was really annoying.
rinthos
06-17-2008, 11:51 PM
However, support for the GeForce GTX 200 series is not part of the change-log, unfortunately...


Ummm..that's because the GTX200 series is supported by the 177.13 driver @:

http://www.nvidia.com/object/linux_display_ia32_177.13.html
and
http://www.nvidia.com/object/linux_display_amd64_177.13.html
Kano
06-18-2008, 04:58 AM
Yes and when look at the new README then you will find out that the 173.xx series is 1 day after release already the legacy driver for GeForce 5 series. Now you need 4 different drivers to support best all Nvidia GPUs.
DeepDayze
06-18-2008, 12:51 PM
Yes and when look at the new README then you will find out that the 173.xx series is 1 day after release already the legacy driver for GeForce 5 series. Now you need 4 different drivers to support best all Nvidia GPUs.

Crazy, isn't it? I'd figure they have one stable driver to cover their newer GPU's and a legacy driver for their old as dust ones.
Kano
06-18-2008, 01:07 PM
Well basically you can cover all cards with 2 drivers, 71.84.04 + 177.13. But of course these are not the best drivers for newer cards, as from GF 2 MX to GF 4 you should use 96.43.05 (not for GF 2 GTS) and for GF 5 the newest driver is 173.14.09. So you get a total count of 4 drivers.
screemo
06-18-2008, 04:16 PM
Has anyone noticed increased 2d performance with 177.13 beta ? (very unlikely..)
MamiyaOtaru
06-18-2008, 06:30 PM
It gets worse. I''m using a geforce 5 on my old machine with an athlon thunderbird. No SSE means the newest driver I can use is 100.14.19. It's a corner case for sure, but for me (and one of my machines) it's a fifth driver.
rinthos
06-18-2008, 07:48 PM
I agree, it's quite a few drivers to keep track of and creates a bit of a headache.

To the comment about not having SSE, time to upgrade or switch to an intel P3 board for a lateral move. More issues than just gpu drivers.
Kano
06-19-2008, 02:15 AM
@MamiyaOtaru

I would use in your case 96.x - there are basically no huge improvements in 100.x series for your old card. I have even heard that only 96.x supports xvmc correctly - and your card would be able to use that. Would help to reduce cpu usage. In days of new dual cores thats just not so important but your cpu is real old ;)
MamiyaOtaru
06-19-2008, 05:25 AM
@rinthos: Eh, it's outdated. It plays Quake 4 just fine though (as long as I avoid the patch that makes it require SSE :-/ ). My upgrade was assembling a core 2 duo based system in 2006. I'm pretty sure I specified that the athlon was an old machine, though I obviously didn't make it clear enough that I called it that to differentiate it from my new machine ;) Most I'd do for the old one is get an AthlonXP or something (preferably one from after the 180->130 die shrink).

@Kano: thanks for the advice. The CPU is definitely the weak point on the old clunker anymore. If the 96s can offload some stuff from it that'd be swell.
.CME.
06-22-2008, 07:34 AM
hello, i have a problem with installing the latest nvidia driver on ubuntu 7.10 64bit, here is the log: http://rafb.net/p/DQr0kX54.html anybody an idea what wents wrong?
Kano
06-22-2008, 07:45 AM
Must be specific to rt kernels, try a pure one (generic).
Ragool
06-25-2008, 04:38 PM
No use... the screen blanks and X is unusable.
FX5500, Athlon 64, nforce2, Sony CPD-E230 Monitor.
Modeline in xorg does not work ... linux-bugs@nvidia.com is a blackhole ... sigh! :(

Forlornly yours
MU_Engineer
07-16-2008, 02:19 AM
@MamiyaOtaru

I would use in your case 96.x - there are basically no huge improvements in 100.x series for your old card. I have even heard that only 96.x supports xvmc correctly - and your card would be able to use that. Would help to reduce cpu usage. In days of new dual cores thats just not so important but your cpu is real old ;)

I have a CPU that is probably just as old (900 MHz Celeron Coppermine) but does have SSE and I am running a 6200 PCI card so I can use the recent drivers. I know that XvMC works as I can play MythTV's recorded SDTV MPEG-2 files very nicely with mplayer with the "-vo xvmc -vc ffmpeg12mc" option- it uses about 35% CPU. Just for kicks, I fed it a 1080p MPEG-2 file at 24 Mbps and it didn't drop *all* that many frames and playback was still smooth enough.

But MythTV is absolutely hating my 6200 and XvMC. The CPU usage is pegged at 100% for about 30 seconds and causes stuttering and then drops to about 65% after that and playback is fine. Just using Xvideo yields better CPU usage as the CPU is at roughly 85-95% usage but it never stutters at all. Is it the 173.xx drivers or something else? I am on Debian Lenny by the way, so you might be able to offer a bit of advice.
Adny
07-30-2008, 12:13 PM
Has anyone noticed increased 2d performance with 177.13 beta ? (very unlikely..)

One thing I have noticed is that 3D support is actually better with my 8600GTS. Specifically, that show-stoppper 'stuttering' bug that affects both the windows & linux drivers (most famously in UT2004 and its kin) seems to be completely (?) fixed now.

Better than nothing (and important to me ;) )