NVIDIA 180.16 Beta Linux Driver

[phoronix]

Phoronix: NVIDIA 180.16 Beta Linux Driver

It was just eleven days ago that NVIDIA had released the 180.11 Beta Linux Driver, but in the wee hours of Saturday morning NVIDIA has pushed out a new beta driver. This driver contains a few fixes, support for new GPUs, and an updated implementation of the Video Decode and Presentation API for Unix.

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=13250

[Med_]

And as usual the performance on the NVS 135M is abysmal with KDE. When will they finally to decide to fix it? I have bought this card, i want working drivers. KDE has been out for almost a year. That is a lack of respect toward their customers.

[Vadi]

*portion of customers

[urandom]

I wish they'd first concentrate on fixing powermizer, or at least giving us a clear way to disable it.

[matt8]

I was wondering which of the Nvidia GeForce mGPUs (http://www.nvidia.com/object/main_mobo_gpus.html) and nForce MCPs (http://www.nvidia.com/object/nforce_desktop_mcp.html) are now fully supported (i.e. on all of the north/south bridge functions handled by these chipsets, including video and audio) in Linux.

In particular, if one buys a motherboard with one of these IGP chipsets:
A. GeForce 8200 mGPU
B. GeForce 8300 mGPU
C. 750a SLI
how much mileage vs hassle should/could be expected for getting the mobo to work well?

[jbrown96]

I have a Quadro 570m in my laptop. I've heard these are based on the 8xxx series. Is VDPAU supported on my card?

Thanks

[Pseus]

@matt8:

I got an ASUS M3N78-VM (GeForce 8200) a couple of days ago and it's been working great with nVidia's 177.82 driver. The only real problem I've come across is getting the sound card to properly initialize after boot. Normally all I need to do is unload and then reload the kernel module for sound (snd-hda-intel), so it's not much of a hassle. Other than that, it works just fine =)

[deanjo]

I was wondering which of the Nvidia GeForce mGPUs (http://www.nvidia.com/object/main_mobo_gpus.html) and nForce MCPs (http://www.nvidia.com/object/nforce_desktop_mcp.html) are now fully supported (i.e. on all of the north/south bridge functions handled by these chipsets, including video and audio) in Linux.

In particular, if one buys a motherboard with one of these IGP chipsets:
A. GeForce 8200 mGPU
B. GeForce 8300 mGPU
C. 750a SLI
how much mileage vs hassle should/could be expected for getting the mobo to work well?

Should all work fine.

[Milyardo]

I own a GeForce 8200 mGPU. Works fine.

[superppl]

The release highlights for the 180.16 driver release mention support for the following GPUs being added: Quadro FX 2700M, GeForce 9400M G, GeForce 9800GT, GeForce 8200M G, GeForce Go 7700, GeForce 9800M GTX, GeForce 9800M GT, GeForce 9800M GS, GeForce 9500GT, GeForce 9700M GT, and GeForce 9650M GT.
The drivers have always worked fine for my gpu (in bold). Does this mean that features I wasn't aware of will work and/or performance will be improved?

[galv]

I wish they'd first concentrate on fixing powermizer, or at least giving us a clear way to disable it.

I second that!

[killall-9]

the perfomence in 2d working much more better now with 9800gt on ubuntu 64bit.
180.06 was really slow in combination with firefox.

[greg]

the perfomence in 2d working much more better now with 9800gt on ubuntu 64bit.
180.06 was really slow in combination with firefox.

This was due to a bug in the glyph cache which was already fixed in 180.11.

For me, VDPAU now works *much* better than in the older drivers and MPlayer patches. All my H.264 videos play now, only the frame ordering issues need to be fixed still.

[killall-9]

didnt know there was a 180.11 release so i have to switch back to 178 .82 driver.Sometimes nvidia is really slow to update new driver on the homepage!

[greg]

Some beta drivers are only informally announced in the nvnews forums, to speed up the process.

The developers <-> users dialog in these forums is nice and effective too.

[Med_]

After having tested it for some time finally i think there is some improvement on NVS135M. Far from perfect, especially in Twinview which gives quite a hit to the performances.

[Jimmy]

didnt know there was a 180.11 release so i have to switch back to 178 .82 driver.Sometimes nvidia is really slow to update new driver on the homepage!

One of the reasons I keep Phoronix on RSS :D

[cbsim]

Seems to have problem with the menu in Compiz + Murrine theme.

[debian_user]

I was wondering which of the Nvidia GeForce mGPUs (http://www.nvidia.com/object/main_mobo_gpus.html) and nForce MCPs (http://www.nvidia.com/object/nforce_desktop_mcp.html) are now fully supported (i.e. on all of the north/south bridge functions handled by these chipsets, including video and audio) in Linux.

In particular, if one buys a motherboard with one of these IGP chipsets:
A. GeForce 8200 mGPU
B. GeForce 8300 mGPU
C. 750a SLI
how much mileage vs hassle should/could be expected for getting the mobo to work well?

In my humble opinion and personal experience, I would recommend that you stay away from mobos with the integrated GeForce 8200 chipset (aka MCP78) at this current time of writing because it takes a lot of fiddling to get them working reasonably. And even still, 2D performance takes 100% hit (on a single core). To get the sound working without popping and crackling, you need to use the latest Linux kernel (2.6.27.9) alongside the latest ALSA base 1.0.18. In terms of distros, I've found that "out-of-the-box" Ubuntu 8.10 configures the sound properly but the 2D/3D graphic performance is shocking and sometimes unplayable at times, even when viewing a Youtube vid. In fact the whole system is incredibly sluggish. Using Debian Lenny (still in testing at this time) I've found the system to be very responsive and I would recommend it above Ubuntu 8.10. However, it does not work properly "out-of-the-box" either and requires a little more work for your rewards. Firstly, to configure the sound properly in Lenny you need to update the ALSA base package from the experimental repository to get the ALSA 1.0.18 version. Then, you need to compile a custom kernel 2.6.27.9. In doing this, you must also compile a compatible NVIDA kernel module from the experiment repository source package (nvidia-kernel-source) to match your custom kernel and also install the experimental nvidia-glx package. The version of the experimental NVIDA source package at this time of writing is 177.80-2, so it does not fix the 100% CPU usage problem. But at least the Debian Lenny system is much faster (how Linux should be) and the sound works fine. I hope my verbose answer helps you.

[deanjo]

In my humble opinion and personal experience, I would recommend that you stay away from mobos with the integrated GeForce 8200 chipset (aka MCP78) at this current time of writing because it takes a lot of fiddling to get them working reasonably. And even still, 2D performance takes 100% hit (on a single core). To get the sound working without popping and crackling, you need to use the latest Linux kernel (2.6.27.9) alongside the latest ALSA base 1.0.18. In terms of distros, I've found that "out-of-the-box" Ubuntu 8.10 configures the sound properly but the 2D/3D graphic performance is shocking and sometimes unplayable at times, even when viewing a Youtube vid.

Flash nailing 1 core is a known flash-plugin bug.

In fact the whole system is incredibly sluggish. Using Debian Lenny (still in testing at this time) I've found the system to be very responsive and I would recommend it above Ubuntu 8.10. However, it does not work properly "out-of-the-box" either and requires a little more work for your rewards.A board like the Asus M3N-HD works perfectly out of the box on opensuse 11.0.

Firstly, to configure the sound properly in Lenny you need to update the ALSA base package from the experimental repository to get the ALSA 1.0.18 version. Then, you need to compile a custom kernel 2.6.27.9.

That's all dependent on the dac being used. You do not have to compile a custom kernel either on other distro's. As mentioned boards like the M3N-HD work out of the box in openSUSE which has a 2.6.25 kernel.

In doing this, you must also compile a compatible NVIDA kernel module from the experiment repository source package (nvidia-kernel-source) to match your custom kernel and also install the experimental nvidia-glx package. The version of the experimental NVIDA source package at this time of writing is 177.80-2, so it does not fix the 100% CPU usage problem. But at least the Debian Lenny system is much faster (how Linux should be) and the sound works fine. I hope my verbose answer helps you.
Almost all the above issues stem from your choice of distro. Not with linux nor the chipsets. It's typical for debian to be lagging a bit in supporting new hardware.

[Pseus]

In my humble opinion and personal experience, I would recommend that you stay away from mobos with the integrated GeForce 8200 chipset (aka MCP78) at this current time of writing because it takes a lot of fiddling to get them working reasonably. And even still, 2D performance takes 100% hit (on a single core).
2D performance is good unless you're playing tons of Flash animations, as Deanjo said.

Disclaimer: I'm running a fairly up-to-date distro, so I don't know how these mobos work on Ubuntu.

[matt8]

In my humble opinion and personal experience, I would recommend that you stay away from mobos with the integrated GeForce 8200 chipset

Many thanks for taking the time to post your detailed advice.

Does this laborious process apply also to GeForce 8300 chipsets? Related question: is it the case that the 750a boards with onboard video come with built-in GF8200 video (and the 780a's with GF 8300 likewise)?

It turns out that just minutes before I saw your post, I ordered a re-certified MSI DKA790GX Platinum (790GX, ATX, 128MB sideport, etc) after considering these other boards closely (all nicely loaded):
1. Asus M3A78-T (790GX)
2. GB xyzGPM-DS2H (mATX 780G w/ sideport)
3. Asus M3N78-EM (mATX w/ GF 8300)
4. Jetway HA07-Ultra (790GX currently holding the world record on OCing @ ripping.org)

The MSI unit was too appealing at a good price (because it was a recert) with good looking heat sinks+pipes (I expect that it'll do a good job w/ heat dissipation, perhaps only matched by the Jetway unit among ALL the sub-$150 780G/790GX boards out there). We'll see how it works out. MSI does seem to (based on the reviews at newegg and elsewhere) have the best quality among the top three (Asus, GB, MSI), as their boards seem to be registering the least number of complaints from buyers about unwanted hassles. Does MSI make all of their boards in Taiwan, or do they outsource parts of production/assembly to other countries?

[geoffp]

Thought I'd add my 2c.

I bought an 8200-based mobo for a MythTV system, and as of driver 177.80, I consider it to be junk.

I consider it so for two reasons: first, because the 2d acceleration is so slow I can literally see the GUI draw itself in a nice, old-school top-to-bottom wipe, and second, because using sync to vblank for video drives xorg up to 100% on one CPU core, despite the old "UseEvents" "True" trick, which doesn't help.

I'm not trying to be a hater. Nvidia have earned many of my dollars, but the 8200 is just not working right for me. There are several threads on nvnews.net on these issues.

I'm not sure whether to go get a $30 8400GS, wait and hope they fix their drivers, or jump ship. I don't want more heat in my little case, though, and I do eventually want to use VDPAU, so...I'm probably stuck with waiting. :)

[deneb]

I bought an 8200-based mobo for a MythTV system, and as of driver 177.80, I consider it to be junk.
Why not try the 180.16 driver then?

[debian_user]

Flash nailing 1 core is a known flash-plugin bug.

A board like the Asus M3N-HD works perfectly out of the box on opensuse 11.0.



That's all dependent on the dac being used. You do not have to compile a custom kernel either on other distro's. As mentioned boards like the M3N-HD work out of the box in openSUSE which has a 2.6.25 kernel.


Almost all the above issues stem from your choice of distro. Not with linux nor the chipsets. It's typical for debian to be lagging a bit in supporting new hardware.


Ok, let me qualify - don't go after a MCP78S mobo like Abit A-N7HD with NVIDIA 8200 and Realtek ALC888 DAC. Debian Lenny uses kernel 2.6.26-1 by default - ALC888 problems are well known and the latest kernel has been updated with improvements to the module. I'm now using kernel 2.6.27.9 and sound crackling is fixed. But using NVIDIA 177.82 drivers, 2D performance (I haven't tested 3D) is still shocking. I will wait for updated drivers coming through Debian experimental repository to see improvements. Thanks for alerting me to flash plugin bug. I updated to using the latest version (32 bit). It is reported that Flash is the number one plugin to cause crashes of Firefox browser. News is that a native 64-bit plugin is in alpha development. But still, I feel it is mainly a NVIDIA driver problem for the 8200 GPU, not distro choice or bad Flash plugin code, because my old FX5200 on a 3.5 year old system does a better job. Here's what I'm talking about on my 64-bit AMD Athlon X2 4850e 2.5Ghz dual core SSE3 machine - link to Picassa album photo (http://picasaweb.google.com.au/lh/photo/2Yj7HPkjNYXT7n-7UBiRoA).

[debian_user]

Thought I'd add my 2c.

I bought an 8200-based mobo for a MythTV system, and as of driver 177.80, I consider it to be junk.

I consider it so for two reasons: first, because the 2d acceleration is so slow I can literally see the GUI draw itself in a nice, old-school top-to-bottom wipe, and second, because using sync to vblank for video drives xorg up to 100% on one CPU core, despite the old "UseEvents" "True" trick, which doesn't help.

I'm not trying to be a hater. Nvidia have earned many of my dollars, but the 8200 is just not working right for me. There are several threads on nvnews.net on these issues.

I'm not sure whether to go get a $30 8400GS, wait and hope they fix their drivers, or jump ship. I don't want more heat in my little case, though, and I do eventually want to use VDPAU, so...I'm probably stuck with waiting. :)

You're technically more adept than me and I concur with your sentiments. Is it normal for a GPU to run at 77 degrees Celcius whilst just browsing the internet, granted an ambient temperature of around 25 degrees Celcius?

[geoffp]

Why not try the 180.16 driver then?

Because I'm squeamish about blowing away Mythbuntu's beautifully clean, package-wrapped driver install with a raw one from the Nvidia installer. I might do it anyway, though. I'd love to try it.



Is it normal for a GPU to run at 77 degrees Celcius whilst just browsing the internet, granted an ambient temperature of around 25 degrees Celcius?

You seem adept enough to me. :)

I don't know the specs on this GPU, but I think I would find that alarming. That seems pretty high to me.

[debian_user]

Because I'm squeamish about blowing away Mythbuntu's beautifully clean, package-wrapped driver install with a raw one from the Nvidia installer. I might do it anyway, though. I'd love to try it.





You seem adept enough to me. :)

I don't know the specs on this GPU, but I think I would find that alarming. That seems pretty high to me.

Well, I was surprised that my mobo didn't find it so alarming as to not sound a beep... here's what I'm talking about - link to Picassa album photo (http://picasaweb.google.com.au/lh/photo/kdomkfauufQZiyxtiRHsnQ). So do you like your eggs sunnyside up? Because it would be just too messy to flip 'em inside my HTPC case.

[KohlyKohl]

Well, I was surprised that my mobo didn't find it so alarming as to not sound a beep... here's what I'm talking about - link to Picassa album photo (http://picasaweb.google.com.au/lh/photo/kdomkfauufQZiyxtiRHsnQ). So do you like your eggs sunnyside up? Because it would be just too messy to flip 'em inside my HTPC case.

Something is not right because the threshold should not be at 255c. 140c would be pushing it.

[debian_user]

Something is not right because the threshold should not be at 255c. 140c would be pushing it.

Well, it would almost be a case of China Syndrome if it reached it's Slowdown Threshold. The chip is soldered internally using a composition made of 95% tin and 5% lead. I don't know about the melting point of this alloy, but regular tin melts at 232 Degrees Celcius. So at 255 Degrees this chip is almost sure to dismount from the mobo and melt through your case, perhaps all the way to the manufacturer in Taiwan.

[deanjo]

77 c is well within normal operating temp when the igp is being used.

[gtrawoger]

Last night they released the 180.11.02, which has complete OpenGL 3.0 support.

Not sure I understand the numbering though....

[zim2dive]

In my humble opinion and personal experience, I would recommend that you stay away from mobos with the integrated GeForce 8200 chipset (aka MCP78) at this current time of writing because it takes a lot of fiddling to get them working reasonably. And even still, 2D performance takes 100% hit (on a single core). To get the sound working without popping and crackling, you need to use the latest Linux kernel (2.6.27.9) alongside the latest ALSA base 1.0.18. In terms of distros, I've found that "out-of-the-box" Ubuntu 8.10 configures the sound properly but the 2D/3D graphic performance is shocking and sometimes unplayable at times, even when viewing a Youtube vid. In fact the whole system is incredibly sluggish. Using Debian Lenny (still in testing at this time) I've found the system to be very responsive and I would recommend it above Ubuntu 8.10. However, it does not work properly "out-of-the-box" either and requires a little more work for your rewards. Firstly, to configure the sound properly in Lenny you need to update the ALSA base package from the experimental repository to get the ALSA 1.0.18 version. Then, you need to compile a custom kernel 2.6.27.9. In doing this, you must also compile a compatible NVIDA kernel module from the experiment repository source package (nvidia-kernel-source) to match your custom kernel and also install the experimental nvidia-glx package. The version of the experimental NVIDA source package at this time of writing is 177.80-2, so it does not fix the 100% CPU usage problem. But at least the Debian Lenny system is much faster (how Linux should be) and the sound works fine. I hope my verbose answer helps you.

is this expected to be better any time soon.. I am a 1st time home user of linux (15 years at work, and spent 80% of my Mac time at a terminal prompt, thought I'd play with linux for a while for HTPC)... all is working pretty well EXCEPT for flash... Acer AX1200, nvidia 8200, I chose Ubuntu 8.10 for no particular reason other than it seems like the easiest out of the box distro.. I found I needed to upgrade to alsa 1.0.18a to get audio via HDMI, and it seemed like I had to upgrade from 177.80 nvidia to 177.82 to get 5.1 sound. I've had no luck with the 180.x drivers (180.11 gives me lots of freezes/crashes).. I'm at wits end... sorry not trying to hijack.. can start a separate thread if that would be better. Have posted at nvnews as well, but this is the 1st place I have seen the 8200 specifically mentioned as the creeping pile of crud that I've been experiencing. At full-screen, I'm lucky to see 2 fps in Flash. I've tried old plugins, and the new ones (10.0 d21) under 32-bit and 64-bit installs.

thanks,
Mike

[bimbo]

Can someone with a GF8200 MoBo comment whether 512MB VRAM is enough to decode 1080p h264 with VDPAU? On my Asus, I cannot set 512MB without having 2GB RAM installed so I cannot test. But if 512MB is not enough, I would go get a 1GB GF9400 rather than another 1 or 2GB RAM.

Otherwise this is a very nice christmas present from nvidia...

[hdas]

As I mentioned in the other thread, with the 180.18 driver, only when I try to run it on my external monitor, 1080i video (ts mpeg format, -vc ffmpeg12vdpau) fails to play with error 23 in libvdpau (out of vram). This is on my notebook with 8400M GS, 128MB dedicated and I guess another 128 in turbocache. Note however that it works fine on my laptop internal display. Looks like the external monitor takes up too much vram (its 1680x1050 along with my notebook 1280x800). However, it looks that 512MB should be fine.

I also might add that this could be the case only on 64-bit systems (I am on Ubuntu 8.10 64-bit) and it seems that either 32-bit systems take up less memory or the 32-bit compat libs take up some space in 64-bit.

There is another thing I might add here. When I connect the external display, powermizer is always in level 3, gpu temp's about 56 C. With no external display, the default is level 1, temp being 48 C. With only the external display, it is in level 2 always. Looks like external displays require quite some gpu horsepower.

[deanjo]

Can someone with a GF8200 MoBo comment whether 512MB VRAM is enough to decode 1080p h264 with VDPAU? On my Asus, I cannot set 512MB without having 2GB RAM installed so I cannot test. But if 512MB is not enough, I would go get a 1GB GF9400 rather than another 1 or 2GB RAM.

Otherwise this is a very nice christmas present from nvidia...

Yes it is. I was just playing with an 8200 a couple of days ago testing out vdpau.

http://www.phoronix.com/forums/showpost.php?p=56160&postcount=8

[hdas]

OK, to clarify some of the things I said last post. I just booted into my old 32-bit ubuntu 8.10 after quite some time, and found that video on external monitor has stopped working with 180.18, but used to work with 180.11. So, its about the driver and vdpau version, and not 32-bit vs 64-bit. Secondly, about running out of VRAM, it is ok when I turn off the laptop internal display and run on external display explicitly. Lastly, it might be a mplayer only issue and can be worked around by playing with some code variables as I found browsing through nvnews forums.

The other thing I commented is actually kind of true, that the memory usage in 64-bit linux is almost double that in 32-bit.