NVIDIA Pushes Out Another Binary Driver Update

[phoronix]

Phoronix: NVIDIA Pushes Out Another Binary Driver Update

While NVIDIA doesn't stick to a defined release cycle like AMD where they will issue Catalyst driver updates for Linux and Windows on a predictable monthly basis, as of late they have been pushing out a lot of drivers. Two weeks ago NVIDIA released four new Linux drivers and then just a day later they released another driver...

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=NzA1Nw

[Vadi]

So these are "stable"?

[Med_]

I had a foolish hope when i saw that: "Fixed an X driver performance problem on integrated GPUs." Unfortunately the performace is as catastrophic as usual on my NVS 135M under KDE 4 with composite activated. KDE 4 has been out for over a year. NVidia still has not fixed their driver. I will keep recommending people not to buy any nvidia product thanks to their behaviour. One year. Incredible. :(

[hdas]

is it just me that this phoronix *news* is more like an amd *advertisement*. besides, lol at *predictable* (thankfully the word *regular* was not abused) amd releases :).

i wonder what would happen in a situation if phoronix were asked to write a wikipedia entry on linux graphics drivers :D. (would imagine it would be worse than if it were done by stallman himself :).)

@ Med_: i understand your frustration, but this is not constructive. i have myself seen kde slowness, but i have seen things improve and wrinkles get ironed out over the time with very honest efforts from both nvidia and the kde team. i am using ubuntu 8.10 with kde 4.2 from kubuntu-experimental repo - 3d effects are smoother than compiz and 2d is good too. in any case, try to at least describe the problem you are facing.

[jeffro-tull]

NVIDIA seems to be taking care of KDE4 performance issues. Granted, GeForce 6-series cards didn't have the same "serious" issues as I guess the 7's and 8's did, but there were issues. And they are dissolving.

And, for the record, NVIDIA is doing a better job fixing KDE4 issues than AMD is with video. Or wine. Or $any_number_of_other_problems.

[bulletxt]

is it just me that this phoronix *news* is more like an amd *advertisement*. besides, lol at *predictable* (thankfully the word *regular* was not abused) amd releases :).

i wonder what would happen in a situation if phoronix were asked to write a wikipedia entry on linux graphics drivers :D. (would imagine it would be worse than if it were done by stallman himself :).)

@ Med_: i understand your frustration, but this is not constructive. i have myself seen kde slowness, but i have seen things improve and wrinkles get ironed out over the time with very honest efforts from both nvidia and the kde team. i am using ubuntu 8.10 with kde 4.2 from kubuntu-experimental repo - 3d effects are smoother than compiz and 2d is good too. in any case, try to at least describe the problem you are facing.


I stated in several occasions that Phoronix is absolutley pro-AMD and have suggested them to just put an AMD logo for website. This can be "silently" understood from Michael's way of writing AMD articles and NVIDIA articles.

However, what I understood in time is that Michael isn't pro-AMD, because he writes in the same way even for Intel articles(well, not exactly the same :P ). This means that he simply doesn't like blob binary drivers, even if they are 1000 times better than any opens source driver of AMD/INTEL.

[jeffro-tull]

@bulletxt:

I don't know, they're usually gushing praise for the Catalyst releases as well. Well, aside from the fact that XvBA is vaporware so far.

[Michael]

However, what I understood in time is that Michael isn't pro-AMD, because he writes in the same way even for Intel articles(well, not exactly the same :P ). This means that he simply doesn't like blob binary drivers, even if they are 1000 times better than any opens source driver of AMD/INTEL.


Hmmm? Sure, I would love all open-source drivers, but I am not anti-binary drivers. At this time they offer the best performance and features on Linux. On my main laptop I am running a binary display driver. Oh yeah, and it's the NVIDIA binary driver.

[bulletxt]

Hmmm? Sure, I would love all open-source drivers, but I am not anti-binary drivers. At this time they offer the best performance and features on Linux. On my main laptop I am running a binary display driver. Oh yeah, and it's the NVIDIA binary driver.

If that is the case, then I (and a lot of other people) don't understand why is your AMD articles always like a "wow" and NVIDIA like "yea ok, I'm bored"... because that is what I understand from your posts....... and I'm sure im not the only one to feel this..

But anyways I don't have anything against you even if you were pro-AMD 'cause I'm the first one to own AMD hardware :)

[hax0r]

I had a foolish hope when i saw that: "Fixed an X driver performance problem on integrated GPUs." Unfortunately the performace is as catastrophic as usual on my NVS 135M under KDE 4 with composite activated. KDE 4 has been out for over a year. NVidia still has not fixed their driver. I will keep recommending people not to buy any nvidia product thanks to their behaviour. One year. Incredible. :(So you're going to recommend ATI cards? Epic fail.

[Med_]

@ Med_: i understand your frustration, but this is not constructive. i have myself seen kde slowness, but i have seen things improve and wrinkles get ironed out over the time with very honest efforts from both nvidia and the kde team. i am using ubuntu 8.10 with kde 4.2 from kubuntu-experimental repo - 3d effects are smoother than compiz and 2d is good too. in any case, try to at least describe the problem you are facing.

Not constructive? KDE 4 is simply not usable at all with the nvidia driver. Konsole takes several seconds display when minised. The effects run at 2 to 3 fps. Moving windows is extremely shaky. My underpowered netbook with a crappy intel 945GM runs KDE 4 much, *much* better than my core 2 duo laptop with the nvidia NVS 135M. NVidia cannot not be aware of the problem, it is so blatant with integrated graphics cards (and on geforce 6xxx but that is another story).

[Med_]

So you're going to recommend ATI cards? Epic fail.

ATI plays the opensource game (partially at least) releasing docs to make Free drivers and their binary driver runs KDE 4 perfectly. Intel shows decent performance with KDE 4 too. So far NVidia has caused me the most headaches and they seem to be very unwilling to fix their driver. Let's face it, if they have not fixed it after 1 year, they will never fix it. Ah, the joys to closed drivers …

[bulletxt]

ATI plays the opensource game (partially at least) releasing docs to make Free drivers and their binary driver runs KDE 4 perfectly. Intel shows decent performance with KDE 4 too. So far NVidia has caused me the most headaches and they seem to be very unwilling to fix their driver. Let's face it, if they have not fixed it after 1 year, they will never fix it. Ah, the joys to closed drivers …


Welcome to NVIDIA's way of doing things. They are kindly inviting you to buy a new NVIDIA GPU, possible a Geforce 8 or 9.

That's exactly why I hate NVIDIA, I hate their company politics, I hate their confusing naming products to confuse user, and I hate there "small" bugs that tend to never be fixed. The result? Buy a new GPU.

[d2kx]

Welcome to NVIDIA's way of doing things. They are kindly inviting you to buy a new NVIDIA GPU, possible a Geforce 8 or 9.

That's exactly why I hate NVIDIA, I hate their company politics, I hate their confusing naming products to confuse user, and I hate there "small" bugs that tend to never be fixed. The result? Buy a new GPU.

What confusing names do you talk about? My brother's GeForce GTS 250, ehm I mean 9800GTX+ runs KDE4 fine. Well, the drivers before 180.27 at least, it frequently crashes since then.

[Kano]

And you use now 180.29? For me and others it fixed the AGP GART issue for GeForce 6 GPUs on first X start and one crash on a h264 movie which does now work with the current mplayer vdpau. The only bad thing is that -vo null -vc null -ao pcm seems to be broken with this mplayer snapshot.

[DeepDayze]

So you're going to recommend ATI cards? Epic fail.

Good timing my old ATI Radeon 9600SE kicked the bucket...and I went out and bought an nVidia 6800 XT for my system. The 6800 blew the doors off the Radeon, and I am now a happy camper with nVidia.

Until AMD/ATI drastically improves their drivers I am going to stick with nVdia...but I might play with Intel chips too, if they ever decide to make a discrete graphics card.

[deanjo]

Welcome to NVIDIA's way of doing things. They are kindly inviting you to buy a new NVIDIA GPU, possible a Geforce 8 or 9.

That's exactly why I hate NVIDIA, I hate their company politics, I hate their confusing naming products to confuse user, and I hate there "small" bugs that tend to never be fixed. The result? Buy a new GPU.

http://www.guru3d.com/news/ati-rebrands-11-radeon-hd-3000-cards-to-4000-series/
http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2006/04/11/ati_renames_radeon_xpress/

[Kano]

Do you think ATI does wants that you use their cards till end of time ;) Well the ones I had died already. So at least the time to replace should not be that long ;)

[whaevr]

So you're going to recommend ATI cards? Epic fail.

Yea and I would love to re-iterate what hax0r said. ATI might make a nice card and everything but their software (as far as I know in linux) is a joke.

Sure Nvidia might have issues with Kde4, but using an ATI card has always made linux a lot more complicated then it needs to be.

ATI has always thrown more curve-balls at me when I try to play games through wine. Look at any of the top ranking games in the wine appdb theres usually an ATI specific bug listed somewhere. Or someone commenting is having trouble playing the game and in their specs theres an ATI card.

ATI has its long standing problems also, they still can't get video playback to work with composite effects enabled. Not to mention the fact that everyone secretly hates the ccc..

What broke the camels back for me is the fact that you can run the windows version of folding at home (for nvidia cards) through wine. The idea has been mentioned for ATI but hasn't exactly seen the same response..

Don't get me wrong I don't hate ATI, I'm actually an AMD fanboy. I just see more pros to owning an Nvidia card when it comes to running linux.

I just bought an Nvidia GeForce 9800 Gt and can't wait till it gets here. (Although I do agree; Nvidia names are confusing as hell)

Probably won't look back at this post when I hit the "Submit Reply" button because it'll most likely burn in the fires of an angry ATI fanboy..

[psycho_driver]

This thread is full of win. A lot of valid points are being brought to light.

A) Why hasn't phoronix included nvidia scores when benchmarking ati cards lately?
B) For every 1 semi-major bug in the nvidia blobs, there are EASILY 10+ in catalyst releases.

I just feel bad for people who decide to buy ati/amd gpus due to biased reviews that don't necessarily reflect the real world status of amd's linux hardware support. nvidia has always been the better option for the linux desktop and will be for at least some time to come.

This is coming from someone who consistantly owned mid to high end products from both companies until the past year or so where I couldn't be bothered to buy another ATi card that I knew wouldn't ever work quite right in linux.

[RealNC]

ATI plays the opensource game (partially at least) releasing docs to make Free drivers and their binary driver runs KDE 4 perfectly.

Ah, ah, ah, ah, ah....

[MaestroMaus]

Can someone wake me up when this (http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=123912) bug is finally squashed? I haven't been able to use Linux normally since march 2008 and I need my gfx card for my work, so I can't just uninstall the drivers.

I'll be using the damned XP partition until then...

[Kano]

If you use Debian or Ubuntu use my script (you get a backup of your xorg.conf as xorg.conf.1st you could use to overwrite the new one if you tweaked it).

http://kanotix.com/files/install-nvidia-debian.sh

My script allows the use of -v option to select any driver. So you can switch back and forth thru all driver versions. There are some shortcuts like -v1 for 71.xx, -v2 for 96.xx, -v3 for 173.xx too.

[MaestroMaus]

If you use Debian or Ubuntu use my script (you get a backup of your xorg.conf as xorg.conf.1st you could use to overwrite the new one if you tweaked it).

http://kanotix.com/files/install-nvidia-debian.sh

My script allows the use of -v option to select any driver. So you can switch back and forth thru all driver versions. There are some shortcuts like -v1 for 71.xx, -v2 for 96.xx, -v3 for 173.xx too.

Hey,

Thanks a lot! I will look into it once I find some spare time.

Cheers!

[BlackStar]

Yea and I would love to re-iterate what hax0r said. ATI might make a nice card and everything but their software (as far as I know in linux) is a joke.

Sure Nvidia might have issues with Kde4, but using an ATI card has always made linux a lot more complicated then it needs to be.

Not really. Catalyst is ok-ish nowadays. It lags behind in general desktop (esp. with compiz) and some hardware configurations suffer from annoying bugs (mainly affecting chips with AGP bridges, IGPs and very old / very new GPUs), but 3D support is on par with Windows. In my experience, if an OpenGL program runs on Ati/Windows, it will run on Ati/Linux without issues (this was not the case a year or two ago).

However, the place where Ati *really* shines is open-source support. The open drivers are easily better than Nvidia's (and even Intel's) for general desktop usage. I have a 9600, a X800, a X1950 and a 4850. The three first cards work out of the box with excellent performance, 2D / video support and features (KMS anyone?) 3D support is currently lacking (no GLSL or FBOs), but this is going to change with the new Gallium3D implementation.

Intel, in comparison, completely sucks performance-wise: anything older than the 4500 IGP is unbearable in Firefox especially with image-heavy pages (hopefully this will get better once UXA becomes stable). Nvidia's open drivers are not ready for the general public.

Granted, Nvidia's binary blobs are better than Ati's. However, they are far from bug-free: compiz window decorations become corrupt after some time (this bug first appeared around drivers ver. 100 and was still present at 177, last time I checked). General slowness with G80+ (my "Quadro NVS 135M" equipped laptop is nigh unusable with Gnome and completely unusable with KDE).

Things are not as one-sided as you claim.

[Kano]

Are you really sure you installed the drivers correctly? In case of problems you can disable Composite extension (-c option to my script in case you could use it). I have got 3 pcs running with NV 8800 GTS 512, NV 8600 GT and NV 6800 GS and see no problems. Also you are not forced to use the 180.xx series - you can use the 173.xx series too (-v3 for the script).

[BlackStar]

The corruption issue appears when using compiz on a 6800M or a 7600GS. I've tested all three drivers that come with Ubuntu 8.10 (177, 173 and 130-something) and it is there. The bug appears to be harmless (the titlebar gets slightly messed up whenever a window loses focus, only to fix itself when it gains focus), but it's a little awkward as the PCs belong to my father and brother, respectively.

The slowness issue with the 135M (8400-derived) is more serious - I've had to go back to Vista on this laptop. The 135M is a slow chip, even on Vista, but at least it works as long as you turn off the compositor. On Linux, it's simply unbearable.

I've tried several drivers (173, 177 and several betas up to 180.22) and I've played with the "glyph cache" and "initial pixmap placement" options (which did help a little). The drivers seem to be installed correctly (direct rendering, GL2.1) and Gnome is usable without compositing, but the experience is far from good (drag a large window and it lags behind the mouse pointer!) Attach a second monitor and it gets downright painful.

In any case, I've given up. My Ati desktop is the main development machine, now, and the laptop is there to ensure the application runs on Nvidia (things flow better this way too, as Ati's GLSL compiler is way pickier). My only regret is that the laptop has a better monitor (1680x1050, matte, PVA panel), otherwise this setup works perfectly.

[Kano]

I would not say that using those Ubuntu release drivers is a good choice - the driver were old from the beginning. Use the new ones, my script should work fine with Ubuntu. Newer 180.xx drivers should not need nvidia-settings hacks. But for KDE4 the U 8.10 Xserver is a really bad choice, in that case jump to 9.04.

[BlackStar]

I would not say that using those Ubuntu release drivers is a good choice - the driver were old from the beginning. Use the new ones, my script should work fine with Ubuntu. Newer 180.xx drivers should not need nvidia-settings hacks. But for KDE4 the U 8.10 Xserver is a really bad choice, in that case jump to 9.04.

Thanks for the advice. The machines with the 6800 and 7600 use stock Ubuntu 8.10 to avoid issues with dist-upgrade (in fact, the 7600 system has been upgraded from 7.10->8.04->8.10 without problems). They are not mine, so I won't be touching these, but the problem is not serious (just annoying).

The laptop with the 135M runs (ran) archlinux and my tests were around the October / November timeframe, which translates to Xserver 1.5.0 / 1.5.1. Now that you mention it, weren't there some performance fixes in a recent Xserver relesae? If so, I may have another go at it (just got me a shiny new 8GB usb stick that is begging for an OS :D).

[apaige]

NVIDIA fixes issues with their drivers one by one. The latest release (180.29) fixes 2D performance issues some people had with the GeForce 8200/8300 IGPs, and most notably it fixes fullscreen Flash playback. I'm surprised no-one mentionned that.

[Kano]

If you use an unpatched Xserver then it does not matter, but U patched the Xserver to speed up GNOME - a very bad choice - and that introduced visable delays till you get an updated image with KDE4. When you see artefacts before drawing the correct image then it is definitely a fault by U 8.10. This is not the case with 9.04 anymore. dist-upgrades can hurt nvidia drivers when xorg core/mesa packages are updated, thats correct. In that case you need to reinstall nvidia drivers. My script already activates dkms, so kernel updates are not problematic anymore.

[BlackStar]

When you see artefacts before drawing the correct image then it is definitely a fault by U 8.10.
Thanks, I was wondering about that. In that case, archlinux uses an unpatched Xserver, which explains why archlinux+gnome+compiz+fglrx is slower than ubuntu+gnome+compiz+fglrx.

Fixed 8200/8300 and fullscreen flash performance? Sounds good, time for another try.