NVIDIA 180.16 Beta Linux Driver

[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.

[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. 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. 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.