NVIDIA's 256.25 Beta Linux Driver Slows Things Down?

[phoronix]

Phoronix: NVIDIA's 256.25 Beta Linux Driver Slows Things Down?

Last week NVIDIA released their first 256.xx proprietary beta Linux display driver that brought many VDPAU improvements, installer improvements, support for new GLX extensions, various bug-fixes, and other enhancements. However, some user reports have shown the 256.xx driver is actually slower than NVIDIA's current pre-200.xx series drivers and so we have carried out a set of tests to see what things are looking like from within our labs. Our preliminary tests do indeed illustrate a drop in performance when upgrading to this new driver.

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=14966

[Veerappan]

Yikes! That's a really big difference. I had been contemplating upgrading to the new beta driver, but I think I'll hold off for now.

As you said, hopefully the next beta will smooth away some of those rough edges.

[blackshard]

At least they don't fry your video card...

[Lukian]

*chuckle* I'm not sure about that. My 8600GT card/fan makes an interesting noise with the new driver.

How's the GT240 fare? Has it's performance issue under Linux been resolved with either the 195 or the 256 series?

[Apopas]

I suppose they saw the gaming results between Ubuntu and windows and decided to "fix" the things a bit...

[Licaon]

Maybe those are some sort of PowerMizer issues on the laptop?

Operating system: Debian Sid / KDE 4.4.3 / 64bit
Kernel: Linux 2.6.34-0.slh.4-sidux-amd64 x86_64
CPU model: AMD Athlon(tm) 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 5200+
CPU flags: 3000MHz MMX+ 3DNow!+ SSE SSE2 SSE3 HTT
GPU model: GeForce GTS 250 PCI Express 1024Mb

Unigine Heaven 2.1

Render: opengl
Mode: 1680x1050 4xAA fullscreen
Shaders: high
Textures: high
Filter: trilinear
Anisotropy: 16x
Occlusion: enabled
Refraction: enabled
Volumetric: enabled
Replication: disabled
Tessellation: disabled

195.36.24/unredirect=false: 445 / 10.0 / 17.7 / 33.0
256.25/unredirect=false: 555 / 11.0 / 22.0 / 46.1

195.36.24/unredirect=true: 515 / 11.7 / 20.4 / 38.5
256.25/unredirect=true: 613 / 12.8 / 24.3 / 49.9

LightsMark 2008.1.9

./backend 1920x1200 stability=high penumbra8

195.36.24/unredirect=false: 227.47
256.25/unredirect=false: 231.74

195.36.24/unredirect=true: 350.51
256.25/unredirect=true: 351.43


195.35.15 and 195.36.24 are on par regarding performance IIRC.

[birdie]

A good strategy to promote/peddle new power hungry and hell hot GTX 4XX GPUs.

[deanjo]

Maybe those are some sort of PowerMizer issues on the laptop?

I suspect this is the case, benching the same tests last week a GTX 275 and 8800GT the new driver actually gave a bit of a boost in performance.

[b15hop]

I've not been too happy with nvidia drivers lately. The new control panel features are nice though. I'm just experiencing many bugs in Starcraft 2 and my mate who has ATi is not experiencing any of the bugs I'm getting. =S ~major sigh~