Benchmarks Of The Latest Nouveau Gallium3D Driver

[darkbasic]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought Intel had good drivers and crappy graphics cards.

Since they switched to KMS you have both crappy drivers and crappy graphic cards.
And I'm not talking about 3d performances (which are half than on windows).
I'm simply too tired having tons of problems with a STABLE intel stack while I have NO problems at all with an UNSTABLE radeon stack.

[mugginz]

Not having to reinstall the nvidia driver after a kernel update is awesome. Back when I used an nvidia it always sucked to reboot into a new kernel and then remember that X won't work anymore.

Thankfully most people running a sane distro that provides packaged binary drivers will automagically get the new kernel module with the new kernel.

Then there's DKMS

Those running a more bespoke "config stuff by hand" distro probably wont be too troubled by running a sudo ./NVIDIA-Linux-x86-195.36.24-pkg1.run -K after the system boots which quickly builds just the kernel module.

[Prescience500]

I think the problems with drivers will only get better when Linux has more market share.

[droidhacker]

Thankfully most people running a sane distro that provides packaged binary drivers will automagically get the new kernel module with the new kernel.

How is it "sane" to provide 3rd party blobs that continually break things all over the map? And I mean to the point where they basically have to say "if you're running a blob driver, don't even bother reporting bugs -- we're not interested".

Then there's DKMS

Aside from the issue previously discussed, you also need to be LUCKY. Change of kernel tends to break the driver -- won't compile until the kmod source is fixed.

Those running a more bespoke "config stuff by hand" distro probably wont be too troubled by running a sudo ./NVIDIA-Linux-x86-195.36.24-pkg1.run -K after the system boots which quickly builds just the kernel module.

.... if they aren't too worried about the nvidia driver polluting their system with files that it will never properly uninstall...

[cl333r]

I wanna see a 2D benchmark since the other day the cairo benchmarks (which were mentioned/linked on Phoronix) said that Nouveau beats Nvidia.

[droidhacker]

LOL,
They will die as IGP on x86 platform ONLY.

Sure, we'll give it to you that they may still have half a "niche" with the add-on cards... which only appeal to a VERY small minority of users. The rest are happy with IGP level performance

AFAIK, NVIDIA is the only fully functional GPU for Linux with proprietary drivers.

You're forgetting about AMD. Last I checked, I actually quite preferred the AMD drivers over nvidia. nvidia drivers are just too broken for my taste.

I (and my guess many others) don't really care if it's open or proprietary. It does the job. Games, Video, other features.

Try to follow the logic:
If one doesn't care if it is open source or closed source, then the natural preference is for the one that "just works", right? And since the proprietary drivers won't be included in any SANE distros, the only one that CAN POSSIBLY "just work" will be the open source driver, right? What follows from that is that YOU and MANY OTHERS naturally must prefer an OPEN SOURCE driver, all else being equal. And so those who want it to "just work" prefer open source, and those who prefer open source as a PRINCIPLE will ALSO prefer open source, naturally EVERYONE prefers open source, all else being equal.

AMD is headed towards the state of "all else being equal". Nvidia is a LONG WAY off of that, and unless they change something drastically, will NEVER get there. And so they will NEVER "just work".

So you are left with PART of a niche market... the OTHER part will be fully owned by something that "just works" while your nvidia remains a struggle... hmm.. seems a no-brainer to me. Nvidia is going to fail, even when it comes to add-on cards.

What about mobile ?

What ABOUT mobile?
Qualcomm snapdragon chips contain a big chunk of AMD IP (the GPU and video decoder), and they're wiping the floor with nvidia in terms of market share.

Of course, if AMD knows what's best for them, they'll probably not want to completely drive nvidia into the ground.... a little bit of competitive innovation moves the world along, and there IS no competition for AMD besides Nvidia....

If i had to guess who gonna die first, it is probably AMD.

I doubt very much that you can substantiate that statement with anything that actually makes sense.

[mugginz]

How is it "sane" to provide 3rd party blobs that continually break things all over the map? And I mean to the point where they basically have to say "if you're running a blob driver, don't even bother reporting bugs -- we're not interested".

How is it sane for some of the posters that frequent these forums to continuously pre-judge people who need to use the blobs? Without even asking what uses people have for their own machines some insist that everyone should, regardless of actual requirements, remove the blasphemy that is the closed driver and be satisfied with and performance implications this has on their work flows.

Aside from the issue previously discussed, you also need to be LUCKY. Change of kernel tends to break the driver -- won't compile until the kmod source is fixed.

Well it works for me but I do understand that not everyone can say that. But again, if you need the blob, you need the blob. You can say all you like about free vs closed, but sometimes the open drivers from any of the various vendors can't cut it for some use cases.

.... if they aren't too worried about the nvidia driver polluting their system with files that it will never properly uninstall...

Remember, some people need the blobs. I understand that not everyone does, and for them the open drivers are options. Not everyone can get buy with the open drivers. Simple really.

[mugginz]

Try to follow the logic:
If one doesn't care if it is open source or closed source, then the natural preference is for the one that "just works", right? And since the proprietary drivers won't be included in any SANE distros, the only one that CAN POSSIBLY "just work" will be the open source driver, right? What follows from that is that YOU and MANY OTHERS naturally must prefer an OPEN SOURCE driver, all else being equal. And so those who want it to "just work" prefer open source, and those who prefer open source as a PRINCIPLE will ALSO prefer open source, naturally EVERYONE prefers open source, all else being equal.

If you believe any of that then I find that pretty funny.

[ChrisXY]

I pity YOU as the one not being able to render a damn game on Linux. Or maybe you are satisfied as the ~5FPS speed on a HD4870 running 10 year old game? That's even more pathetic

That's a strong statement that can be proven wrong by one example.
My example is Half Life 2 + Episode 1 + Episode 2 + Portal. I played all of them on highest settings with a HD 4650.
The Framerate was ok, game ran very fluent.
The only problem are some rendering glitches with the sky but when trying the open source driver I got exactly the same rendering glitches... Maybe it's wine?

[kazetsukai]

How is it "sane" to provide 3rd party blobs that continually break things all over the map?

It isn't that the driver is breaking- it compiles the driver kernel interface for the -specific version- of kernel.

And I mean to the point where they basically have to say "if you're running a blob driver, don't even bother reporting bugs -- we're not interested".

I've filed bugs with NVIDIA before, and they're very interested in hearing about them. There are NVIDIA support personnel on patrol in their forums for this purpose as well.

Aside from the issue previously discussed, you also need to be LUCKY. Change of kernel tends to break the driver -- won't compile until the kmod source is fixed.

No, you need to be running something other than Noobuntu (which in its latest versions break alot of automagick functionality). Any modern RPM distro supports DKMS, as does Gentoo / Debian, Slackware, Arch....

.... if they aren't too worried about the nvidia driver polluting their system with files that it will never properly uninstall...

What driver are you downloading? The Riva TNT2 driver? Are you stuck in the early 90's McFly? The (un)installer does a good job cleaning up after itself nowadays, and it certainly does a better job than the proprietary ATI one.

I'm tempted to believe this article was written in /response/ to the flaming going on in the forums now. If you want bleeding edge GPU features go with the NVIDIA blob, if you want openness stick with your radeonhd driver. The trolling is getting old.