NVIDIA 256.53 Stable Linux Driver Release

[phoronix]

Phoronix: NVIDIA 256.53 Stable Linux Driver Release

Over the weekend there was a new Linux binary driver release from NVIDIA that was the 256.52 driver in a pre-release state. It didn't deliver on OpenCL 1.1, Fermi Linux overclocking support, or any other radical features, but it did bring a handful of bug-fixes. Today this driver has been released as stable after being branded the NVIDIA 256.53 driver...

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=ODU1Ng

[Shining Arcanine]

Why did the version change if there is no real difference?

[jmcharron]

Just got my twin Palit GTX465 up and running. I've been testing Linux SLI performance with the lastest 256.53 drivers. Soo far I've found that SFR works the best but it bearly performs better then a single card...

Rig-
AMD Phenom x4 955
4gigs Ram
GTX465 1024mb x2


----------Sanctuary 1280x1024----------
Shaders: High
Textures: High
Filters: Trilinear
Anisotropy: x16
Parallax: Enabled
Reflections: Enabled
DOF: On
HDR: On

SLImode - AFR - OFF - SFR
AverageFPS - 47.5 - 67.1 - 67.9
MinFPS - 35.9 - 46.8 - 47.5
HighFPS - 55.1 - 79.8 - 82.2
Score - 2012 - 2844 - 2881


----------Heaven 1280x1024----------
Shaders: High
Textures: High
Filter: Trilinear
Anisotropy: 16x
Occlusion: enabled
Refraction: enabled
Volumetric: enabled
Replication: disabled
Tessellation: extreme

SLImode - AFR - OFF - SFR
AverageFPS - 22 - 31.1 - 34
MinFPS - 6.8 - 17.1 - 17.7
MaxFPS - 97.4 - 81.3 - 95.4
Score - 558 - 784 - 855


On a side note... Sanctuary had some weird green discoloration issues when the demo was started with PTS. When I start up the demo by itself I don't see this problem.

[Kano]

Could you compare that with Win + OpenGL 4 / DX11?

[jmcharron]

Yes, I can get on that

[jmcharron]

-----------Win7 Heaven-----------
Shaders: High
Textures: High
Filter: Trilinear
Anisotropy: 16x
Occlusion: enabled
Refraction: enabled
Volumetric: enabled
Replication: disabled
Tessellation: extreme

-OpenGL-
SLImode - Auto - OFF
AverageFPS - 49 - 57.1
MinFPS - 26.5 - 37.3
HighFPS - 154.6 - 94.3
Score - 1235 - 1439

-DX11-
SLImode - Auto - OFF
AverageFPS - 30.3 - 60
MinFPS - 11.9 - 36.5
HighFPS - 102.2 - 105.6
Score - 764 - 1512

Oh Noes!!!!

[Kano]

There must be something wrong with your Linux install. The single gpu values are too different. Maybe use kernel 2.6.35 - that would be needed for X6, no idea what is slowing down your system... Maybe SLI works better with high performance Intel CPUs on X58. AMD CPU on NV chipset does not seem to work well - at least not with your system...

[jmcharron]

I'm already running 2.6.35-18-desktop kernel from the opensuse build service. I'm running a quad core not a x6 anyways.

I'm pretty sure you ment windows anyways...

Also i fudged up those #. on the Windows dx11/OpenGL sides(long night) i typed down the tess-off results instead of tess-extreme...

-Win7 OpenGl-
SLImode - Auto - OFF
AverageFPS - 49 - 31.1
MinFPS - 26.5 - 17
HighFPS - 154.6 - 81.1
Score - 1235 - 787

-Win7 DX11-
SLImode - Auto - OFF
AverageFPS - 30.3 - 32.1
MinFPS - 11.9 - 16.1
HighFPS - 102.2 - 89.3
Score - 764 - 808

[Kano]

The opengl auto score is still wrong or? Maybe upload all hmtl files onto your homepage. The results can not be correct that you posted here.

[jmcharron]

Yea looks like I posted tess normal results for Win7 OpenGL. Seems like I can't get anything right this week and now I'm just looking like a damn fool... I'm just going to rebenchmark and save the results which I only wrote down on a piece of paper last time. Sorry for my incompetence