Nouveau For Open-Source NVIDIA In Mesa 8.0 Is Mixed

Within the Linux 3.3 kernel there are some GeForce 400/500 "Fermi" DRM driver improvements, such as for re-clocking. Originally, an early snapshot of the Linux 3.3 kernel was going to be used since Fermi should be faster there, but that DRM happens to be busted... There was a continual flow of PMFB1_SUBP0 and PMFB1_SUBP1 messages to the dmesg log while delivering very choppy OpenGL performance.

The hardware that I ended up using for this Nouveau Mesa 8.0 testing where the open-source support was the least broken was the GeForce GTX 460, GeForce 9800GT, GeForce 9500GT, and GeForce 8600GTS graphics cards. The same lightning fast Intel Core i7 3960X Sandy Bridge Extreme Edition system was used as in the Radeon testing and many other recent articles. Ubuntu 11.10 x86_64 was in use with the mainline Linux 3.2 kernel, Unity desktop, and the varying driver configurations.