Nouveau Receives Greater Re-Clocking Support

The Linux 3.13 kernel has major power management and re-clocking changes -- including automatic fan management by default and initial support for Fermi/Kepler GPU core re-clocking -- and now separate from that work are some more re-clocking improvements. This time around the re-clocking work is for some older NVIDIA integrated/mobile graphics cores.

Roy Spliet has shared his initial implementation of NVAA/NVAC overclocking support, which is said to be substantially different from the rest of the NV50 graphics processors. The "NVAA" represents the GeForce 8100/8200/8300 mobile GPUs (MCP77/MCP78) and the nForce 700A series while the "NVAC" includes the GeForce 9300/9400 (MCP79/MCP79A), nForce 700i, 8200/9100/9400M, and the once-popular NVIDIA ION platform.

While these graphics cores are advertised in the GeForce 8 and 9 series, the re-clocking differences has yielded its own clock implementation for Nouveau. With these being mobile/integrated GPUs, there's only core re-clocking involved and no video memory re-clocking needed. Roy has had this NVAA/NVAC re-clocking code sitting around for a while and is now calling for more testing.

For those with these older NVIDIA chipsets wishing for re-clocking support can see this Nouveau mailing list post for more details on the patches. These Nouveau DRM patches are not queued up for Linux 3.13 with the rest of the PM/re-clocking changes.