9/18/2007
new NVIDIA drivers
NVIDIA has released a new set of drivers in the latest series for Linux x86, Linux amd64, and Solaris. Curiously missing from this release is FreeBSD. The version is dubbed 100.14.19 and you can read the shortlog of it here. The biggest thing to note is that X.org 7.3 is supported. The drivers are already committed to the tree and Donnie has already removed the nvidia-drivers blocker in the xorg-server 1.4 ebuild, so everyone should be set. If you’re stuck on the 96xx series or the 71xx series, you’re out of luck for official X.org 7.3 support as NVIDIA has not updated those drivers for the new ABI. However, official word by NVIDIA employees is that if you disable the Composite extension and pass -ignoreABI to the X server, you should be fine.
Basically the new driver adds support for a few new Quadros and improves support for the GeForce 8 GPUs. But the item everyone might notice is actually buried deep in Appendix B on the README. It’s OnDemandVBlankInterrupts, you put that in your driver section and set it to true and you should see some power savings from your laptops. On my machine with sys-power/powertop, it showed an immediate reduction of 60 interrupts per second.
Overall OpenGL seems to be a bit smoother with compiz and such and general graphics performance seems to be improved, however it must be noted that I am a GeForce 8600 user so people with other cards may not have the same experience I’ve had.
Filed under: 3 Responses to “new NVIDIA drivers”
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September 20th, 2007 at 1:09 pm
still no xvmc support for GeForce 8 GPUs
September 21st, 2007 at 11:14 am
yeah that’s true. Which does suck since I’m a fellow GeForce 8 series owner. I have a feeling they won’t implement XvMC due to it’s limitations. They might be considering the new vaapi that’s being worked out by the X.org guys and Intel. It basically allows a graphics card to export several codecs it can natively handle. Rather then XvMC supporting specific portions of MPEG2. I plan on doing a write up about vaapi some point soon.
November 11th, 2007 at 6:27 pm
I’ve just tested the latest version of nvidia’s secret drivers on Gentoo.
They’re totally crap. The kernel module regularily totally locks up my machine after a few mins (even if no xserver running).
Last time I tried nvidia’s secret code, several years ago, was for tnt and first geforce boards. It already had been unstable crap. Obviously they didn’t learn anything.
Why can’t they just release their source under an appropriate open license ?!
Again, I’ve learned one thing: never ever by that crap again.