NVIDIA 256 Beta Linux Driver Released

[phoronix]

Phoronix: NVIDIA 256 Beta Linux Driver Released

NVIDIA has rolled out its first beta in the expected 256.xx driver series for Linux, Windows, and other supported platforms. Last month we asked what you wanted from the NVIDIA 256.xx driver and while many of the respondents didn't get their greatest wishes answered, the 256.25 beta driver does offer quite a bit of changes over the previous-generation proprietary NVIDIA driver...

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=ODI3Mw

[Tsiolkovsky]

Still no word about support for XRandR 1.2+

[aaaantoine]

At first I thought this was a FOSS driver for the "GeForce 256".

Boy that brought back memories.

[Pahanilmanlintu]

I wonder if the nvidia blob will ever support kernel mode setting. As i understand, distros are starting to push x.org out of kernel space, so am i forced to choose between improved security and performance that's adequate for games? With Ubuntu 10.04 it was already a bit annoying to lose the pretty startup and the warm fuzzy feeling of using a free driver to get compiz up.

[patstew]

I wonder if the nvidia blob will ever support kernel mode setting. As i understand, distros are starting to push x.org out of kernel space, so am i forced to choose between improved security and performance that's adequate for games? With Ubuntu 10.04 it was already a bit annoying to lose the pretty startup and the warm fuzzy feeling of using a free driver to get compiz up.

As I understand it, the nvidia driver does kernel mode setting, and has done for some time. The nvidia driver also shouldn't need the X server to be run as root so long as the user is in the video group, ie can write to /dev/nvidia.
What the nvidia driver doesn't have is a decent framebuffer driver (which is probably what you mean by kms).
See this thread, post 5 is by an nvidia driver dev http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/show...&highlight=kms

[Ulukai]

Performance

Can anyone who tested this driver drop some performance results here of opengl games? Better than previous versions? I'm specially interested how the GTX 470 / 480 cards behave with this driver to get an idea whether they're still pughing the cards further with new releases...

[McDuck]

Can anyone who tested this driver drop some performance results here of opengl games? Better than previous versions? I'm specially interested how the GTX 470 / 480 cards behave with this driver to get an idea whether they're still pughing the cards further with new releases...

I did some tests with a 250 GTS card.

http://global.phoronix-test-suite.com/?k=profile&u=mcduck-9870-6614-27626

[Dragoran]

Can anyone who tested this driver drop some performance results here of opengl games? Better than previous versions? I'm specially interested how the GTX 470 / 480 cards behave with this driver to get an idea whether they're still pughing the cards further with new releases...

http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=2256110&postcount=24

Not a GTX 470 / 480 but it shows a rather nice boost.

[Ulukai]

http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/show...0&postcount=24

Not a GTX 470 / 480 but it shows a rather nice boost.

Thanks for the reply Of course it's only one case and another person told the opposite I guess I'll wait till the final release and then see for myself.

[Ulukai]

http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/show...0&postcount=24

Not a GTX 470 / 480 but it shows a rather nice boost.

Thanks for the reply Of course that's only one case and another person said the opposite I guess I'll wait for the final release and then see for myself.