New official Nvidia drivers

[deanjo]

New official drivers out again:

Notice this: Beginning with driver version 180.35, VDPAU now supports VC-1/WMV acceleration on all GPUs that VDPAU supports.

Release Highlights:

• Added support for the following GPUs:
  • GeForce GT 120
  • GeForce G100
  • Quadro FX 3700M
  
  
• Fixed a bug that caused Maya to freeze when overlays are enabled.
• Fixed an interaction problem with some applications that use memory tracking libraries.
• Added support for RG renderbuffers in OpenGL 3.0.
• Added support for OpenGL 3.0 floating-point depth buffers.
• Fixed a problem that caused Valgrind to crash when tracing a program that uses OpenGL.
• VDPAU updates:
  • VDPAU now supports VC-1/WMV acceleration on all GPUs supported by VDPAU; see the README for details.
  • Expand the documentation of VDPAU's VdpVideoMixer, in particular regarding how to use the deinterlacing algorithms. Explicitly document "half rate" deinterlacing, which should allow the advanced algorithms to run on more low-end systems. See vdpau.h.
  • Implement a "skip chroma deinterlace" option in VDPAU, which should allow the advanced deinterlacing algorithms to run on more low-end systems. See vdpau.h.
  • Enhance VDPAU to correctly handle some forms of corrupt/invalid MPEG streams on some GPUs.
  • Fix VDPAU to prevent some cases of "display preemption" in the face of missing H.264 reference frames on some GPUs.
  • Fix VDPAU to correctly handle VC-1 skipped pictures with missing start codes on some GPUs.
  • Fix VDPAU to correctly handle WMV "range reduction" on some GPUs. A minor backwards-compatible API change was made for this; see vdpau.h's documentation for structure field VdpPictureInfoVC1.rangered.
  • Fix VDPAU wrapper library to print dlerror() messages when problems occur, which will simplify debugging of driver loading issues.
  
  

The 180.35 NVIDIA Accelerated Linux Graphics Driver Set for Linux/x86 is available for download via FTP.
The 180.35 NVIDIA Accelerated Linux Graphics Driver Set for Linux/x86-64 is available for download via FTP.

Please see the README (x86, x86-64) for more information about this release.

Please note: This NVIDIA Linux graphics driver release supports GeForce 6xxx and newer NVIDIA GPUs, GeForce4 and older GPUs are supported through the 96.43.xx and 71.86.xx NVIDIA legacy graphics drivers. GeForce FX GPUs are supported through the 173.14.xx NVIDIA legacy graphics drivers.

Please also note: If you encounter any problems with the 180.35 NVIDIA Linux graphics driver release, please start a new thread and include a detailed description of the problem, reproduction steps and generate/attach an nvidia-bug-report.log file (please see http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=46678 for details).

[deanjo]

vdpinfo output now with the new drivers on a 8800GT

dean@nemicron:~/vdpinfo> ./vdpinfo
display: (null)   screen: 0
API version: 0
Information string: Unknown

Video surface:

name   width height types
-------------------------------------------
420     4096  4096  NV12 YV12
422     4096  4096  UYVY YUYV

Decoder capabilities:

name          level ref width height
------------------------------------
MPEG1             0 8192  2048  2048
MPEG2_SIMPLE      3 8192  2048  2048
MPEG2_MAIN        3 8192  2048  2048
H264_MAIN        41 8192  2048  2048
H264_HIGH        41 8192  2048  2048
[B]VC1_SIMPLE        1 8190  2048  2048
VC1_MAIN          2 8190  2048  2048
VC1_ADVANCED      4 8190  2048  2048[/B]

Output surface:

name              width height nat types
----------------------------------------------------
B8G8R8A8          8192  8192    y  Y8U8V8A8 V8U8Y8A8
R10G10B10A2       8192  8192    y  Y8U8V8A8 V8U8Y8A8

Bitmap surface:

name              width height
-------------------------------------------
B8G8R8A8          8192  8192
R8G8B8A8          8192  8192
R10G10B10A2       8192  8192
B10G10R10A2       8192  8192
A8                8192  8192

Video mixer:

feature name                    sup
------------------------------------
DEINTERLACE_TEMPORAL             y
DEINTERLACE_TEMPORAL_SPATIAL     y
INVERSE_TELECINE                 y
NOISE_REDUCTION                  y
SHARPNESS                        y
LUMA_KEY                         y

parameter name                  sup      min      max
-----------------------------------------------------
VIDEO_SURFACE_WIDTH              y         1     4096
VIDEO_SURFACE_HEIGHT             y         1     4096
CHROMA_TYPE                      y
LAYERS                           y         0        4

attribute name                  sup      min      max
-----------------------------------------------------
BACKGROUND_COLOR                 y
CSC_MATRIX                       y
NOISE_REDUCTION_LEVEL            y      0.00     1.00
SHARPNESS_LEVEL                  y     -1.00     1.00
LUMA_KEY_MIN_LUMA                y
LUMA_KEY_MAX_LUMA                y

[The_Rebel]

Why are there so many packages? which one do i want?

[deanjo]

Why are there so many packages? which one do i want?

All depends on your card. This post will tell you what driver you should use with what card.

http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=122606

[The_Rebel]

All depends on your card. This post will tell you what driver you should use with what card.

http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=122606

That's not what i meant -_-

See how the 180.35 driver has three .pkgx files? what's that about?

[The_Rebel]

All depends on your card. This post will tell you what driver you should use with what card.

http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=122606

That's not what i mean.

See how the 180.35 driver has 3 .pkg's files? whats that about?

[LydianKnight]

That's not what i mean.

See how the 180.35 driver has 3 .pkg's files? whats that about?

extracted from ftp://download.nvidia.com/XFree86/Li...DME/README.txt

The package suffix ('-pkg#') is used to distinguish between packages
containing the same driver, but with different precompiled kernel interfaces.
The file with the highest package number is suitable for most installations.

maybe it means like when compiling glibc against a certain kernel version? that's like the higher the kernel version the less code workarounds needed to include in the libc codebase (or something like that, but maybe I'm terribly wrong) :P

Julio

[Nexus7]

That's not what i meant -_-

See how the 180.35 driver has three .pkgx files? what's that about?

Per the FAQ on the nvidia site,
"The pkg# suffix is used to distinguish between .run files containing the same driver, but different sets of precompiled kernel interfaces. If a distribution releases a new kernel after an NVIDIA driver is released, the current NVIDIA driver can be repackaged to include a precompiled kernel interface for that newer kernel (in addition to all the precompiled kernel interfaces that were included in the previous package of the driver)."

In other words, get the highest number (because higher is always better, right)?

[The_Rebel]

sorry for the double post, i forgot these forums were moderated.

[hdas]

For 64-bit, it is best to use pkg2, since it has the 32-bit compat libs (and also precompiled modules for several kernels).

For 32-bit, I guess pkg0 suffices if you compile modules for your kernel (which is always true if you are using a custom kernel, and in general a good idea). rest should have a lot of precompiled junk for the (un)lucky and lazy .