Nouveau Graphics On Linux 3.15

Following this week's Radeon DRM benchmarks on Linux 3.15, here are benchmarks of the Nouveau open-source NVIDIA Linux graphics driver when using the 3.15 Git kernel compared to stable Linux 3.14.

The Linux 3.15 kernel with the Nouveau DRM kernel driver update brings initial NVIDIA Maxwell GPU support but it's still an early work-in-progress and the Nouveau Gallium3D support for Maxwell is still in early stages.

Other Nouveau changes in Linux 3.15 include GPU fault recovery improvements and numerous other fixes throughout this reverse-engineered, open-source NVIDIA graphics driver. Unfortunately, the big feature most Nouveau users are waiting on is still MIA: suitable re-clocking / dynamic power management support.

To see if the Nouveau performance changes with Linux 3.15 for OpenGL performance, I used a GeForce GT 520 and GTX 760 to benchmark Linux 3.15 Git from yesterday against the Linux 3.14 stable kernel. Benchmarking happened on a Core i7 4770K Haswell system running Ubuntu 14.04 LTS with Mesa 10.1. All benchmarking was handled via the Phoronix Test Suite software.