Open-Source NVIDIA Driver Approaches Stable State

Besides thrashing the Nouveau stack with OpenGL workloads, a few 2D-focused tests were run, in particular with the Cairo demos that have real world relevance. There is not much change in Cairo performance between the different graphics cards, but overall the Nouveau driver was running about 80% the speed of the NVIDIA binary driver with the first "Charts" demo.

When running the more demanding Cairo Gears workload there is at least some performance improvements on the newer GeForce hardware with the NVIDIA binary driver, but meanwhile the Nouveau driver performance is relatively flat across the ten graphics cards that were tested.

With the Cairo Fish test, again stressing 2D code paths, the Nouveau driver is closer to the NVIDIA binary driver.