GeForce 9600GT Gets Open "nv" Support

Posted by Michael Larabel on March 07, 2008

Late last month NVIDIA had unveiled the GeForce 9600GT graphics card as direct competition to the AMD Radeon HD 3850 / 3870. This new PCI Express graphics card still isn't supported by the latest official driver (169.12), but it's been reported to work (at least partially) when using the Tesla 171.05 driver. There is now, however, limited open-source support for this card.

NVIDIA's Aaron Plattner has pushed out an update to the xf86-video-nv driver that fixes connector mapping and TMDS initialization on certain GPUs, new chip names for existing GeForce 8 products, and adds support for the GeForce 9600GT. While this is good news, don't forget that the xf86-video-nv driver is basic, limited to 2D support, and its code is rather obfuscated. This new version of xf86-video-nv is 2.1.8. The release announcement and source download links are available off the X.Org mailing list.

On another note, it's the one-week anniversary of OpenTheBlob.com, which is an open letter to NVIDIA Corporation. This letter is requesting better open-source involvement by NVIDIA. There were 5,000 signatures on the fifth day, and now on the seventh day there are over 7,100 signatures (and plenty of embedded comments).

Discuss this article in our forums, IRC channel, or email the author. You can also follow our content via RSS and on social networks like Facebook, Identi.ca, and Twitter (@Phoronix and @MichaelLarabel). Subscribe to Phoronix Premium to view our content without advertisements, view entire articles on a single page, and experience other benefits.
Latest Hardware Reviews
  1. Sumo Lounge Emperor
  2. Gallium3D Continues Improving OpenGL For Older Radeon GPUs
  3. 15-Way Open vs. Closed Source NVIDIA/AMD Linux GPU Comparison
  4. Nouveau vs. NVIDIA Linux Comparison Shows Shortcomings
Latest Software Articles
  1. Intel Linux OpenGL Driver Leading Over Apple OS X
  2. The Cost Of Ubuntu Disk Encryption
  3. Btrfs vs. EXT4 vs. XFS vs. F2FS On Linux 3.10
  4. AMD Radeon R600 GPU LLVM 3.3 Back-End Testing
Latest Linux News
  1. Debian GNU/Hurd 2013 Release Brings New Packages
  2. Intel Ultrabook Performance Is Faster With Mesa 9.2
  3. Hot Relocation HDD To SSD Support For Btrfs
  4. Phoronix Test Suite 4.6.0 "Utsira" Released
  5. New Intel X.Org Driver Supports All Of Haswell
  6. SQLite Now Faster With Memory Mapped I/O
  7. Microsoft Releases Skype For Linux 4.2, Has Bug-Fixes
  8. Qt For Tizen Launches, Based On Qt 5.1
  9. KTAP Released For Linux Kernel Dynamic Tracing
  10. Linux 3.10-rc2 Kernel Takes In A Few Extra Pulls
  11. QEMU 1.5 Supports VGA Passthrough, Better USB 3.0
Latest Forum Talk
  1. FreeBSD Still Working On Next-Gen Package Manager
  2. What is the best nvidia gpu for gaming?
  3. Debian GNU/Hurd 2013 Release Brings New Packages
  4. Kubuntu, KDE Has Little Hope For Ubuntu's Mir
  5. Intel Linux OpenGL Driver Leading Over Apple OS X
  6. Freedreno Gallium3D Now Banging The Adreno A3XX
  1. Computers
  2. Display Drivers
  3. Graphics Cards
  4. Motherboards
  5. Peripherals
  6. Processors
  7. Software
  8. Operating Systems
  9. All Articles
  1. Linux Benchmarking
  2. OpenBenchmarking.org
  3. Phoronix Test Suite