What Do You Want From NVIDIA's Next Driver?

[Prescience500]

I want to see performance improvements for improve 3d gaming so when Steam comes to Linux, Linux versions of the games can give the Windows versions a run for their money.

[klikklak]

3D vision! I really really want this as I've already bought the kit and the screen. But unfortunately it looks like I'll have to buy a gaming pc with windows to use it (had dual boot, but I never boot in to it).

[Rush314]

Source and HW specs.

Source and HW specs.

SCNR.

here here!

[parityboy]

Not too fussed about the 3D stuff but the Surround stuff looks very interesting, So yeah, get that Surround stuff in there.

[kazetsukai]

Next driver:

Open:
Release documentation for some of the bare minimum 2D and 3D functionality on all modern GPUs (8800-Fermi GPUs) and get the Open Driver (Nouveau) running basic spec on all cards.

Closed:
Better tessellation performance, an (updated) OpenCL SDK, GPU profiling capability... perhaps a little more modernized control panel area would be nice.

Most of the problems I have are multimonitor related and they would have to make some huge commits to Xorg to fix that stuff (get Composite working with Multiple X Screens and Xinerama, which all users could really benefit from).

A little unrelated:
It would be neat if NVIDIA did some Linux-exclusive stuff as well, such as an OpenGL tech demo, some screensavers, or Compiz effects. It would be a nice way to tell your users you appreciate them, regardless of what OS they run.

[V!NCENT]

A minimal amount of documentation that is not full of IP that could at least allow for some mediocre performance in 2D, 3D and generic computing.

[mugginz]

3D vision! I really really want this as I've already bought the kit and the screen. But unfortunately it looks like I'll have to buy a gaming pc with windows to use it (had dual boot, but I never boot in to it).

Here, here!

If not the full 3D vision, at least the component in their Windows driver that makes their triple head stuff across two cards work well.

At this stage they're leaving the three or more screen market for Linux to AMD. Three screen setups aren't exactly rare these days.

[kazetsukai]

If not the full 3D vision, at least the component in their Windows driver that makes their triple head stuff across two cards work well.

Hah. These aren't problems in the NVIDIA driver, they're problems in Xorg. The Xorg composite extension does not work with Xinerama.

There are a few solutions to this:
-Get Composite working within Xinerama setups by contributing to Xorg
-Sell a card with more RAMDACs and outputs (up to the hardware vendor really, not NVIDIA)
-Enable SLI Mosaic mode on consumer cards without SLI motherboard hardware to share the framebuffer between GPUs

I think contributing to Xorg would be the best solution, as currently everyone is SOL on compositing in Xinerama without a deprecated solution like Xgl.

[pingufunkybeat]

No.

This is a problem in the Nvidia driver, as it uses Xinerama (which is deprecated) instead of the solution which replaced it, namely RandR.

ATi doesn't have this problem, as it supports RandR. As do the open drivers for all cards.

The correct solution is to provide support for the existing X technology instead of using a deprecated on which will never be fixed.

[mugginz]

ATI obviates the need for Xinerama by having a single card that does three screens.

I believe nVidia on Windows does some funky stuff so that when running two cards it presents a unified frame store to games.

Xorg itself isn't going to be able do a unified desktop on multi card without Xinerama in a hurry so nVidia's only hope is to present two cards as one virtual card to Xorg but still publish the relevant per monitor stuff like Twinview does.