NVIDIA 256.52 Linux Driver Brings Fixes

[phoronix]

Phoronix: NVIDIA 256.52 Linux Driver Brings Fixes

Just shy of a month ago was when NVIDIA last released a proprietary Linux driver, at which point they also released a second driver that was their OpenGL 4.1 preview driver. This Saturday though NVIDIA has provided a new driver release, which is tagged as the 256.52 pre-release. This new Linux driver release isn't overly exciting, but it does carry some prominent fixes that will please some NVIDIA customers...

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=ODU1Mg

[smitty3268]

HAHAHA, let's wait and see, this will be yet another time you ATI lovers are proven wrong.

Keep on flaming away, fanboy.

As for the details, call me making shit up all you want

Seriously, where are you getting your information from? Everything I've seen says that SI will be a minor update based off of Evergreen that will focus on making things more efficient. So when you come in here talking about how they're going to have to completely rewrite the driver from scratch I'm justifiably dubious.

To me, Evergreen is soon begin to phase out and yet there is still no OSS support, not even 2D accel. That is one EPIC FAIL for me.

I really doubt you own an Evergreen card, therefore your opinion really doesn't matter, does it?

Anyway, the OSS support is there if you're willing to compile it and work around the bugs.

More to the point, who would actually go out and buy an Evergreen card, and then a few months later throw it away for a brand new SI card? That makes no sense - you should care about Evergreen support for more than just the few months when they are brand new because they will continue to be in use for a long time.

I really don't know why i'm even bothering responding to such an obvious troll, i must be really bored tonight.

[FunkyRider]

Just a change from 5 to 4 VLIW instructions doesn't seem particularly hard to support.



They are apparently starting to work on drivers now, so an open driver could be available on launch.

You happened to know anything about low level shader compiler those drivers have to provide? S.I. is ALMOST another architecture. See, R500 is one architecture, R600/R700/even R800 is another architecture, and S.I. is a new, next gen architecture.

We still haven't got R700 sorted out quite well have we? So we are practically 2 generations behind already.

[FunkyRider]

HAHAHA, let's wait and see, this will be yet another time you ATI lovers are proven wrong.

As for the details, call me making shit up all you want, you are so used to live in your dreamed ATI fglrx works at all world so whatever.

To me, Evergreen is soon begin to phase out and yet there is still no OSS support, not even 2D accel. That is one EPIC FAIL for me.

[Agdr]

SI shader core is 4D VLIW, this changed everything from driver's perspective.

Just a change from 5 to 4 VLIW instructions doesn't seem particularly hard to support.

Buy ATI means you will never have on-time proper support. ever.

They are apparently starting to work on drivers now, so an open driver could be available on launch.

[smitty3268]

Do you know that SI cards have changed their tessellation, shader core designs?

SI shader core is 4D VLIW, this changed everything from driver's perspective. What does it mean? It means SI support will be another 3 years away.

Buy ATI means you will never have on-time proper support. ever.

Ah, so this isn't really about Evergreen at all, but rather a generic ATI sucks rant.

First, are you talking about the OSS drivers or fglrx? You seem to be merging the 2 together in your complaint.

fglrx will come with support at release, at the same time the windows drivers are released. just like evergreen did.

for the OSS drivers, they've actually started working on support now, rather than waiting until long after it's released, so i would expect support of some minimal level to come quicker, not slower. And changing tesselation design is the last thing that would affect the driver, since it's nowhere close to even supporting that feature yet. As far as the design completely changing how the driver works, where's your source? I doubt anyone outside of ATI really knows this for a fact, and think you're making shit up, but if you can provide a good source i'll believe you.

[FunkyRider]

Do you know that SI cards have changed their tessellation, shader core designs?

SI shader core is 4D VLIW, this changed everything from driver's perspective. What does it mean? It means SI support will be another 3 years away.

Buy ATI means you will never have on-time proper support. ever.

[smitty3268]

From what I've heard, Southern Islands will be a relatively minor update, so Evergreen cards should still be perfectly good.

[FunkyRider]

Evergreen is obsolete

Southern Islands will be out by next 2-3 months.

Evergreen support will be EOL even if no drivers even picked up support for them YET.

I pity all Evergreen users.

All your life spent on the card were miserable. Hope you do wiser choice next time.

[Panix]

At least, Nvidia has drivers released relatively quickly and they seem to follow up. On the NvNews website, it does look like there's issues with the drivers applicable to the Fermi cards and GTX 460 in particular, as it's the latest card to be released. But, it doesn't look nearly as bad as what is going on with Evergreen cards. The evidence can be read about here but also any place in which HD 5xxx cards and Linux is in the discussion.

From this blurb:

NVIDIA had same-day Linux support ready with their proprietary driver, launched CUDA 3.0 support at the same time as their Windows release, and they released their first OpenGL 4.0 Linux driver just days after releasing the first OGL4-capable hardware, which was the GeForce GTX 470/480. Since then, with the release of the OpenGL 4.1 specification from the Khronos Group they have provided an OpenGL 4.1 driver to Fermi Linux users.

The driver is released in a timely fashion so even if it's not perfect, there's something to try and one is not reading a zillion posts of issues.

The latest ones in the ATI section is shocking especially since the cards were released last Sept./Oct.? Pathetic...

I guess that shows the true nature of Linux support by ATI. AMD/ATI devs ignore it here, too.