NVIDIA Legacy Driver Updated For X.Org Server 1.15

[deanjo]

But it doesn't say anywhere in the article about FX cards.

Click the link to them in the article. Big tab there that mentions what products it covers.

GeForce 200 Series:

GeForce GTX 280, GeForce GTX 260
GeForce 9 Series:

GeForce 9800 GX2, GeForce 9800 GTX/GTX+, GeForce 9800 GT, GeForce 9600 GT, GeForce 9600 GSO, GeForce 9500 GT
GeForce 8 Series:

GeForce 8800 Ultra, GeForce 8800 GTX, GeForce 8800 GTS 512, GeForce 8800 GTS, GeForce 8800 GT, GeForce 8800 GS, GeForce 8600 GTS, GeForce 8600 GT, GeForce 8600 GS, GeForce 8500 GT, GeForce 8400 GS, GeForce 8400 SE, GeForce 8400, GeForce 8300 GS, GeForce 8300, GeForce 8200, GeForce 8200 /nForce 730a, GeForce 8100 /nForce 720a
GeForce 7 Series:

GeForce 7025 / NVIDIA nForce 630a, GeForce 7050 PV / NVIDIA nForce 630a, GeForce 7050 / NVIDIA nForce 610i, GeForce 7050 / NVIDIA nForce 630i, GeForce 7100 / NVIDIA nForce 630i, GeForce 7100 / NVIDIA nForce 620i, GeForce 7100 GS, GeForce 7150 / NVIDIA nForce 630i, GeForce 7300 SE / 7200 GS, GeForce 7300 LE, GeForce 7300 GS, GeForce 7300 GT, GeForce 7350 LE, GeForce 7500 LE, GeForce 7550 LE, GeForce 7600 LE, GeForce 7600 GS, GeForce 7600 GT, GeForce 7650 GS, GeForce 7800 GS, GeForce 7800 GTX, GeForce 7800 SLI, GeForce 7900 GS, GeForce 7900 GT/GTO, GeForce 7900 GTX, GeForce 7950 GT, GeForce 7950 GX2
GeForce 6 Series:

GeForce 6100, GeForce 6100 nForce 400, GeForce 6100 nForce 405, GeForce 6100 nForce 420, GeForce 6150, GeForce 6150 LE, GeForce 6150LE / Quadro NVS 210S , GeForce 6150SE nForce 430, GeForce 6200, GeForce 6200 A-LE, GeForce 6200 LE, GeForce 6200 TurboCache(TM), GeForce 6200SE TurboCache(TM), GeForce 6250, GeForce 6500, GeForce 6600, GeForce 6600 GT, GeForce 6600 LE, GeForce 6600 VE, GeForce 6610 XL, GeForce 6700 XL, GeForce 6800, GeForce 6800 GS, GeForce 6800 GS/XT, GeForce 6800 GT, GeForce 6800 LE, GeForce 6800 Ultra, GeForce 6800 XE, GeForce 6800 XT
GeForce 5 FX Series:

GeForce FX 5100, GeForce FX 5200, GeForce FX 5200 Ultra, GeForce FX 5200LE, GeForce FX 5500, GeForce FX 5600, GeForce FX 5600 Ultra, GeForce FX 5600XT, GeForce FX 5700, GeForce FX 5700 Ultra, GeForce FX 5700LE, GeForce FX 5700VE, GeForce FX 5800, GeForce FX 5800 Ultra, GeForce FX 5900, GeForce FX 5900 Ultra, GeForce FX 5900XT, GeForce FX 5900ZT, GeForce FX 5950 Ultra, GeForce PCX 5300, GeForce PCX 5750, GeForce PCX 5900
Quadro FX Series:

Quadro FX 330, Quadro FX 350, Quadro FX 370, Quadro FX 500/FX 600, Quadro FX 540, Quadro FX 550, Quadro FX 560, Quadro FX 570, Quadro FX 700, Quadro FX 1000, Quadro FX 1100, Quadro FX 1300, Quadro FX 1400, Quadro FX 1700, Quadro FX 1500, Quadro FX 2000, Quadro FX 3000, Quadro FX 3400/4400, Quadro FX 3450, Quadro FX 3500, Quadro FX 3700, Quadro FX 4000, Quadro FX 4500, Quadro FX 4500 X2, Quadro FX 4600, Quadro FX 4700 X2, Quadro FX 5500, Quadro FX 5600
Quadro FX Series (Notebooks):

Quadro FX 3600M, Quadro FX 2700M, Quadro FX 1700M, Quadro FX 1600M, Quadro FX 570M, Quadro FX 370M, Quadro FX 360M
Quadro NVS Series:

Quadro NVS 285, Quadro NVS 290, Quadro NVS 440
Quadro Plex Series:

Quadro Plex Model II, Quadro Plex Model IV
Quadro Sync Series:

Quadro G-Sync II, Quadro G-Sync I
Quadro SDI:

Quadro SDI
NVS Series:

Quadro NVS 285, Quadro NVS 290, Quadro NVS 440
C-Class:

Tesla C870

[cynical]

They want to make sure that the nouveau driver works good enough with any NVIDIA GPU so that you get a working desktop to later install the proper driver. That's not the case right now. With some cards you can have major trouble even booting a Live System to start the installer for a distro unless you use "nomodeset" as kernel parameter. Their goal is improving the out of the box experience not to have an alternative driver for graphic intensive tasks like gaming. I don't blame them, it's a reasonable thing to do.

Ah thank you that makes sense to me. Guess I will be leaning towards AMD since radeon's hardware support seems to be improving quickly. Nice to have options though.

[blackout23]

I've read that NVIDIA has released some documentation that would be useful to Nouveau driver developers. Are they planning to follow in the same path as AMD with supporting open drivers or what?

They want to make sure that the nouveau driver works good enough with any NVIDIA GPU so that you get a working desktop to later install the proper driver. That's not the case right now. With some cards you can have major trouble even booting a Live System to start the installer for a distro unless you use "nomodeset" as kernel parameter. Their goal is improving the out of the box experience not to have an alternative driver for graphic intensive tasks like gaming. I don't blame them, it's a reasonable thing to do.

[cynical]

I've read that NVIDIA has released some documentation that would be useful to Nouveau driver developers. Are they planning to follow in the same path as AMD with supporting open drivers or what?

[blackout23]

But it doesn't say anywhere in the article about FX cards.

Just look under the "supported devices" section for the recently released 173 driver.

[Apopas]

The GeForce FX 5800 being that it was the first FX card available.

But it doesn't say anywhere in the article about FX cards.

[blackout23]

A while back I was personally hit when nvidia didn't support their own Geforce4 Series anymore on current drivers, last one working was 96.xx which was flawed. Using compiz for example always resulted in black windows at normal usage, which was unusable. Geforce 4 debuted in 2002 and it was around 2007 when I finally ditched my notebook because of bad nvidia support. I heavily prefer ati these days, whatever might happen, my card will run. I don't need it to be a killer, i just want it to work decent, and that's what we get

Back to the facts: In the end, since Geforce FX is the first current supported card, and I think it debuted in 2003, we have 10 years, not 20

10 years in IT is still a millenium.

[dungeon]

This driver was expected, but seems like that will be end of the road

Support for new Linux kernels and X servers, as well as fixes for critical bugs, will be included in 173.14.* releases through the end of 2013.

http://nvidia.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/3142

[Hibbelharry]

Nvidia will support GPU cards for more than 20 Years rather than going after open source drivers They'de do anything they can (all their best) to avoid being forced to go the open way

Jokes aside, they are really being honest in releasing such update on legacy driver. Good!

A while back I was personally hit when nvidia didn't support their own Geforce4 Series anymore on current drivers, last one working was 96.xx which was flawed. Using compiz for example always resulted in black windows at normal usage, which was unusable. Geforce 4 debuted in 2002 and it was around 2007 when I finally ditched my notebook because of bad nvidia support. I heavily prefer ati these days, whatever might happen, my card will run. I don't need it to be a killer, i just want it to work decent, and that's what we get

Back to the facts: In the end, since Geforce FX is the first current supported card, and I think it debuted in 2003, we have 10 years, not 20

[Wibowit]

I think legacy Catalyst drivers would work comparably or worse to open source ones if they were maintained. Stability and feature wise for sure. Performance-wise open source drivers are also pretty close to blobs on old hardware. So no big deal for me. Also the pre-HD 5000 cards weren't meant for OpenCL, so lack of open-source OpenCL driver is not a problem either. Casual users are perfectly fine with open-source drivers on legacy Radeon hardware.

OTOH open-source drivers for nVidia cards aren't very good and nVidia users really benefit from the binary blob maintained for all generations of GPUs.