Nouveau's OpenGL Performance Approaches The NVIDIA Driver

[pingufunkybeat]

Honestly, what'll save me more grief is to just get a laptop with an NVidia based chipset.

I recommend an Nvidia Optimus chipset.

[HangFire]

Re: Can we see the xorg.conf used for this testing?

I still want to see the xorg.conf(s) used (if any).

I'm glad to hear AMD is putting time and money into OSS drivers, I can't wait to see the results. Really, I can't wait, so I was forced to buy an nvidia video card and run Nouveau. The OSS drivers I tried on both HD4250 and HD4290 were all so slow on my quad core system that I couldn't stand it. I'm not talking subjective speed-freak slow, I'm talking 3 seconds to paint a 1920x1200 screen from top to bottom slow. Can't possibly run video slow. Fglrx (then Radeon) was too unstable for KDE as well on two old 9xxx series cards and on new hardward as well (HD4250 and HD4290).

Note, that was not a rant about the efficacy of Open Source. (Here comes the rant...)

I spent half of 2009 and most of 2010 sorting through both AMD and NV OSS and proprietary drivers, 3 M/B, 4 video cards, with modest expectations (run a KDE desktop), across 3 distros and multiple releases of said distros, and I can say one thing with certainty. The state of ALL linux video drivers is miserable due to KMS. OSS and proprietary.

Also KDE is poorly maintained. I opened multiple KDE bug reports, all of which were closed with some verbage like "fixed in next version" which it wasn't.

KDE depends on many things working in video that used to work in pre-KMS drivers, and they just don't work any more, in just about anything. The nearly-latest Nouveau (thank you gentoo rolling release) is the first stability I've had on KDE in 1.5 years.

[whitecat]

It's fairly pathetic that to use Citrix I have to run it in a VirtualBox session...

It's more pathetic seeing you trolling on Phoronix instead of file a bug.

[smitty3268]

KDE4 won't work for more than a few minutes unless I turn desktop effects off.
...
It's a HUGE regression from RadeonHD, which worked. Why that driver was abandoned, I'll never understand.

RadeonHD is a 2D-only driver, so it has nothing to do with whether or not 3D desktop effects work. That would be the mesa driver, either r300g or r300c.

I'm sure they would be interested in a backtrace from you, because your problems don't seem to be commonplace.

[jonnycat26]

You should really try to debug it, since KDE4 should work fine. It does here, and most other places.

You'll save yourself a lot of grief.

Honestly, what'll save me more grief is to just get a laptop with an NVidia based chipset. Which is what I intend to do when this one finally bites the big one.

It's fairly pathetic that to use Citrix I have to run it in a VirtualBox session...

[pingufunkybeat]

Words can't begin to describe my hatred for the radeon driver. KDE4 won't work for more than a few minutes unless I turn desktop effects off. And lest the apologists start to blame KDE, I also can't run the citrix client (Motif based) without major issues.

You should really try to debug it, since KDE4 should work fine. It does here, and most other places.

You'll save yourself a lot of grief.

[Melcar]

Sigh.

The radeon OSS driver is the biggest pile of trash I've ever had the misfortune to use. And, unfortunately, I'm stuck using it because my laptop has an older ATI chipset that ATI no longer supports in their proprietary driver.

Words can't begin to describe my hatred for the radeon driver. KDE4 won't work for more than a few minutes unless I turn desktop effects off. And lest the apologists start to blame KDE, I also can't run the citrix client (Motif based) without major issues.

The radeon driver has rendered my laptop barely usable. It's a HUGE regression from RadeonHD, which worked. Why that driver was abandoned, I'll never understand.

OTHO, my laptop has an Nvidia card in it. NVidia's driver support is flawless.

So, basically, to hell with ATI. I'll stick with NVidia, and I'll stick with their closed driver, because it just works.

I guess I must be using a different driver then. R300g works much, MUCH better than fglrx ever did.

[jonnycat26]

I give the nouveau devs a lot of credit for the impressive work they've done, but it's definitely not (and never has been) on par with the radeon OSS driver.

Sigh.

The radeon OSS driver is the biggest pile of trash I've ever had the misfortune to use. And, unfortunately, I'm stuck using it because my laptop has an older ATI chipset that ATI no longer supports in their proprietary driver.

Words can't begin to describe my hatred for the radeon driver. KDE4 won't work for more than a few minutes unless I turn desktop effects off. And lest the apologists start to blame KDE, I also can't run the citrix client (Motif based) without major issues.

The radeon driver has rendered my laptop barely usable. It's a HUGE regression from RadeonHD, which worked. Why that driver was abandoned, I'll never understand.

OTHO, my laptop has an Nvidia card in it. NVidia's driver support is flawless.

So, basically, to hell with ATI. I'll stick with NVidia, and I'll stick with their closed driver, because it just works.

[allquixotic]

It doesn't run Heaven, but since Heaven is just a demo, it's not a big deal.

Here, I run the following using a low-end HD4550 and r600g:

SweetHome3d
OpenArena
Nexuiz
Compiz
KWin
Doom3 + RoE
Quake4
Warsow
Penumbra games
World of Goo
Gish
Aquaria
LugaruHD
Quake Live


and they are fine. But I'm not much of a gamer, other people run more stuff. Pretty much everything I've tried, works.

Also power saving is OK, Xvideo and xrandr are excellent (nvidia blob still doesn't support this), and the thing is stable.

I'm very glad that you refuse to look at open drivers because of your serious need for "Heaven" but please do not intentionally spread lies to confuse users, OK?

"VESA", what an idiot

Adding to your list, for r600g + HD5970:

Imprudence / Second Life viewers (great performance; perfect rendering)
Savage 2 (great performance; non-game-breaking rendering issues)
Heroes of Newerth (great performance; non-game-breaking rendering issues)

[smitty3268]

I don't know how much good that did, but I believe nouveau is still the better open source driver.

LOL. You haven't actually tried either driver, but clearly anything associated with radeon's must suck, right?

I give the nouveau devs a lot of credit for the impressive work they've done, but it's definitely not (and never has been) on par with the radeon OSS driver.

For proof, just look at this very article. Michael mentions wanting to test on more cards, but that these were the only ones that actually ran correctly. There's been a lot of effort put into the r300g and r600g drivers to ensure they work on the widest array of hardware possible. Stability and features like power management are ahead there.