NVIDIA Starts Supplying Open-Source Hardware Reference Headers

[kokoko3k]

They'd better invest a lot into nouveau. NVIDIA's legacy hardware support is horrible! Anything below the 400 series is tied to nvidia-340.xx, which doesn't play nice at least with GTK+3 and Firefox. Gedit-3.16 is unusable using this driver. WhatsApp-Web in Firefox, too. The workarounds from the web don't work. On top of that, gedit and Matlab randomly crash once a day. Nouveau on the other hand doesn't have these issues. And radeon on the same Gentoo, different machine, works fine, too.

my 9800gt is way below 400 series and works just fine with firefox and gtk3 using nvidia-340.xx
What's your experience?

[oleid]

On my 8 year old latop I'm stuck with 304xx, which still gets updates for a few years and works just fine on Arch with the latest GTK3, Firefox & Co.

The problem started somethen in 33x and got fixed only after 340, but the fix never got backported.

Perhaps that particular card you talk about isn't working quite right anymore? The problem might not show up with Nouveau if the card is running in a reduced power state when using it, and only shows up in the highest power state.

Nope, it's there when fixing the power state and even with different cards. We see it on different workstations, as we all use the same linux installation via NFS root in out department. We use the legacay 340.xx driver, so that the whole range of our cards are supported. The oldest are 9000series cards, the latest some GT 7xx. And I'm not the only one who has the problem.

https://www.google.de/search?q=gedit+slow+typing

As I said: the bug is fixed in later nvidia versions, it's well known to nvidia but the fix never got backported.

[oleid]

my 9800gt is way below 400 series and works just fine with firefox and gtk3 using nvidia-340.xx
What's your experience?

Basically the same as those guys:

https://www.google.de/search?q=gedit+slow+typing

e.g.: http://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=117171
Gedit is getting slower the more you type. I see it at least on GT 600 series and GT 200 series.

Yet, the workaround suggested there doesn't work for me.

GTK+ and GNOME is all >= 3.14, most is on 3.16.

[Passso]

Crazy to see that a single Linus finger can force NVidia to do that

[blackout23]

Basically the same as those guys:

https://www.google.de/search?q=gedit+slow+typing

e.g.: http://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=117171
Gedit is getting slower the more you type. I see it at least on GT 600 series and GT 200 series.

Yet, the workaround suggested there doesn't work for me.

GTK+ and GNOME is all >= 3.14, most is on 3.16.

Does adding "export CLUTTER_PAINT=continuous-redraw" to the end of your /etc/profile and restarting help?

[laykun]

I certainly remember the r300 launch. It was common for a 9500np to function just fine as a 9700pro. All it required was a good 9500np and a few minor modifications to the board and a bios flash. And then like a miracle a softmod was made that didn't require any of that!

It's not like this stuff is new....

You haven't been able to do this since like the Radeon X800/GF 6800 days. Every since then they've been laser cutting the non-functional units making them physically inaccessible, firmware change or no.

[chithanh]

That is not correct, many of the early Radeon 6950 cards could be unlocked to 6970s via BIOS mod.

Some other functions are only driver limitations, like 30-bit deep color support which was at one time limited to FirePro (now unlocked for everyone). ECC support for Tahiti/Hawaii is another example if I am not mistaken.

What is true however is that NVidia very thoroughly fuses off functions which are reserved for higher paying customers.

[Kano]

Its a piece of cake to fake a FireGL card on Linux. But for Nvidia you need a combination of firmware mod and some little hardware changes - parts of the PCI ID is decoded with different small resistors.

[DeepDayze]

That is not correct, many of the early Radeon 6950 cards could be unlocked to 6970s via BIOS mod.

Some other functions are only driver limitations, like 30-bit deep color support which was at one time limited to FirePro (now unlocked for everyone). ECC support for Tahiti/Hawaii is another example if I am not mistaken.

What is true however is that NVidia very thoroughly fuses off functions which are reserved for higher paying customers.

So for certain AMD cards the drivers could be patched/modded to unlock the functions as well. Nvidia surely has done a better job with this iteration by now signing their firmware and drivers

[Kano]

Every AMD card/APU can be used in FireGL mode, a 2 lines patch for fglrx kernel driver. Most likely amdgpu can be patched as well.