NVIDIA Provides A Surprise For Pascal GPU Owners Wanting Open-Source

[Adarion]

It is a move at all at least, so it's welcome. But I guess one could've already cut that firmware from a windows driver or even use something to dump it once uploaded to the card. Anyway, it's a step if that will work with nouveau.
Still - I was, am and likely will be with the red team.

[FLHerne]

Nop, open kernel driver is the minimum. Every other chip maker has one. CPU vendors, GPU vendors, other use ASIC vendors, chipset vendors and goes on. It is unreasonable to need a closed driver for power management.

If only. ARM is still a world of hopelessly poor binary blobs and reverse-engineering projects facing active hostility.
Samsung and Broadcom can be bothered, and oddly enough Nvidia (they've done a lot for Tegra support in Nouveau).
Qualcomm, ImgTec, Allwinner, ARM themselves...nah.

[dungeon]

Cool, i guess deblob-check script (with full source released ) of linux-libre kernel project is ready to get new bits

[eydee]

Isn't GPU-PRO just a slightly modified AMDGPU driver? As for either being bad, that's definitely not what I've seen, but I'm guessing you aren't up for discussing it with that stance And hopefully you're not referring at all to the dead fglrx?

As for NVIDIA, while I can't speak for single-GPU setups, Optimus is a nightmare. Say what you want about AMD's drivers, but at least I can install them without a ton of manual work and reading a novel

AMDGPU is just a kernel module. Once there was fglrx which had it's own module, that's what you had to build at install, and that's why it broke with every kernel update. Then a new module came, designed to be open source and to work with existing open source drivers, that's AMDGPU. As it's open, it could get into the kernel, so everyone has it now. Building at install is an option if you have a newer version than what is in the kernel by default. Then there's the PRO driver package. It's a heavily modified fglrx. It's modified to use the new module, while keeping most of the old user space, with added features (e.g. Vulkan) and optimizations that happened since the switching.

[boltronics]

Congratulations Nvidia on releasing something that should never have been required in the first place.

[Kano]

bridgman

The new drivers shift the load from motherboard to PCI-E connector. But even using the compatibility setting the card needs more than 75 W from PCI-E 6-pin. With 8-pin everything would be inside specs. c't magazine asked PCI-SIG if AMD is allowed to use the PCI-E logo and this was denied. Most likely the card will run without problems but AMD promised a power saving card and this is certainly not correct.

[c117152]

DON'T BUY AMD! NEVER EVER! The new cards could fry your motherboard...

nVidia had more then a few cases of Windows10 "upgrades" ending with a fried board.

I'm not saying this to excuse AMD mind you. This shouldn't happen. EVER. But, it's hardly fair to favor nVidia when they're doing just as bad.

[vein]

DON'T BUY AMD! NEVER EVER! The new cards could fry your motherboard. They are releasing a driver update to sweep the thing under the carpet. It's all a lie! FFS IF YOU BUY AMD YOU ARE A MORON. Nvidia is cheaper and better. Do you even realize how stupid the AMD engineers are if they don't even know the limits of the ports that they are using. How can you trust your PC to AMD! NEVER BUY AMD! THEIR CPUS ARE SHIT AND THEIR GPUS HAVE BEEN SHIT FOR THE PAST 10 YEARS! IT can receive a ITC Ban!

PLUS: AMD WILL BE DEAD IN MAXIMUM 2 YEARS! YOU WON'T GET SUPPORT!

*WARNING* BEWARE FOR TROLLS *WARNING*

No but seriously...Today, my opinion is that the OSS AMDGPU drivers are the best drivers on Linux. (And Yes, I have had Nvidia cards and have used the blob). I am running a fiji based system today with OSS AMDGPU and I haven't had a single problem on it...No screen tearing, great perfomance on the games I play and I just feel happy about the satisfaction of having OSS drivers.

To be fair, I have had some problems on my Carrizo based laptop... there I am running the AMDGPU-PRO driver since I need OpenGL 4.5 to help out on a friends companys 3d-engine (Written in Pascal for Linux.....don't ask...) but after some driver fiddling it is working pretty well too...

[Passso]

As for NVIDIA, while I can't speak for single-GPU setups, Optimus is a nightmare. Say what you want about AMD's drivers, but at least I can install them without a ton of manual work and reading a novel

Wow that is just not fair.

Both AMD a NVidia give the same "bad" driver : you can choose your active card at startup and have to reboot if you need to play a game or save battery.

Optimus is complicated, but with it you can activate on-demand the NVidia card without reboot/X restart. With AMD you do not even have that option...

[Oguz286]

This is the nth thread in which I've seen Master5000 spew crap again calling everyone that buys AMD products morons, Rust sucks, etc.

You are right, let's all support companies that don't give a crap about open source and dictate exactly how we should use their products. That's a fantastic idea!

/sarcasm