Nouveau Linux 4.8 + Mesa 12.1-dev vs. NVIDIA OpenGL Performance

[cj.wijtmans]

This is why you should believe nvidia when they come up with something else than GBM.

[dungeon]

But realistically, any user seriously considering nouveau for gaming would never use upstream.

He, he, but really realistically articles speak to most people so to Average Joe, who typically uses upstream kernels which are not even up do date always

[molecule-eye]

And this is why I refuse to buy nvidia hardware even if it performs better. For my purposes, I can get buy with fluid performance using open source drivers and moderate AMD hardware (an RX 460), so there's absolutely no point in giving my money to nvidia. And if you like testing/using/ Wayland, there's another reason to stay RED.

[imirkin]

It's a little unfortunate that these results are carefully (carelessly?) done so as present nouveau in the worst light possible.

The real issue is that on all but the GTX 680 board, memory reclocking completely fails. So you have a high core speed and the original lowest memory clock. This yields totally crap performance (as can be seen).

One would likely get better results by first switching to a middle perf level (usually called "0a" on such GPUs), which should allow the memory clock change without the voltage change, and then try to flip to 0f. The memory reclock will fail again, but at least you'll have a middling memory clock instead of the absolute lowest.

But realistically, any user seriously considering nouveau for gaming would never use upstream. They'd use a tree with Karol's reclocking patches, where every Kepler GPU should behave roughly as the GTX 680 one does - about 60-80% of blob performance, depending on the application.

[ElectricPrism]

Wish AMD cards were competitive with nvidia on proprietary driver. The highend AMD cards still run like ass.

XNvidia GTX 970 owner here. Switched to AMD RX 480 and am very happy, mesa-git is fantastic. 120 - 360 FPS is plenty enough for me @ 1080p which is what I get in most games, in other unoptimized games on a low I get 60-90 at worst 95% of the time.

I dunno what your situation is but I can't fathom how it holds truth that my AMD with 360 FPS in CS:GO "run like ass". Before my RX 480 Not even my GTX 970 could run CS:GO reliably or at nearly as high a frame rate.

I actually suggest you consider that you could be encountering a "CPU-Bound" problem and not "GPU-Bound" -- I would never own a AMD CPU until Zen IMO, (I'll probably trade in my 2 Skylake i7's for some Zen CPU's if it benches good.
--
As for the Nouveau vs Nvidia Blob results, it makes me rigermortus to think of all the wasted GPU juice, for office use I'm sure it's a dream but then why own a $400-1000 GPU.

On Linux AMD is becoming increasingly attractive as it fortifies Linux stability - Nvidia Blob is a nightmare once you realize how many stability problems it creates on Linux.

These results were and still are a slaughter to open source.

[cruelj]

Thanks alot for that insight.

[karolherbst]

Then why not reverse engineer something useful, like coreboot or that pile of hardware that has NO linux driver at all. I really don't want so waste somebodies time, but could any of the devs answer that? Maybe my frame of mind is off, but i don't get the motivation behind this, in my humble opinion, useless effort, no offence.

well, GPUs are more complex and maybe somebody also wants a pure open source driver. On linux-libre you can't use AMD, cause of the closed firmware they are using. One example.

Also I have a nvidia gpu and I don't care that much about my motherboard firmware, I know it is crap and I know it might make sense to have an open alternative, but you can actually brick your hardware and this is something not everybody is willing to risk.

Nvidia cards seems to be pretty much unbrickable, I don't know of any nvidia dev who actually managed to brick one.

[karolherbst]

Could somebody please explain to me, how people still have money/time/motivation to work on nouveau, while NVIDIA obviously doesn't wan't an opensource driver.

fun mainly

[cruelj]

I think i already answered it - it is reverse engineering desire who is driving this, those people know and like to do exactly that .

And even if you give them specs, they are not interested anymore... as that would became boring everyday job

Then why not reverse engineer something useful, like coreboot or that pile of hardware that has NO linux driver at all. I really don't want to waste somebodies time, but could any of the devs answer that? Maybe my frame of mind is off, but i don't get the motivation behind this, in my humble opinion, useless effort, no offence.

[JonathanM]

Could somebody please explain to me, how people still have money/time/motivation to work on nouveau, while NVIDIA obviously doesn't wan't an opensource driver.

As dungeon said, some people find reverse engineering a nice challenge. And if they wouldn't do it, who would?

Edit: you seem to be faster than me, dungeon.