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

[karolherbst]

Basically opensource drivers are not copy/paste clones from proprietary - there would be always some gap here and there

sure, and for nouveau also no documentation, which makes it not boring actually AMD and Intel stuff is boring, because you already know everything

[dungeon]

Well i know, people like nouveau because they learn there how reing going.

If even nVidia give you specs, those people would not be excited with that... they would probably go to reing something else

[cruelj]

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.

[dungeon]

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.

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

[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.

[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.

[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

[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.

[cruelj]

Thanks alot for that insight.

[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.