Open-Source NVIDIA Driver Approaches Stable State

Written by Michael Larabel in Display Drivers on 13 April 2012. Page 6 of 12. 9 Comments
Nouveau Linux 3.4 Mesa 8.1-devel

Besides thrashing the Nouveau stack with OpenGL workloads, a few 2D-focused tests were run, in particular with the Cairo demos that have real world relevance. There is not much change in Cairo performance between the different graphics cards, but overall the Nouveau driver was running about 80% the speed of the NVIDIA binary driver with the first "Charts" demo.

Nouveau Linux 3.4 Mesa 8.1-devel

When running the more demanding Cairo Gears workload there is at least some performance improvements on the newer GeForce hardware with the NVIDIA binary driver, but meanwhile the Nouveau driver performance is relatively flat across the ten graphics cards that were tested.

Nouveau Linux 3.4 Mesa 8.1-devel

With the Cairo Fish test, again stressing 2D code paths, the Nouveau driver is closer to the NVIDIA binary driver.


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