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aluma

Member

Registered: 2022-10-26

Posts: 533  

Nvidia vs nouveau for old card.

Lenovo Y500 laptop with two GT 650M video cards. The latest version of the Nvidia driver for them is 418, the latest version of Nvidia supported by distributions is 390.

There are two simple programs for speed testing, 2D xengine, 3D glxgears.

The laptop has two operating systems, openSuse 15.5 with the nvidia driver installed and dedaulus with the nouveau driver.
glxgears results are the same, ok. 60 fps (monitor frame rate).
Result 2D

Nvidia driver

nouveau driver

On the bad side for Nvidia, I couldn't get the keyboard buttons to work to adjust the brightness, although xblacklight works.
Draw your own conclusions; in general, there are no problems with the lack of speed in 2D in Linux with free drivers.

And anyone who installs the nvidia v.390 driver on debian should certainly be given a medal for patience.

greenjeans

Member

Registered: 2017-04-07

Posts: 506  

Website

Re: Nvidia vs nouveau for old card.

Interesting.

Way back in the day I absolutely despised Nouveau, it was buggy as it could be and always caused me headaches, so I used the generic driver unless I needed to run a dual-screen setup on a desktop system, and in that case I would use the Nvidia driver out of necessity...man, it really did require patience.

But the last time I tried Nouveau it surprised me greatly as it worked pretty well with none of the old bugginess, really has come a long way.

There's an old XKCD cartoon that explains the old days of fighting with video drivers.

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zapper

Member

Registered: 2017-05-29

Posts: 856  

Re: Nvidia vs nouveau for old card.

A good rule of thumb, I have noted for hardware in general, if it doesn't have coreboot on it, older hardware usually is easier to deal with in an open source way.

Although, older hardware is more likely to be corebootable... so there's that.

I did however hear once nvidia is being more reasonable with newer hardware now. I don't know how long that lasted or if that was just pure PR, but I do remember hearing about it.

I still avoid using nvidia due to the bloated electrical usage, but better to use libre than non whenever possible.

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