Perforrmance of Nouveau drivers under Slackware

John Smith

unread,

Feb 8, 2022, 3:40:42 PM2/8/22

to

I have an old PC with an NVidia graphics card running 14.2. I use
the NVidia proprietary drivers for this card on this PC without any
problems. However, transitioning to 15.0 and the 5.* kernels, the guys
from NVidia tell me that there are no NVidia drivers for my particular
NVidia card when such drivers are used. Which implies I'll have to use
the Nouveau driver.

Anybody have experience with this driver under Slackware? I am
thinking about 3D applications - like e.g. google-earth, or the 3D hacks
in xscreensaver. Do they run at all? If they do, do they perform
tolerably, or are they like trickle?

I might just have to bite the bullet and get a new card (or maybe
even a new PC) but I would be interested to learn about the experience of
other Slackware users in this respect.

Rich

unread,

Feb 8, 2022, 4:38:50 PM2/8/22

to

John Smith <12...@whatismyemailaddress.xyz> wrote:
> I have an old PC with an NVidia graphics card running 14.2. I
> use the NVidia proprietary drivers for this card on this PC without
> any problems. However, transitioning to 15.0 and the 5.* kernels,
> the guys from NVidia tell me that there are no NVidia drivers for my
> particular NVidia card when such drivers are used. Which implies
> I'll have to use the Nouveau driver.

Yes, the 'proprieatary' driver is not updated for older cards and newer
kernels. I am

> Anybody have experience with this driver under Slackware?

> thinking about 3D applications - like e.g. google-earth, or the 3D
> hacks in xscreensaver. Do they run at all? If they do, do they
> perform tolerably, or are they like trickle?

My system is running this Nvidia card:

NVIDIA Corporation G94GL [Quadro FX 1800] (rev a1)

Which is a rather older Nvidia card, and I am running the Nouveau
driver (from Slack 14.1).

The CPU is an: Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU X5570 @ 2.93GHz

The video card is also driving two monitors in a desktop spanning
side-by-side configuration.

Testing xscreensaver-demo, and picking the gl* screen saver names for
demoing, they all seemed to run just fine, nice, smooth, and seemingly
as fast as they should. So based on this quick test, things seem to
work fine for screensaver and this older Nouveau driver. I'd assume
the newer driver in 15 would work just as well, if not better.

> I might just have to bite the bullet and get a new card (or
> maybe even a new PC) but I would be interested to learn about the
> experience of other Slackware users in this respect.

That's always an option, but it seems that 3d stuff works reasonably
fine on older hardware and with a now older driver, so I'd say just
give it a try and see what happens. If it works, then you don't need
to shell out for a new card (and given current pricing, that would be a
big savings).

John McCue

unread,

Feb 8, 2022, 6:27:46 PM2/8/22

to

John Smith <12...@whatismyemailaddress.xyz> wrote:
> I have an old PC with an NVidia graphics card running 14.2. I use
> the NVidia proprietary drivers for this card on this PC without any
> problems. However, transitioning to 15.0 and the 5.* kernels, the guys
> from NVidia tell me that there are no NVidia drivers for my particular
> NVidia card when such drivers are used. Which implies I'll have to use
> the Nouveau driver.

Yes, no other choice

> Anybody have experience with this driver under Slackware? I am
> thinking about 3D applications - like e.g. google-earth, or the 3D hacks
> in xscreensaver. Do they run at all? If they do, do they perform
> tolerably, or are they like trickle?

Exactly what I went through with my Slackware Server when
14.2 was released.

> I might just have to bite the bullet and get a new card (or maybe
> even a new PC) but I would be interested to learn about the experience of
> other Slackware users in this respect.

For the Slackware Server, I bought a new Video Board, but
stayed as away from Nvidia. If you have a desktop I would
just buy a new card. I ended up getting a "Radeon HD
6450", which is also said to work with OpenBSD. I picked
that because if it works on OpenBSD, Linux would have no
issues. Turned out it works fine on Slackware, but I do not
know how it would work with hardcore gaming.

Good Luxj
John

Jimmy Johnson

unread,

Feb 8, 2022, 7:04:32 PM2/8/22

to

I think my card is older than yours, it's a "GeForce GT 610" and has not
used the nvidia driver in many years. I could use a new card too, but
this card still works, tested with GLX. I do have a problem with the
plasma splash screen when I download and use the "Quarks Splash Darker"
splash screen, it crashes plasma and becomes unresponsive, using the
default breeze splash screen works with no problem. I test different
computers and different linux systems and have no other problems using
Slackware 15.0 or Current.
--
Jimmy Johnson

Slackware64 15.0 - AMD A8-7600 - EXT4 at sda6
Registered Linux User #380263

Jimmy Johnson

unread,

Feb 8, 2022, 7:19:25 PM2/8/22

to

On 2/8/22 15:27, John McCue wrote:

> For the Slackware Server, I bought a new Video Board, but
> stayed as away from Nvidia. If you have a desktop I would
> just buy a new card. I ended up getting a "Radeon HD
> 6450", which is also said to work with OpenBSD. I picked
> that because if it works on OpenBSD, Linux would have no
> issues. Turned out it works fine on Slackware, but I do not
> know how it would work with hardcore gaming.

Yep, the replacement for my nvidia card will be a "amd radeon". I'm
using amd radeon on another computer and it's never been a problem using
any old or new linux os.

bad sector

unread,

Feb 8, 2022, 11:38:14 PM2/8/22

to

I'm interested in this too but in another way. Can Google-Earth-Pro
run with the Nouveua driver? I gotta have GEP & a bulletproof music
studio!

Just starting out on Slackware-15.0 I haven't even tried the
nvidia driver bit yet, will be busy with getting basics out of
the way for months to come.

On the other hand my card is a GeForce-Gt640 and under
Suse the nvidia-G04 (390 series) driver does the job with
Kernel-5.3.18

Henrik Carlqvist

unread,

Feb 9, 2022, 1:59:41 AM2/9/22

to

On Tue, 08 Feb 2022 20:40:40 +0000, John Smith wrote:

> I have an old PC with an NVidia graphics card running 14.2. I use the
> NVidia proprietary drivers for this card on this PC without any
> problems. However, transitioning to 15.0 and the 5.* kernels, the guys
> from NVidia tell me that there are no NVidia drivers for my particular
> NVidia card when such drivers are used. Which implies I'll have to use
> the Nouveau driver.

If the nouveau driver works for your needs I would stick with that,
otherwise, check if your card is listed at https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/
drivers/unix/legacy-gpu/ and choose its corresponding legacy driver.

regards Henrik

Marco Moock

unread,

Feb 9, 2022, 2:37:46 AM2/9/22

to

Please tell us which card you exactly have.
The look at the feature matrix:
https://nouveau.freedesktop.org/FeatureMatrix.html

If you plan to buy /already have an ATI/AMD for replacement, see here:
https://www.x.org/wiki/RadeonFeature/

John Smith

unread,

Feb 10, 2022, 10:59:25 AM2/10/22

to

Thanks everybody for yor feedback, in particular Marco Moock for
providing the link to the Nouveau feature matrix. On that basis, the
hardware I have (GeForce 7025 / nForce 630a) is one in the NV40 family,
which seems to be well supported by the Nouveau driver.

Marco Moock

unread,

Feb 10, 2022, 12:11:25 PM2/10/22

to

It should work, but don't expect it works well. This is a 16 year old
IGP.

Henrik Carlqvist

unread,

Feb 10, 2022, 1:22:45 PM2/10/22

to

On Thu, 10 Feb 2022 15:59:22 +0000, John Smith wrote:
> the hardware I have (GeForce 7025 / nForce 630a) is one in the NV40
> family,

The latest binary driver from nVidia for that card seems to be 304.137
from 2017.

regards Henrik