Someone check the weather in hell, as NVIDIA seem to be opening themselves up a bit more with the release of some additional GPU documentation.
Phoronix writes that NVIDIA notified them about the documentation now being available on GitHub along with it under an MIT license, which should hopefully help the Nouveau open source Linux driver. It was previously available here on their own website, although they stopped updating that in May. So not only is this more up to date with new and updated files, it's also far easier to look through.
The documentation covers all sorts of things like the BIOS, their custom "Falcon" architecture for security, memory tweaking and so on. This isn't just desktop GPU docs either, having a look over it myself there's information for notebook products as well.
According to what NVIDIA said, it's a work in progress and not everything is up yet. This has apparently been a "multi-year undertaking", which isn't really surprising given how it would all have to be run through different people to sign off on it. The legal spaghetti surrounding things like this is probably quite messy.
Pretty big surprise, nice to see NVIDIA make some more open steps. It's still nothing compared to the levels of AMD and Intel, since they have proper open source drivers but it's a good step in a nice direction for sure. You can find it all here on GitHub.
Hey NVIDIA, if you're reading—get in touch!
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
It was a write-up about firmware, VBIOS and overclocking(or the lack thereof). I have the link
but I don't have a Phoronix account.
link - must read
Quoting: sr_ls_boySomeone at Phoronix was looking for a very detailed post by 'i mirkin' concerning the problems with nouveau.
It was a write-up about firmware, VBIOS and overclocking(or the lack thereof).
Yep, pretty good summary. Here is another one. TL;DR: just don't use Nvidia ;)
Edit: and forgot to type in my other replies...
The story, first: let's not throw the baby together with the bathwater. Any progress on that front is good progress. Nevertheless, they'd have to do a lot more before impresssing me and having me consider one of their GPUs.
sr_ls_boy: bridged to phoronix :)
Last edited by MayeulC on 7 August 2019 at 9:19 pm UTC
But these kinde of news makes me want to keep an eye on nvidia again. I wont get a new card for a while anyways so I hope for more changes :).
Last edited by Zelox on 7 August 2019 at 9:58 pm UTC
TheRiddick Aug 8, 2019
Quoting: TheRiddickHopefully AMD's open-source vulkan drivers can pull ahead and make some real impressive wins against NVIDIA's closed drivers in the future, that would really put the pressure on, we have seen what open-source opengl drivers have done for AMD, quite impressive.
I agree with you on this, I'm currently an Nvidia user and next go around will be
AMD. The maturing AMD drivers for Linux is amazing.
TheRiddick Aug 8, 2019
ElectricPrism Aug 8, 2019
Quoting: goldenkAt least Nvidia is doing something.
Yeah what they're doing is getting their ass whooped by AMD in the GPU space on Linux XD :D
Quoting: MayeulCElectricPrism: hum... say, what would happen to the old GPU? :P I often encounter hangs, and I suspect my R9 Fury is to blame, perhaps due to its old age?
Edit: and forgot to type in my other replies...
The story, first: let's not throw the baby together with the bathwater. Any progress on that front is good progress. Nevertheless, they'd have to do a lot more before impresssing me and having me consider one of their GPUs.
I have a big family and I often donate GPU's to family members -- like my GTX 970s -- one I donated and the other is in my Dan A4-SFX Steam Machine, my main 2 rigs are VEGA 64 and I have a RX 480 in a different Work PC and RX 580 in another SFX build.
So I basically try to circulate hardware to encourage a "Good Linux Experience" and I am obsoleting my Nvidia cards slowly.
I did notice some GPU overheating issues which I fixed by changing the fan curve to linear in CoreCTL for AMD VEGA GPU's. (I'm on a reference cooler unfortunately I couldn't justify the extra $100-200/ea) and my GPU is next to my CPU heat stack kindof close.
The other "freeze" or hang issue I may have experienced may be related to GPU OOM after 1 hour Dota 2 games sometimes there is a freeze but it probably was just a cooling issue since I didn't have any fans plugged in for a bit.
Other than that, RX 4XX and 5XX are the most stable, VEGA is 1st gen so it's been a little bumpy but still worth the upgrade and maybe slightly less tested because of how expensive it was during the mining craze, and I am thinking and hoping to get rid of some of the 1st gen problems just be switching to a new card like Navi or VII or similar but I hear the memory bandwidth of VEGA is still really great.
I scored a killer deal last year on Black Friday and got $900 AMD CPU's -- 16 cores 32 threads for $450/ea but then had to do custom motherboard TR4 $300 and custom CPU cooling $90 with 2 large fans $40, it's absolutely amazing -- I can compile the kernel in minuets it makes me consider trying Gentoo even.
It feels good to put your money where your mouth is, AMD has earned it. I like to think my money goes to investing in Linux and indirectly I'm sure -- it does. It shows companies that the open source model can work.
Last edited by ElectricPrism on 8 August 2019 at 5:55 am UTC
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