Cyrus_the_virus
Unmountable Boot Volume
Last week NVIDIA introduced the 169.04 Beta Linux driver for their GeForce and Quadro graphics cards. This X.Org driver contained a number of GeForce 8 fixes, initial support for the GeForce 8800GT graphics card, monitoring of PowerMizer state information, and other changes. More information on the 169.04 Beta driver is available in this article. What we had not tested, however, at that time was a performance comparison of the new driver and the previous 100.14.23 driver. The undocumented fact we have found is that this 169.04 Beta driver does deliver performance improvements for the GeForce 8 series on Linux.
The PowerMizer area in the nvidia-settings panel shows whether adaptive clocking has been enabled, the GPU clock and memory clock frequencies, the power source, performance level, and performance mode. PowerMizer is oriented for mobile NVIDIA customers.
The graphics card we used for testing in this article was an ASUS GeForce 8600GT 256MB. The rest of the [FONT=verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif][FONT=verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif]system[/FONT][/FONT] components included an AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+ processor, Abit NF-M2 nView motherboard, and 2GB of A-DATA DDR2-800 Vitesta Extreme memory. Running on the system was Ubuntu 7.10 "Gutsy Gibbon" with the Linux 2.6.22 kernel and X server 1.3.
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The PowerMizer area in the nvidia-settings panel shows whether adaptive clocking has been enabled, the GPU clock and memory clock frequencies, the power source, performance level, and performance mode. PowerMizer is oriented for mobile NVIDIA customers.
*img526.imageshack.us/img526/3079/img2kj5.jpg
The graphics card we used for testing in this article was an ASUS GeForce 8600GT 256MB. The rest of the [FONT=verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif][FONT=verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif]system[/FONT][/FONT] components included an AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+ processor, Abit NF-M2 nView motherboard, and 2GB of A-DATA DDR2-800 Vitesta Extreme memory. Running on the system was Ubuntu 7.10 "Gutsy Gibbon" with the Linux 2.6.22 kernel and X server 1.3.
Benchmarks had consisted of Doom 3, Quake 4, and Enemy Territory: Quake Wars.
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*www.phoronix.com/data/img/results/925/02.png
*www.phoronix.com/data/img/results/925/03.png
*www.phoronix.com/data/img/results/925/04.png
When the GeForce 8 series support for Linux was introduced, we had found its performance lagged behind the NVIDIA ForceWare driver for Windows. In that article we found that the GeForce 8 Linux performance delta was much larger than what had existed for the GeForce 6 series. In subsequent driver updates we have seen performance improvements. Most notably, with the NVIDIA 100.14.19 driver with a GeForce 8800GTS 640MB we found major performance gains. With the NVIDIA 169.04 Beta driver we have once again found significant performance improvements for the GeForce 8 series on Linux. While there were no improvements with the GeForce 8600GT in Enemy Territory: Quake Wars, the improvements were very noticeable in Doom 3 and Quake 4. This updated Linux driver has also corrected some [FONT=verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif][FONT=verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif]monitor[/FONT][/FONT] issues we previously had with incorrectly parsing the EDID information and other bugs. Shortly we will be delivering more GeForce 8 benchmarks with this new driver as well as a NVIDIA GeForce 8600GTS review.
Source: Phoronix
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