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What's wrong with the Nvidia drivers for Linux?

by k33n 7mo ago

Duralias 7mo ago
In practically every benchmark the Linux Nvidia drivers notably underperform compared to the windows driver.
Night_Thastus 7mo ago
They're garbage. They're bad enough that If you have an Nvidia GPU, it's borderline impractical to game on Linux. You can, but you'll be cutting framerates in half or more in many cases.
- rounce 7mo ago
  That’s a wild exaggeration. Yes they underperform relative to the Windows drivers but my experience is far from “cutting framerates in half” nor “borderline impractical”. I’ve had the last four generations of Nvidia card (currently on 5070Ti) on Linux and played demanding games just fine.
- braiamp 7mo ago
  The only problem with Nvidia in the last... 5 years was their wayland support and their worse than expected performance for DX12 games. Both of which were being actively worked on, where wayland support has been improving since 2 years ago and DX12 performance needs patches on all the stack, the driver is there, mesa and vkd3d patch are pending.
- drnick1 7mo ago
  This is not true at all. I game on Linux (Arch, btw) on my 3090 and every game not using some kind of kernel-level anticheat just works. I have never made formal comparisons, but my experience is that I can't notice a difference in performance relative to Windows most of the time. One exception was Helldivers 2, but the performance gap has more or less closed recently with recent Proton versions.
  - KomoD 7mo ago
    > I have never made formal comparisons, but my experience is that I can't notice a difference in performance relative to Windows most of the time. But you also have a pretty powerful card, unless you're gaming in 4K you could probably take a performance hit and not even notice. I have a 3060 (prev: 1660 ti) and I can say that I've definitely noticed a difference in performance in lots of games.
    - drnick1 7mo ago
      I do in fact game at 4K, but actual measurements tend to place the overhead of Proton in the single digits. Going from, say, 100fps to 90fps is completely inconsequential as far as I am concerned.

What's wrong with the Nvidia drivers for Linux?

by k33n 7mo ago

What's wrong with the Nvidia drivers for Linux?

Duralias 7mo ago

In practically every benchmark the Linux Nvidia drivers notably underperform compared to the windows driver.

Night_Thastus 7mo ago

They're garbage. They're bad enough that If you have an Nvidia GPU, it's borderline impractical to game on Linux. You can, but you'll be cutting framerates in half or more in many cases.

rounce 7mo ago
That’s a wild exaggeration. Yes they underperform relative to the Windows drivers but my experience is far from “cutting framerates in half” nor “borderline impractical”. I’ve had the last four generations of Nvidia card (currently on 5070Ti) on Linux and played demanding games just fine.
braiamp 7mo ago
The only problem with Nvidia in the last... 5 years was their wayland support and their worse than expected performance for DX12 games. Both of which were being actively worked on, where wayland support has been improving since 2 years ago and DX12 performance needs patches on all the stack, the driver is there, mesa and vkd3d patch are pending.
drnick1 7mo ago
This is not true at all. I game on Linux (Arch, btw) on my 3090 and every game not using some kind of kernel-level anticheat just works. I have never made formal comparisons, but my experience is that I can't notice a difference in performance relative to Windows most of the time. One exception was Helldivers 2, but the performance gap has more or less closed recently with recent Proton versions.
- KomoD 7mo ago
  > I have never made formal comparisons, but my experience is that I can't notice a difference in performance relative to Windows most of the time. But you also have a pretty powerful card, unless you're gaming in 4K you could probably take a performance hit and not even notice. I have a 3060 (prev: 1660 ti) and I can say that I've definitely noticed a difference in performance in lots of games.
  - drnick1 7mo ago
    I do in fact game at 4K, but actual measurements tend to place the overhead of Proton in the single digits. Going from, say, 100fps to 90fps is completely inconsequential as far as I am concerned.