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I wonder what this will mean for free drivers. While nVidia hasn't been entirely uncooperative (they do participate in X.org upstream development to the degree

by sho_hn 13y ago

I wonder what this will mean for free drivers. While nVidia hasn't been entirely uncooperative (they do participate in X.org upstream development to the degree that it affects their products), the only free driver they've written for the line of GPUs the to-be-licensed Kepler core is part of is an obfuscated, 2D-only token effort, and they have stayed away from participating in the Nouveau project to write a fully-featured free driver. Contrast that with Intel and AMD, where the free driver is the primary effort or one supported with documentation, code and manpower, respectively. On the other hand, they've contracted Avionic Design to write a free 3D-enabled driver for the GPUs in their Tegra 3 SoCs. If future Tegra is based on a Kepler derivative (as indicated by the blog), and this prior commitment forces them to release a free driver for it as well, I wonder if one day this hypothetical free driver might have a shot at replacing their closed source codebase. Or they could join forces with Nouveau and finally put some of their resources behind it, similar to what AMD has done.

vacri 13y ago
Contrasting with AMD, the AMD drivers are a complete mess. I have a card that was released about a year ago (HD7800) and I can't dual-screen on it with the AMD drivers (maximum total resolution is 1920x1920 - yes, that's not a typo). Regardless of effort, the graphics drivers AMD produce are terrible, and the free version doesn't deal well in the gap (pitcairn chipset). I would not be pointing at AMD as a role model in this regard.
- sho_hn 13y ago
  I wasn't. I agree that the closed-source drivers AMD also still produce are friggin' terrible, and far worse than nVidia's closed-source drivers. AMD has been much better about supporting efforts to write free drivers than nVidia has, however. In terms of serving as role model I'd say Intel takes the lead by actually developing their sole drivers out in the open _and_ releasing hardware documentation so others outside the company can help out. Even Intel as had their missteps however (e.g. the infamous Poulsbo driver mess).
  - pjmlp 13y ago
    Not only that, their all developer documentation and tooling for tracking down graphics performance focus mainly on DirectX and Windows.
  - vacri 13y ago
    For sure, Intel is the golden standard. It's just that AMD drivers suck - proprietary or free - and nvidia's don't - proprietary or free. I've got a pitcairn chipset GPU (AMD, released about a year ago) and I cannot get dual-screen working with hardware acceleration. The free drivers can't enable it, and the proprietary drivers are limited to the very bizarre 1920x1920 maximum joined resolution. I've noticed plenty of others struggling with AMD at the moment, and these days it's "just choose nvidia". A complete switcheroo on several years ago when it was "just choose ATI" (well, if you wanted something more than intel, that is).
    - sho_hn 13y ago
      Luckily there's an increasing number of use cases that no longer have a want for more than Intel - I've been impressed just what the HD 4000 in my new laptop can do. Sure, a nVidia GPU still kicks its butt pretty thoroughly, but there's a lot more that works acceptably than there used to be, and it looks like Iris Pro will be a significant improvement on top of the current gen. Unfortunately it also looks like the wall they're going to run into after they leap over the performance one might be legal rather than technical (e.g. Mesa for Intel implements OpenGL 3 now, but due to Red Hat legal having problems with the patent coverage on some of that stuff Fedora won't actually ship all the bits, etc.).
    - lgeek 13y ago
      Offtopic, but: > the proprietary drivers are limited to the very bizarre 1920x1920 maximum joined resolution That's not true. I'm currently using 2 1080p screens on a HD7870. You just have to initially set it up using amdcccle or maybe aticonfig, or to edit xorg.conf manually, after which you can use RandR-based tools as normal. I dislike that the AMD drivers lag behind in software compatibility and that they do things in non-standard ways, but they provide all the functionality I'd expect. Getting back to your problem, in amdcccle set up Display Manager > Multy-Display, or manually in xorg.conf, Section "Screen", SubSection "Display" needs to have an entry called 'Virtual', which looks something like this: Virtual 3840 1920.

by sho_hn 13y ago

vacri 13y ago

Contrasting with AMD, the AMD drivers are a complete mess. I have a card that was released about a year ago (HD7800) and I can't dual-screen on it with the AMD drivers (maximum total resolution is 1920x1920 - yes, that's not a typo). Regardless of effort, the graphics drivers AMD produce are terrible, and the free version doesn't deal well in the gap (pitcairn chipset). I would not be pointing at AMD as a role model in this regard.

sho_hn 13y ago
I wasn't. I agree that the closed-source drivers AMD also still produce are friggin' terrible, and far worse than nVidia's closed-source drivers. AMD has been much better about supporting efforts to write free drivers than nVidia has, however. In terms of serving as role model I'd say Intel takes the lead by actually developing their sole drivers out in the open _and_ releasing hardware documentation so others outside the company can help out. Even Intel as had their missteps however (e.g. the infamous Poulsbo driver mess).
- pjmlp 13y ago
  Not only that, their all developer documentation and tooling for tracking down graphics performance focus mainly on DirectX and Windows.
- vacri 13y ago
  For sure, Intel is the golden standard. It's just that AMD drivers suck - proprietary or free - and nvidia's don't - proprietary or free. I've got a pitcairn chipset GPU (AMD, released about a year ago) and I cannot get dual-screen working with hardware acceleration. The free drivers can't enable it, and the proprietary drivers are limited to the very bizarre 1920x1920 maximum joined resolution. I've noticed plenty of others struggling with AMD at the moment, and these days it's "just choose nvidia". A complete switcheroo on several years ago when it was "just choose ATI" (well, if you wanted something more than intel, that is).
  - sho_hn 13y ago
    Luckily there's an increasing number of use cases that no longer have a want for more than Intel - I've been impressed just what the HD 4000 in my new laptop can do. Sure, a nVidia GPU still kicks its butt pretty thoroughly, but there's a lot more that works acceptably than there used to be, and it looks like Iris Pro will be a significant improvement on top of the current gen. Unfortunately it also looks like the wall they're going to run into after they leap over the performance one might be legal rather than technical (e.g. Mesa for Intel implements OpenGL 3 now, but due to Red Hat legal having problems with the patent coverage on some of that stuff Fedora won't actually ship all the bits, etc.).
  - lgeek 13y ago
    Offtopic, but: > the proprietary drivers are limited to the very bizarre 1920x1920 maximum joined resolution That's not true. I'm currently using 2 1080p screens on a HD7870. You just have to initially set it up using amdcccle or maybe aticonfig, or to edit xorg.conf manually, after which you can use RandR-based tools as normal. I dislike that the AMD drivers lag behind in software compatibility and that they do things in non-standard ways, but they provide all the functionality I'd expect. Getting back to your problem, in amdcccle set up Display Manager > Multy-Display, or manually in xorg.conf, Section "Screen", SubSection "Display" needs to have an entry called 'Virtual', which looks something like this: Virtual 3840 1920.