I know this video is quite old by now but in case someone sees this video and wonders why the difference is so huge it's actually quite simple the reason is reclocking. The nouveau open source driver does NOT reclock the gpu meaning it runs fixed at stock clock the card boots with which is usually only about 300-500MHz. So comparing the card with proprietary driver boosting to 1468MHz(according to gt1030 spec) vs the card running at fixed 300-500MHz with nouveau no wonder the performance difference is 10x or so. If nvidia ever releases the needed firmware stuff to allow fan control which is the main reason reclocking is disabled even on cards where you can change the clock(gtx 600series have the best support afaik). If we ever get fan control in nouveau and then all the automatic reclocking programmed in the driver(because so far supported cards have manual pstate level selection) i'd say it would offer similar performance to the official proprietary blob while being much better compatible with linux.
@@curiosidadesdalife381 I'm not nouveau developer so i might be wrong but to my understanding. You cannot do that because nvidia cards MUST load their signed binary firmware blob to be able to operate and access these functions. Nvidia locked down their cards like that since like gtx9xx series not sure exactly. And if they even release their firmware they usually do that like 3+ years after the given card launched. And even for older cards nouveau works best for like gtx6xx cards from then onward it's become substantially more difficult to reverse engineer with each generation and then they added the signed firmware. Though even if there is firmware from nvidia for some "newer" cards reverse engineering the driver is very difficult and also legally it's a total minefield. For example for older cards there was script that could extract the firmware from nvidia proprietary package which enabled hw decoding of video but was shutdown for legal reasons. If you search for nouveau feature matrix it should lead you to the freedesktop site which shows exactly what works and what doesn't for each generation and you can see the power management hasn't been fully implemented for any card. Without power management the cards won't change clock and thus work very slow no matter what
@@curiosidadesdalife381 intel has only opensource driver and amd has both proprietary and open source. It's only Nvidia that keeps everything proprietary and locks out everything they can so if you want to use only opensource drivers then intel or amd are the way to go. I've had excellent experience with intel gpu driver on a old sandybridge era laptop with HD 2000 igpu. On desktop pc i have nvidia gpu so linux experience is all over the place. I don't have experience with AMD but most people running linux seem to be having a good experience with AMD open source drivers.
Great video Dominic, would like to see more Linux videos. If you're benchmarking you might want to give phoronix-test-suite a try. Phoronix can do glmark2 along with hundreds of other tests covering everything from overall system performance to I/O performance. And you can upload and compare results between cards. Using phoronix I ran glmark2 on a Radeon HD 6950 2GB card (that I pulled from a Mac) using the open source Nouveau drivers at 1920 x 1080 and got 1826 overall. (Not as great as the GT1030's overall score of 2065 in your test, but apples and oranges since we're not testing using the same conditions). But it's cool to know the open source drivers for this older card (2010) approach the proprietary drivers for the newer (2017) GT1030.
@@dominicogallachoir4554 I tested a 2GB NVidia GTX660 for comparison and the AMD 6950 blew it away with the open source drivers. However, when I added the NVidia 470 proprietary driver the GTX660 came out on top with a result of 2327 (versus the 1826 for the 6950 @ 1920x1080). I don't have the NVidia open source results in front of me, but I recall it being something in the 700 range (really bad compared to either case). I'm not sure if the Nouveau driver has improved for newer NVidia cards, but I suspect AMD is still the way to go for those too. I'm actually testing a bunch of cards that have come in to our shop, so I'll post some follow up numbers for you here in a day or so.
I don't think any human will notice the difference beyond 120FPS. But it's really about headroom to play games, use very high resolution, etc. Glad you like it!
Even with these results, the irony is that Nvidia drivers are very poorly optimized and supported in Linux, performing about half to two-thirds as well as in Windows - OpenGL vs. OpenGL, not even accounting for any of that DirectX nonsense - and SLI is so bad that it generally actually performs worse than using just one of the same cards would by itself, regardless of SLI mode used. 💩
My results were based primarily using Unigine Heaven, Valley, and Superposition. Using glmark2 fullscreen as you did in this video, though not using screen capturing, I did see score improvements with SLI in AFR (alternate frame rendering) mode, but unfortunately there were some weird issues on screen with flickering black horizontal lines toward the top in most of the tests. SLI performed worse than using one card in the other SLI modes. Edit: Disabling Allow Flipping and/or enabling Force Composition Pipeline fix the flickering lines in the glmark2 tests, but unfortunately performance then drops down bellow just using one card by itself again. The Unigine tests still perform better using just one card either way, but don't have the flickering issue. They perform better in AA or SFR than AFR though. But yeah, a rather sad state for Nvidia drivers on Linux for the time being still, unfortunately. Probably going AMD is the best bet for now. I'll be trying to get the most out of my Titan Black cards for a bit yet though. Cheers.
I tried to run the same tests for my laptop with a Quadro M1000M. Interestingly, using proprietary drivers crashed glmark about halfway through the test. The ones where it did work where significantly faster than the nouveau drivers though.
Affect performance or compatibility the graphic interface of deskop/windows? EndervouarOS Arch or ubuntu based or arch based? What is the best interface for gaming with nvidia card? I found better in ubuntu based the KDE Plasma better than cinamonn,mate or xfce and run better Am using kubuntu and coming from mint (idk mint)
That's annoying. All I can say is maybe try changing some of the settings or using a slightly different NVIDIA driver. Also, there are some great tips in the comment section here. I hope you find a solution
The sleep state makes it glitch out, other than reloading the desktop there's not much you can do about it. On Gnome desktop alt+f2 type r and enter. Sadly for me my older laptop is not supported by Nvidia anymore so will no longer work with newer kernel so am stuck with the opensource driver. Think the lesson to be learned here is only buy laptops with AMD graphics.
On Linux Mint I don't have these software source options. And when trying to install the proprietary driver downloaded from Nvidias homepage it says it conflicts with something already installed. I have only average glmark2 score of 124. I really need this driver to work
Bumblebee seems like a very nice tool and I would be interested to give it a go. Unfortunately though, my CPU does not have integrated graphics so that won't be possible :/
@@dominicogallachoir4554 Well, I would say that in both, its gaming performance very close to Windows, some time ago I verified that the Android Studio emulator did not start with the proprietary controller, however sometimes the videos on RUclips in full screen are a bit buggy but nothing serious. I read somewhere that Nouveau works better with old cards. good video!
how did you even run the nvidia driver? I have a video card from the same gf117m family. Some versions of the driver do not start, some versions break when i switch graphic to intel. What is your driver and kernel version?
@@DmitryJT50 for Fermi GPUs, you need to run nvidia driver 390 family Im currently on a 820M(GF117 as well) so I'm interested in using nouveau. Nvidia drivers before 435 is now functionally obsolete
@@pipyakas hi ,I have a GeForce 820m too .how could we reclock nouveau ?is it possible. I have better performance with proprietary nvidia driver in games and emulators but prime or switching between integrated graphics and nvidia doesn't work with proprietary drivers. Where as nouveau works outofthe box
I know this video is quite old by now but in case someone sees this video and wonders why the difference is so huge it's actually quite simple the reason is reclocking. The nouveau open source driver does NOT reclock the gpu meaning it runs fixed at stock clock the card boots with which is usually only about 300-500MHz. So comparing the card with proprietary driver boosting to 1468MHz(according to gt1030 spec) vs the card running at fixed 300-500MHz with nouveau no wonder the performance difference is 10x or so. If nvidia ever releases the needed firmware stuff to allow fan control which is the main reason reclocking is disabled even on cards where you can change the clock(gtx 600series have the best support afaik). If we ever get fan control in nouveau and then all the automatic reclocking programmed in the driver(because so far supported cards have manual pstate level selection) i'd say it would offer similar performance to the official proprietary blob while being much better compatible with linux.
Thanks for the insightful comment :)
Noobie question here: is it really hard to kinda guess how to control the fan via code? don't they have some defaults you can use as tips?
@@curiosidadesdalife381 I'm not nouveau developer so i might be wrong but to my understanding. You cannot do that because nvidia cards MUST load their signed binary firmware blob to be able to operate and access these functions. Nvidia locked down their cards like that since like gtx9xx series not sure exactly. And if they even release their firmware they usually do that like 3+ years after the given card launched. And even for older cards nouveau works best for like gtx6xx cards from then onward it's become substantially more difficult to reverse engineer with each generation and then they added the signed firmware. Though even if there is firmware from nvidia for some "newer" cards reverse engineering the driver is very difficult and also legally it's a total minefield. For example for older cards there was script that could extract the firmware from nvidia proprietary package which enabled hw decoding of video but was shutdown for legal reasons. If you search for nouveau feature matrix it should lead you to the freedesktop site which shows exactly what works and what doesn't for each generation and you can see the power management hasn't been fully implemented for any card. Without power management the cards won't change clock and thus work very slow no matter what
@@Vitis-n2v I see.. that's a big problem. Do other brands do that to their cards as well? if not, do you recommend any at all?
@@curiosidadesdalife381 intel has only opensource driver and amd has both proprietary and open source. It's only Nvidia that keeps everything proprietary and locks out everything they can so if you want to use only opensource drivers then intel or amd are the way to go. I've had excellent experience with intel gpu driver on a old sandybridge era laptop with HD 2000 igpu. On desktop pc i have nvidia gpu so linux experience is all over the place. I don't have experience with AMD but most people running linux seem to be having a good experience with AMD open source drivers.
Wow. I knew it would be significant, but not THAT significant. Thank you for the data. I guess Wayland+sway is out of the question for me.
Great video Dominic, would like to see more Linux videos. If you're benchmarking you might want to give phoronix-test-suite a try. Phoronix can do glmark2 along with hundreds of other tests covering everything from overall system performance to I/O performance. And you can upload and compare results between cards. Using phoronix I ran glmark2 on a Radeon HD 6950 2GB card (that I pulled from a Mac) using the open source Nouveau drivers at 1920 x 1080 and got 1826 overall. (Not as great as the GT1030's overall score of 2065 in your test, but apples and oranges since we're not testing using the same conditions). But it's cool to know the open source drivers for this older card (2010) approach the proprietary drivers for the newer (2017) GT1030.
Thanks for the great input. Would your conclusion be to go with AMD if you're determined to use open-source graphics drivers?
@@dominicogallachoir4554 I tested a 2GB NVidia GTX660 for comparison and the AMD 6950 blew it away with the open source drivers. However, when I added the NVidia 470 proprietary driver the GTX660 came out on top with a result of 2327 (versus the 1826 for the 6950 @ 1920x1080). I don't have the NVidia open source results in front of me, but I recall it being something in the 700 range (really bad compared to either case). I'm not sure if the Nouveau driver has improved for newer NVidia cards, but I suspect AMD is still the way to go for those too. I'm actually testing a bunch of cards that have come in to our shop, so I'll post some follow up numbers for you here in a day or so.
Thanks for making this video
If you are in Linux use AMD is the way to go, is just plug and play, no proprietary drivers and no bloatware
also for hackintosh User
agreed, no issues with an older AMD gpu besides the obvious lower performance of its age
Same:
AMD > Nvidia
I only changed of Nvidia for AMD and now I can i play and use wayland without installing and uninstalling proprietary drivers :D
@@ShiroCh_ID fuck yea! Another hackintosh user
@@ShiroCh_IDyea. Also for Android x86 user.
wow... I thoguth for a sec... hm... 120 fps is not bad, actually... and then I saw the results with proprietary driver :D
Thanks for the video!
I don't think any human will notice the difference beyond 120FPS. But it's really about headroom to play games, use very high resolution, etc.
Glad you like it!
Even with these results, the irony is that Nvidia drivers are very poorly optimized and supported in Linux, performing about half to two-thirds as well as in Windows - OpenGL vs. OpenGL, not even accounting for any of that DirectX nonsense - and SLI is so bad that it generally actually performs worse than using just one of the same cards would by itself, regardless of SLI mode used. 💩
That's pretty sad :( thanks for the info.
My results were based primarily using Unigine Heaven, Valley, and Superposition. Using glmark2 fullscreen as you did in this video, though not using screen capturing, I did see score improvements with SLI in AFR (alternate frame rendering) mode, but unfortunately there were some weird issues on screen with flickering black horizontal lines toward the top in most of the tests. SLI performed worse than using one card in the other SLI modes.
Edit: Disabling Allow Flipping and/or enabling Force Composition Pipeline fix the flickering lines in the glmark2 tests, but unfortunately performance then drops down bellow just using one card by itself again. The Unigine tests still perform better using just one card either way, but don't have the flickering issue. They perform better in AA or SFR than AFR though.
But yeah, a rather sad state for Nvidia drivers on Linux for the time being still, unfortunately. Probably going AMD is the best bet for now. I'll be trying to get the most out of my Titan Black cards for a bit yet though. Cheers.
Same bro I changed of Nvidia for AMD exactly for this.
Not true tho
@@elimgarak3597 What isn't true?
I tried to run the same tests for my laptop with a Quadro M1000M. Interestingly, using proprietary drivers crashed glmark about halfway through the test. The ones where it did work where significantly faster than the nouveau drivers though.
Thanks for the info!
The catch is the open source driver maybe slow but produces far, far more clarity.
Affect performance or compatibility the graphic interface of deskop/windows?
EndervouarOS Arch or ubuntu based or arch based?
What is the best interface for gaming with nvidia card?
I found better in ubuntu based the KDE Plasma better than cinamonn,mate or xfce and run better
Am using kubuntu and coming from mint (idk mint)
But when I use Nvidia proprietary driver all my distros creating a problem. When I sleep and wake my computer it glitches
That's annoying. All I can say is maybe try changing some of the settings or using a slightly different NVIDIA driver. Also, there are some great tips in the comment section here. I hope you find a solution
The sleep state makes it glitch out, other than reloading the desktop there's not much you can do about it. On Gnome desktop alt+f2 type r and enter. Sadly for me my older laptop is not supported by Nvidia anymore so will no longer work with newer kernel so am stuck with the opensource driver. Think the lesson to be learned here is only buy laptops with AMD graphics.
Thats better than being unable to suspend at all with nouveau and some cards.
TY :3
On Linux Mint I don't have these software source options. And when trying to install the proprietary driver downloaded from Nvidias homepage it says it conflicts with something already installed. I have only average glmark2 score of 124. I really need this driver to work
Hmmm, all I can say is, did you consider uninstalling whatever it is that Nvidia's driver conflicts with? (if safe to do so of course)
@@dominicogallachoir4554 i wouldnt know either how to uninstall and if it was safe. So i’m stuck with miserable video performance :-(
Linux Mint have driver manager, that u can use for installing proprietary driver
Make a video on optimus bumblebee on nvidia
Bumblebee seems like a very nice tool and I would be interested to give it a go. Unfortunately though, my CPU does not have integrated graphics so that won't be possible :/
I changed of Nvidia for AMD, because Nvidia drivers are bad in Linux
I wish a driver source code leak from a hacker group so much ahah
Well, it isn't bad idea install nvidia drivers
Haha yeah maybe an understatement but that's pretty much what I found
Well I can't use the official drivers 'cause they fuck up my pc and I'm real pissed...
@@trtrhr You're totally right, I ended up not even playing anymore, I'm just focusing on my career ever since, yk
@@trtrhr NVIDIA not allowing full potential on linux bc of the stupid drivers. I had a geforce 440 by the time I made this comment.
@@trtrhr I used to play batman arkham series with mine
My old gt 720m works better with Nouveau
Interesting... Performance or stability? Or both?
@@dominicogallachoir4554 Well, I would say that in both, its gaming performance very close to Windows, some time ago I verified that the Android Studio emulator did not start with the proprietary controller, however sometimes the videos on RUclips in full screen are a bit buggy but nothing serious. I read somewhere that Nouveau works better with old cards. good video!
how did you even run the nvidia driver? I have a video card from the same gf117m family. Some versions of the driver do not start, some versions break when i switch graphic to intel. What is your driver and kernel version?
@@DmitryJT50 for Fermi GPUs, you need to run nvidia driver 390 family
Im currently on a 820M(GF117 as well) so I'm interested in using nouveau. Nvidia drivers before 435 is now functionally obsolete
@@pipyakas hi ,I have a GeForce 820m too .how could we reclock nouveau ?is it possible. I have better performance with proprietary nvidia driver in games and emulators but prime or switching between integrated graphics and nvidia doesn't work with proprietary drivers. Where as nouveau works outofthe box