Fernando Negro
2014-Jan-10 12:36 UTC
[Nouveau] Should I dump my Nvidia card from the less known brand "Gainward"?
Hi everyone. I'm a big Free Software enthusiast and, therefore, I would very much like to use the nouveau free driver, instead of the proprietary one. My problem is that, looking for the cheapest option available, when I needed to buy a new graphics card, 2 years ago, I decided for a model from a brand that I had never heard of - called "Gainward" - because I thought it had a better price/quality relationship than its ASUS equivalent with the same Nvidia chip. My specific graphics cards is this one: http://www.gainward.com/main/product/vga/pro/p00472/p00472_datasheet_17204da7fe6add60c.pdf?s=125 Because I used to use a not completely free GNU/Linux distribution at the time, where one could easily install the proprietary driver, right after installing the distro, I've always run this last driver on it, and managed to find a version where it would run well. But, now wanting to migrate to a completely free GNU/Linux distribution, I now notice better the problem that I have, with this specific graphics card, where I can't even make the nouveau drivers run on it, let alone run well... I've already made several tests, with different kernels, and there's really no way that I can make this graphics card work with the nouveau driver. (My results here: http://trisquel.info/en/forum/nouveau-mi-eq-overflowing#comment-43762) And, the problem that appears, is what is listed here: http://trisquel.info/en/forum/nouveau-mi-eq-overflowing And, after learning, in this mailing-list, that people who use this card's ASUS equivalent with the same Nvidia chip, don't have any of the problems that I have, I now know that this is a particular type/brand of card, or particular graphics card, that is not currently supported by the nouveau driver. So, my question is... Knowing that Free Software is mainly developed to run on the most used type of computer components, and not being, apparently, my graphics card, one of this type of most used components, do the people here, in this mailing-list, know if, or think that, there's ever going to be some effort made to make the nouveau driver run on the type of graphics card that I have? (What I want to know, in practical terms, is if it's worth keeping this graphics card for some possible use in the Future, when it will be supported, or if it's better for me to just sell it to someone who's not as interested as me in using only Free Software?) Thank you, all, in advance, for your answers. And thank you very much, also, all of you, for the *great results* that I've already witnessed on other graphics cards. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/nouveau/attachments/20140110/e9c32014/attachment.html>
Emil Velikov
2014-Jan-11 03:58 UTC
[Nouveau] Should I dump my Nvidia card from the less known brand "Gainward"?
On 10/01/14 12:36, Fernando Negro wrote:> Hi everyone. >Hi Fernando,> > I'm a big Free Software enthusiast and, therefore, I would very much like to use the nouveau free driver, instead of the proprietary one. > > My problem is that, looking for the cheapest option available, when I needed to buy a new graphics card, 2 years ago, I decided for a model from a brand that I had never heard of - called "Gainward" - because I thought it had a better price/quality relationship than its ASUS equivalent with the same Nvidia chip. > > My specific graphics cards is this one: http://www.gainward.com/main/product/vga/pro/p00472/p00472_datasheet_17204da7fe6add60c.pdf?s=125 > > Because I used to use a not completely free GNU/Linux distribution at the time, where one could easily install the proprietary driver, right after installing the distro, I've always run this last driver on it, and managed to find a version where it would run well. > > But, now wanting to migrate to a completely free GNU/Linux distribution, I now notice better the problem that I have, with this specific graphics card, where I can't even make the nouveau drivers run on it, let alone run well... > > I've already made several tests, with different kernels, and there's really no way that I can make this graphics card work with the nouveau driver. (My results here: http://trisquel.info/en/forum/nouveau-mi-eq-overflowing#comment-43762) And, the problem that appears, is what is listed here: http://trisquel.info/en/forum/nouveau-mi-eq-overflowing > > And, after learning, in this mailing-list, that people who use this card's ASUS equivalent with the same Nvidia chip, don't have any of the problems that I have, I now know that this is a particular type/brand of card, or particular graphics card, that is not currently supported by the nouveau driver. > > > So, my question is... > > Knowing that Free Software is mainly developed to run on the most used type of computer components, and not being, apparently, my graphics card, one of this type of most used components, do the people here, in this mailing-list, know if, or think that, there's ever going to be some effort made to make the nouveau driver run on the type of graphics card that I have? > > (What I want to know, in practical terms, is if it's worth keeping this graphics card for some possible use in the Future, when it will be supported, or if it's better for me to just sell it to someone who's not as interested as me in using only Free Software?) > > > Thank you, all, in advance, for your answers. > > And thank you very much, also, all of you, for the *great results* that I've already witnessed on other graphics cards. >Now that was a lengthy email :) With that said as most people working on nouveau are volunteers/hobbyists and as such we tend to work on what interests us. This does not mean that noone will _ever_ look your problem. I would recommend that you go through the FAQ[1], Troubleshooting[2] and Bugs[3] wiki.>From a quick glance I can see a few of interesting bits* there is some missmatch between the reported amount of VRAM vs the one calculated [ 2.132258] [drm] nouveau 0000:02:00.0: memory controller reports 512MiB VRAM [ 2.132264] [drm] nouveau 0000:02:00.0: we calculated 1024MiB VRAM * shortly after you're getting MEM_FAULT/IB_EMPTY errors (?related to the actual amount of vram your card has?) and last but not least * you're using an _ancient_ kernel Thus first and foremost I would advice that you experiment with various kernels (older and newer) and (hopefully) you'll find one that does not produce "PFIFO_DMA_PUSHER" style of messages. You can easily check that even without X, just login in VT and look at your dmesg output. Good luck Emil [1] http://nouveau.freedesktop.org/wiki/FAQ/ [2] http://nouveau.freedesktop.org/wiki/TroubleShooting/ [3] http://nouveau.freedesktop.org/wiki/Bugs/> > > _______________________________________________ > Nouveau mailing list > Nouveau at lists.freedesktop.org > http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/nouveau >
Marcin KoĆcielnicki
2014-Jan-11 13:26 UTC
[Nouveau] Should I dump my Nvidia card from the less known brand "Gainward"?
> * there is some missmatch between the reported amount of VRAM vs the one > calculated > [ 2.132258] [drm] nouveau 0000:02:00.0: memory controller reports 512MiB > VRAM > [ 2.132264] [drm] nouveau 0000:02:00.0: we calculated 1024MiB VRAM >I can explain that one: nouveau doesn't know about single-subpartition [ie. 32-bit bus width per partition] GT21x parts. While that causes an error in memory calculations, the calculations err on the safe side (reordering block is 2x larger than it needs to be), and there should be no negative consequences. I'll prepare a fix for that bug once I finish my research on dual-rank tesla cards (which likely involve a calculation error that falls on the *un*safe side), but for the moment it's nothing to worry about. Marcin Ko?cielnicki
Fernando Negro
2014-Jan-11 23:48 UTC
[Nouveau] Should I dump my Nvidia card from the less known brand "Gainward"?
Hi there, Emil. Sorry for the "long story"... :) It's just that, being an "outsider" (i.e. not a member of this mailing-list) and someone who just came here once before, to ask another question, I thought I should sort of "introduce" myself. :) Unfortunately, (as I say in the link where I point to for my "results") I've already tried all sorts of different kernels, including the most recent ones (and I've also tried several different distributions), and there's really no way that I can make nouveau run on this particular card. Besides the proprietary drivers (that run well on it), the only other driver that I can make run on my card is the generic "vesa" one - but, only if I add the "nomodeset" parameter at boot. And, if I don't add this option to the kernel parameters (and just let the nouveau driver try to load), I always get black screens, when X loads, with every kernel that I try. It's something in the card, itself, that makes nouveau not able to run on it... (Since that, as I said, people who have cards from well known brands that use the same chip - http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/nouveau/2013-October/014677.html - don't have the same problem that I have.)
Apparently Analagous Threads
- Should I dump my Nvidia card from the less known brand "Gainward"?
- GeForce 8400 GS (follow-up)
- [Bug 43029] New: System won't boot using nouveau and Gainward Phantom adapters
- [PATCH 3/3] drm/nouveau/pci: SOR crossbar quirk for 10b0:1b81
- [PATCH 3/3] drm/nouveau/pci: SOR crossbar quirk for 10b0:1b81