the context is: the 470 legacy driver doesn't compile on the linux 6.12 kernel. because of that, debian decided to officially drop support to that driver. i tried installing the driver myself using nvidia's official installer, but the installation indeed fails during the module compilation stage.
this means i am stuck with nouveau. it got better since i last tested it on bookworm, but one major pain in the ass is that nouveau has no support for performance levels for my card and it runs at the lowest clock bc of that (~400 megahertz instead of its max ~900 mhz).
this causes a noticeable performance hit, even for desktop usage, but it's good enough for work. waching full hd 60 fps video is a bit painful, but it's possible. but gaming, which was possible, got way worse. even a lightweight game like celeste got frustrating to play due to stuttering.
i guess i'll have to deal with it and maybe this is the cue to buy another graphics card and never buy nvidia again, but i'm thinking about what my options would be here:
- downgrade to bookworm. not easy to do, would only delay the problem.
- install an older kernel and use only that. not sure how, the official repos only have the 6.12 kernel. i could get the older kernel from the bookworm backports and pin it to prevent any updates, but mixing repos from different versions makes me uneasy.
- patch the driver. there are a few patches floating around that make nvidia's driver compile on the 6.12 kernel. applying the patch by hand is annoying and i would have to re-apply it at every kernel update.
- cope.
any ideas?
edit
and it runs at the lowest clock bc of that (~400 megahertz instead of its max ~900 mhz).
that was a mistake. i was reading the clock off of my onboard video chip, which also happens to be nvidia. the onboard chip is at .../dri/0; my graphics card is at .../dri/1. nouveau seems to support reclocking for my card, but i'm trying to change the clock and the video signal goes crazy when i do it
you're right. i thought my card didn't support it because i might have misread the feature matrix. adding to the confusion,
/dri/0is my onboard video (which also happens to be nvidia) and that's where i got the 400 mhz number fromstill, i just tried it reclocking seems to drive the video signal crazy
edit: yeah it's definitely unsupported, the display turns completely into scrambled eggs. i'll try a newer kernel just in case
edit 2: tried it on the 6.16 kernel (i have an opensuse tumbleweed installation laying around) just in case it had some development on that front compares to 6.12 (debian's version) and it's still a mess. so reclocking for my card is definitely a no-no on nouveau
I gave it some thought, I think that you are getting slowdowns because of some kind of a bug and not due to slow speed of the GPU.
I have actually daily-driven a MacBook Pro 15-inch 2009 with a GeForce 9600M GT and even at 279 Mhz core, it was usable on Manjaro KDE, animations were a bit laggy, but nothing compared to what you are describing.
I still remember trying kernel 6.7 or 6.8 and immediately seeing MUCH worse performance with constant lags. I have only consistently used kernels 6.1, 6.6 and 6.12 on Manjaro on that machine, all of them with decent experience. I would try some other kernel if that's possible, but considering that you have tried 6.12 and 6.16 at this point, I am not too hopeful.
Oh that sucks. Other than that, I don't have many other ideas, maybe get a cheap used ATI/AMD card, even if it is worse on paper, as they should be decently supported, unlike Nouveau.