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nvidia 470 on debian trixie (kernel 6.12). any ideas? (lemmy.eco.br)
submitted 3 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) by bunitor@lemmy.eco.br to c/linux@lemmy.ml
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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:

  1. downgrade to bookworm. not easy to do, would only delay the problem.
  2. 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.
  3. 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.
  4. 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

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[-] ILikePigeons@lemmy.ml 3 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

Nouveau supports manual reclocking for Tesla, Fermi and Kepler GPU-s. You said that you have a GT 710, so it should be supported. There is a guide on how to manually reclock it --> https://github.com/polkaulfield/nouveau-reclocking-guide.

[-] bunitor@lemmy.eco.br 2 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

you're right. i thought my card didn't support it because i might have misread the feature matrix. adding to the confusion, /dri/0 is my onboard video (which also happens to be nvidia) and that's where i got the 400 mhz number from

still, 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

[-] ILikePigeons@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 day ago

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.

[-] ILikePigeons@lemmy.ml 1 points 2 days ago

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.

[-] echedeylr 14 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

Please, to the people replying to this person and suggesting "just buy a new one".

Not everynyan has the money, and yes, even 30 dollars/euros/etc may be difficult to get for a person. Maybe low income, maybe no income, maybe inflation in the country, maybe that is not the real price in their zone, maybe no stores available easily.

I understand that some of you have those options but understand that is a privilege too.

edit: if you wanna still suggest that, I propose something better. If it is so cheap and accesible for you, why dont you buy it and give it to them for free?

[-] bunitor@lemmy.eco.br 8 points 3 days ago

i'm actually okay with hardware suggestions, but they tend to be useless since a $50 or 40€ graphics card normally translates to a R$900 one. a few factors contribute to this

  1. exchange rates. currently, 1USD ~= 5,5BRL
  2. purchasing power. the avg income of brazil is around ~$8500/yr. 1USD is way more money to us than it is to usians and euros
  3. taxes. based on exchange rates alone, $50 converts to around R$270, but most electronics in brazil are imported and are subject to heavy taxation. the "$50 video card" recommended to me by someone in the comments is sold online for R$870 at its cheapest.

although i'm talking specifically about brazil, the same applies to any other emergent market (the rest of latam, india, etc).

this is why hardware recommendations are rarely useful to us. i'm still open to them, though. once in a while something useful pops up.

[-] echedeylr 4 points 3 days ago

I am aware too of the Brazil case, specially for imports, the taxes and the inflation.

I have a friend there. I know that my options did not cover the difficulty of import and taxes because I tend to be general. I know that for GPUs and such, unless you want to pay the expensive pricing you have inside from people who scam locals (people who import laptops from US at 200 and sell at 800 as example), must be gotten from outside and such.

[-] procapra@lemmy.ml 5 points 3 days ago

Yeah this really pissed me off. People acting like this is a just a trivial purchase. Even $30 is alot for me sometimes and I live in the US, I can't imagine how hard that must be to someone in Brazil.

[-] monovergent@lemmy.ml 5 points 3 days ago

Absolutely. And in the case of laptops, there might be no way to upgrade the GPU. I'm keeping an eye on this since I have an otherwise perfectly good laptop that also needs an unsupported legacy nvidia driver.

[-] procapra@lemmy.ml 8 points 3 days ago

What I think you should do (the smart choice): Compile the newest lts that supports the driver.

What I would do (the stupid choice): Frankenstein my debian install by adding a repo from somewhere else (probably sparkylinux) and pin it so nothing gets automatically pulled from that repo. Then install 6.6 from that repo. Its jank, its definitely not the recommended or supported way to do it, but I'm lazy and if I compile a kernel onto my system manually its 100% never getting updated ever.

[-] Hagenman@lemmy.world 6 points 3 days ago

Can your system handle a 970 or Radeon 5700XT? I have no idea if I’m breaking the rules by offering this, but they’re just sitting around and would be happy to send you one.

[-] bunitor@lemmy.eco.br 3 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

wait, for real?

according to this online psu calculator: https://www.coolermaster.com/pt-br/power-supply-calculator/

  • my current psu (400 watts) can barely handle a 970

  • and for very little it can't handle the radeon

i could buy a new psu, though... it would be cheaper than a new graphics card, i think

[-] SteveTech@programming.dev 9 points 3 days ago

The official driver already uses DKMS (at least in the newer drivers), so you should be able to patch the code in /usr/src/nvidia-470* and have it apply automatically every kernel update.

[-] bunitor@lemmy.eco.br 4 points 3 days ago

okay that's much better. i might actually try using the patch then. any guides?

[-] SteveTech@programming.dev 3 points 2 days ago

Not really, but once you've patched the driver, run dkms status and dkms build <id from status> (e.g. dkms build nvidia/580.76.05) to rebuild the driver for your current kernel.

When you get it working, it'll be a good idea to write a little guide here for other people to follow.

[-] gnuhaut@lemmy.ml 5 points 3 days ago

I would try the patches. Also about older kernels: It's not that hard to e.g. get a kernel.org upstream kernel and compile that, no need to mix repos.

https://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/debian-handbook/sect.kernel-compilation.en.html

[-] eugenia@lemmy.ml 5 points 3 days ago

And that's why I'd never buy an nvidia card laptop or PC. For my Debian PC that has a Xeon CPU (so it has no integrated gpu), I bought an Intel ARC GPU for $110. For what I do, which is video editing and encoding/decoding at 10bit 4:2:2 (which is what most modern cameras record as), it's the best card on the planet. Better than nvidia and especially amd. Not so for gaming, of course. If your CPU is a 11th+ intel generation, and it comes with an intel gpu integrated, maybe you don't need anything more than that. Just remove or don't use the nvidia one completely. If you don't have a gpu, get a cheap intel.

[-] bunitor@lemmy.eco.br 4 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

id usually avoid nvidia as well but sadly this was the cheapest option to me at the time

If your CPU is a 11th+ intel generation

it's an amd fx 8300 🥲

i should've told my pc is old

[-] eugenia@lemmy.ml 1 points 3 days ago

Then check if your PC/power supply can run an AMD or intel gpu. If not, upgrade your PC. You can get a BeeLink minipc for $180 that's faster than your current computer.

[-] bunitor@lemmy.eco.br 2 points 3 days ago

i'm pretty sure there's an equivalent radeon card for around the same price and i'm willing to buy it as soon as i can, but i'm trying to get as much mileage as i can out of my current card

[-] eugenia@lemmy.ml 1 points 3 days ago

You won't. You will get crashes. This is a very old nvidia driver, which was barely working on x11, and not at all on wayland. Their newer drivers are more serious. You'd be best to upgrade your PC, not just an old amd card. I personally have found many bugs that DIDN;T exist 10 years ago on open source drivers. Basically, as the kernel evolves, and the old drivers become unmaintained, new bugs emerge. So it's best to get something new, a new pc, and not try to make this old nvidia or old amd card to work. If you can spare $180, you'll be in a much better shape.

[-] bunitor@lemmy.eco.br 1 points 3 days ago

that's not my experience with it at all. on bookworm with the proprietary it worked pretty well (with only occasional crashes every other month). even now it works fine aside from the lower performance (and no suspend).

[-] unexposedhazard@discuss.tchncs.de 3 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

Maybe im missing something here, but why do you need to use such an old driver version? Trixie ships with 550 if you enable non-free so why not use that? Considering you tried the official installer i would think you dont mind non-free drivers.

https://packages.debian.org/trixie/nvidia-driver

[-] bunitor@lemmy.eco.br 3 points 3 days ago

why do you need to use such an old driver version?

old card. it's a geforce gt 710, it's only supported up to the 470 nvidia driver

[-] unexposedhazard@discuss.tchncs.de 3 points 3 days ago

Ooh i see. That was kinda missing from the post for me to understand it. Do you just not wanna spend any money or why keep that card? You could get a used AMD card that is 10-30 times as powerful for like 30-50€

Im all for extending hardware lifetime as much as possible, but after 10 years i feel like its okay to upgrade.

[-] echedeylr 5 points 3 days ago

Some people just dont have 30 euros.

Please, take that into account before suggesting like everynyan else.

[-] bunitor@lemmy.eco.br 3 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

You could get a used AMD card that is 10-30 times as powerful for like 30-50€

i'm open to suggestions

about the age of the card: i actually bought it new 2-3 years ago. it's pretty common in emergent markets for cheapo cards to be shipped brand new with obsolete graphics chips. this isn't a problem on windows, but then someone owning this card switches to linux and is hit with a massive performance loss bc of unsupported drivers. it sucks.

[-] eager_eagle@lemmy.world 2 points 3 days ago

why do you need to use 470?

[-] bunitor@lemmy.eco.br 3 points 3 days ago

old card (geforce gt 710)

[-] eager_eagle@lemmy.world 2 points 3 days ago

I see, honestly, if I could afford it, I'd just buy a newer card. But if you're stuck with it for now, I get it.

[-] echedeylr 2 points 3 days ago

Are you using xorg or wayland?

If you use xorg do you have xserver-xorg-video-nouveau?

do you have libdrm-nouveau2?

do you have libgl1-mesa-dri?

did you install firmware-nvidia-graphics? this is the firmware packages from NVIDIA to use it in Nouveau, should help you a lot.

[-] bunitor@lemmy.eco.br 1 points 3 days ago

my configuration is optimal as far as nouveau goes. performance on wayland is similar to x11

[-] echedeylr 3 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

Okay but tell me what you use or I cannot help you.

There has been changes and specifying every possible path is messy :c

Also check if you installed or have firmware-nvidia-gsp (only if your GPU is post-Turing) in addition to what I asked before.

[-] bunitor@lemmy.eco.br 2 points 3 days ago

as i said, there's no software problem in my setup. i've checked nouveau's feature matrix for my card (a geforce gt 710) and it's one of the best supported cards, but sadly performance levels are wip. that's the main issue

besides that, everything works fine

[-] echedeylr 2 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

The thing is, the firmware is needed for extra initialization in some cards even if the feature Matrix reports that is supported.

And that is why I ask. Also some of the DRM packages are optional.

So, yeah, I ask to be sure and as far as you dont want to disclose info, I cannot offer "any idea" because that is conditioned by the variables of the environment.

Edit: removed part of the reply because I was frustrated. I am sorry.

[-] bunitor@lemmy.eco.br 3 points 3 days ago

i'm sorry if i sounded obtuse, it was not my intention. i could get the info you want later, but my point is that i am sure that the nouveau driver is configured correctly because 1) debian ensures graphics are working properly on desktop installations for a wide array of hardware configurations and 2) i made sure dri, mesa, the firmware and the x11 driver are all installed. i just wanted to say in my reply that going down that route of investigation isn't worth our time because it would lead to nowhere and what i'm seeking help with is installing the proprietary driver

still, i appreciate your willingness to help. i'll check everything you mentioned when i get home just to make sure

[-] sic_semper_tyrannis@lemmy.today 2 points 3 days ago

Have you considered changing distros?

[-] bunitor@lemmy.eco.br 5 points 3 days ago

yeah but then i remembered debian is the best distro on the planet

(also, this problem isn't exclusive to debian)

[-] eugenia@lemmy.ml 5 points 3 days ago

The same situation for any distro with newer kernels.

[-] anon5621@lemmy.ml 1 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

3,option create dkms module or buy Rx 580 for 50$

[-] bunitor@lemmy.eco.br 3 points 3 days ago

sadly that translates to almost 900 reais

[-] LiveLM@lemmy.zip 1 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

Are you OK buying used?
Dunno what city you live in, but you can find some RX 570's for 300~400ish on OLX. Maybe even cheaper on Facebook (🤮) Marketplace.

But yeah, not exactly pocket change. Hardware prices suck ass here.

[-] bunitor@lemmy.eco.br 2 points 3 days ago

bem lembrado o olx. é que pra comprar no olx tem que preparar bastante o emocional, mas eu moro no rio, então deve ter bastante opção sim. 300-400 é o que eu paguei na minha, então acho que tá de boa

this post was submitted on 25 Aug 2025
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