this post was submitted on 01 Sep 2025
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FYI this is the nouveau driver no one uses. There is absolutely no reason to use an nvidia card and this driver.
I really feel bad for the nouveau developers, it seems like such a thankless job.
Nonetheless Nvidia:
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Maybe best to avoid NVDA if using Linux, entirely.
My next build is going to be AMD GPU and CPU with nixOS. I heard GPU support for Linux is better with AMD cards, but honestly haven’t delved into it whether it holds any truth or not.
It’s generally easier because the drivers are built in. Nvidia is perfectly usable, but it’s more susceptible to breaking during kernel updates. It’s not as bad as everyone makes it sound though. That said, AMD is usually the way to go on Linux unless your use case requires Nvidia.
The use case is precision CAD and DNN development.
cuDNN+CUDA+TensorCores have the best TOPS/$/kWh performance (for now). Plus, I need ECC VRAM for professional CAD calculations.
There's plenty of reasons to use an NVIDIA stack.
It's just weird when people say there's no reason to use their products.
I use it because I need HDMI :/
Can you explain what you mean by that? You can't use HDMI with AMD?
Not the newer version of it, they're stuck on the older one.
Ah right, I have read about that, just forgot. Man HDMI is such a mess. Use Display Port whenever you can and don't buy a monitor without one ever again.
It really is, most people could probably be using Display Port anyways, unless trying to hook up to a TV I suppose.
The 9070 XT supports HDMI 2.1b, and unfortunately my Sapphire NITRO+ has two of them and two DisplayPorts. None of my three monitors support HDMI 2.0 or 2.1, so one of them is stuck at 60 Hz right now, and I'm pretty annoyed about it.
Did you make sure its not an issue with the cable? Because the cables need to support the "correct" version and features of HDMI too, not just the GPU and monitor connections and the driver. Man typing that out makes me dizzy.
I've checked it, just to be sure, it's definitely a 2.1 cable, but unfortunately the cable doesn't matter in this case. My monitors are good, but they're older. HDMI 2.0/2.1 wasn't around back then. I get good refresh rates over DisplayPort (I believe they have DP 1.4), and my RX 6800 XT had three of those, so I just naively assumed a 9070 XT would as well.
Display Port ftw
What does that have to do with needing NVIDIA?
Something about AMD not being able to license the HDMI protocol in a way that allows open source code.
The main Nvidia driver that people use is proprietary, so it doesn't have that problem
The newer versions of HDMI aren't supported on AMD cards due to licencing issues.
Obviously AMD and Intel don't include HDMI on their cards.
/s
"perfectly usable" as in you have to install a third party translation layer to make hardware video decoding work on firefox
I also switched to AMD+AMD. The GPU support being better on AMD comes from the Open Source driver that is integrated into Linux. But there are caveats. In example if you need OpenCL or other features, it can be problematic with AMD. Plus, if you have a Nvidia card 20xx series or newer, then you can use the new Open Source driver too. And Nvidia support for Wayland and other stuff got better nowadays (just reading about it, no personal experience with current, my last Nvidia card is 1070).
While I prefer AMD gpu now, the "better support" is not really black and white.
My older previous computer has a GTX 1070 and I don't use it because I avoid the proprietary driver. If the nouveau driver becomes good, I can use my older secondary computer for something else. Hell, it can even game, but that wouldn't be my main usage anyway.
So yes, there are people caring about nouveau driver.
With old hardware, beggars can't be choosers. I get the appeal of the nouveau driver, but if your goal is to save a machine from the landfill, it's probably the better compromise to use the proprietary driver and keep it actually competitive for as long as possible. Those 900/1000 series cards are still plenty powerful today, even if they can't quite do AAA gaming anymore.
If you have an Nvidia card then you are going use it. That is a reason.
Not exactly. There are two alternatives, depending on which card you have: a) the proprietary driver, b) the new Open Source driver that supports RTX 20xx series and upwards.
Nouveau seems to work pretty well on Debian 13 for me, at least for standard web browser / streaming / video playback with 2160p HDR tonemapping. Back when I was using Debian 12 Nouveau would lag badly during 2160p playback so I was force to use the Nvidia driver binary at the time. But so far it's been alright, granted I've not tested any gaming and perhaps that's where Nouveau won't do as well.