Thursday, 5. November 2009, 20:43:45
linux, driver, nvidia, notebook
This short post just explains how you can enable
PowerMizer and performance tuning for
nvidia proprietary drivers under Linux (and also BSD).
Basically, just add this line to your
/etc/X11/xorg.conf:
Option "RegistryDwords" "PowerMizerEnable=0x1; PerfLevelSrc=0x2233; PowerMizerDefault=0x3"
It will set
adaptive strategy mode (raise the GPU clock as needed, lower it when not needed) whenever the machine is powered by AC; and will set
maximum power saving mode (keep the lowest GPU clock possible) whendever the machine is powered by battery.
You can monitor the GPU clock and temperature using
nvidia-settings program. Note, however, that it might report an incorrect
Performance mode, so just ignore this value (and keep an eye at the clock and the thermal monitor).
Since I use
Compiz, I expect that this feature will drastically reduce energy consumption of my notebook, extending the battery runtime.
All credit goes to
NVIDIA™ driver for FreeBSD/Linux: performance and power saving hints, which contains a very detailed explanation of this almost undocumented feature.
Friday, 1. May 2009, 22:52:04
windows, wtf, nvidia
I'm Brazillian. I speak Portuguese. However, I often prefer to have programs in English because it is easier to communicate with the rest of the world, and because almost always the translations suck. Sometimes they suck so bad that we can't even understand what some options are supposed to be. What's more, many technical words should not be translated, else users won't know exactly what the developers meant.
Today, I managed to make
NVIDIA Control Panel be displayed in English. This one is particularly troublesome because there is no option to change the language.
The solution is quite simple, but damn quick and dirty: just delete the DLLs that contain the localized strings. Yeah, that's it, delete them and be happy with your NVIDIA Control Panel in English. Please look at the following links for complete instructions:
Also note that those forum threads are from september/october 2006. Today is May 2009 and we still have the same issue. Let me quote what
RejZoR said in one of those forum threads:
Why is there no language selection? Shouldn't be more than 30 lines of code to do that.
That's exactly what I keep asking to myself...
Saturday, 28. February 2009, 05:10:55
X.org, linux, nvidia, gentoo
...
Lesson: if you have your Linux system running well, don't update the nvidia driver, and don't update your kernel. If you do, you might end up like me, with a non-working nvidia driver.
Read more...
Thursday, 17. July 2008, 17:24:39
linux, driver, nvidia, network
...
Guess what? The
legacy x11-drivers/nvidia-drivers-96.43.05 fails to compile on 2.6.26.
Let me try the version that I have on my laptop, which is
169.12... Huh? It fails to compile too.
Maybe I have better luck with the latest stable version on gentoo,
173.14.09. You should remember that
173.14.09 was completely messed up on my laptop, but maybe I have a better luck on my desktop.
Hum...
173.14.09 compiles fine. Let me reboot with the new kernel and try it. No, wait! *Almost* forgot to update
/boot/grub/grub.conf (
menu.lst on some systems; on mine, one is a symlink to the other). How many of you have rebooted a system but forgot to update the boot manager?
Rebooting... It boots! Let me try X.org and this nvidia driver... Good, it appears to work, at least for now. I need to keep an eye on it. We never know when it will crash.
And... does the Wi-Fi card work as I want it?Answer: I don't know yet!
I can confirm that I can put the card on ad-hoc mode, and that
wpa_supplicant tools on my notebook can detect a new wi-fi network that uses
IBSS. This is much better than
my previous try. I can finally feel that things might start working!
However, I could not associate with that network yet, and I'm not sure why. Since I am in a hurry, I can't investigate it yet.
Will it work for real? Will it work in ad-hoc mode? Will it work in the
very experimental master mode? Don't miss the answer to these questions, and also the answer to life, the universe, and everything in my next blog posts!
Friday, 4. July 2008, 02:16:00
nvidia, X.org, linux, gentoo
As usual, I'm here again to blog about... guess what? Problems with nvidia driver.
Right now I have an Asus M51Sn notebook, which has nvidia GeForce 9500M GS card. I'm using 64-bit
Gentoo/Linux with
vanilla kernel 2.6.25.5. At the time I installed it, the 2.6.25.x versions were not marked as
stable in Gentoo, but I chose to install it anyway. However, the then
stable x11-drivers/nvidia-drivers-169.09-r1 did not compile with those kernel versions (
bug 218178).
Solution? Well, I just installed the next version (
x11-drivers/nvidia-drivers-169.12) and it worked pretty well.
In fact, it worked very well until this week, when
x11-drivers/nvidia-drivers-173.14.09 was marked stable (but 169.12 was still ~testing). After this update, my
3D desktop simply stopped working. Well, it starts, I can start one app or two, but things are frozen or almost frozen in a weird way that it is simply not usable.
Solution? I'm going back to 169.12 version.
This comment on bug 218178 was a bit scary for me:
Which is why you use the latest stable version, 173.14.09 which is designed for
2.6.25.
What does that mean? Does that mean that 169.x series were not designed for 2.6.25? Or just that 169.09 was not designed, but 169.12 is ok (because it was left "undefined" in his comment)?
Well, anyway I'm masking 173.14.09. I'm going to stick with 169.12, at least this version works for me... until the next nvidia strike.
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