NVIDIA
NVIDIA is a popular graphical chipset manufacturer. NVIDIA GPUs can use either open source (nouveau, x11-drivers/xf86-video-nouveau) or proprietary (closed source) drivers (nvidia-drivers, x11-drivers/nvidia-drivers).
Which driver to choose?
Because it is more up-to-date and efficient, the proprietary driver is often seen as a must-have for more computationally intensive 3D applications and games. At the same time, NVIDIA is gradually ending support for older GPUs. A proprietary driver is available on a limited number of architectures, currently only for amd64 and arm64. These limitations may lead to the fact that the only alternative can only be the open source nouveau driver.
Feature support
| Chipset | Code name | Series | OpenGL | OpenCL | VAAPI / VDPAU | Vulkan | CUDA[1] | Latest nvidia-drivers support[2] | nouveau support[3] |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| NV04 | Fahrenheit | Riva TNT, Riva TNT2 | 1.2 | No | No | No | No | 71.86.xx | Yes |
| NV10 | Celsius | GeForce 256, GeForce 2, GeForce 4 MX | 1.2 | No | No | No | No | 71.86.xx | Yes |
| NV20 | Kelvin | GeForce 3, GeForce 4 Ti | 1.3 | No | No | No | No | 96.43.xx | Yes |
| NV30 | Rankine | GeForce 5 / GeForce FX | 1.5 | No | No | No | No | 173.14.xx | Yes |
| NV40 | Curie | GeForce 6, GeForce 7 | 2.1 | No | No | No | No | 304.xx | Yes |
| NV50 | Tesla | GeForce 8, GeForce 9, GeForce 100, GeForce 200, GeForce 300 | 3.3 | No | Yes | No | 1.1 | 340.xx | Yes |
| NVC0 | Fermi | GeForce 400, GeForce 500 | 4.6 | 1.1 / 1.2 | Yes | No | 2.1 | 390.xx | Yes |
| NVE0 | Kepler | GeForce 600, GeForce 700, GeForce GTX Titan | 4.6 | 1.1 / 1.2 | Yes | 1.2 / 1.3 | 3.0 | 470.xx | 3.14 |
| NV110 | Maxwell | GeForce 700, GeForce 900 | 4.6 | 3.0 | Yes | 1.3 | 5.2 | latest | 4.6 |
| NV130 | Pascal | GeForce 10 series | 4.6 | 3.0 | Yes | 1.3 | 6.1 | latest | 4.8 |
| NV140 | Volta | Titan V | 4.6 | 3.0 | Yes | 1.3 | 7.0 | latest | 4.19 |
| NV160 | Turing | GeForce 16 series, GeForce 20 series | 4.6 | 3.0 | Yes | 1.3 | 7.5 | latest | 6.7 |
| NV170 | Ampere | GeForce 30 series | 4.6 | 3.0 | Yes | 1.3 | 8.7 | latest | 6.7 |
| AD10x | Ada Lovelace | GeForce 40 series | 4.6 | 3.0 | Yes | 1.3 | 8.9 | latest | 6.7 |
A full list of NVIDIA GPU capabilities is here.
Hybrid GPUs systems
Some systems allows seamlessly switches between two GPUs. It is typically used on systems that have an integrated Intel GPU and a discrete NVIDIA GPU. The main benefit of using that technology is to extend battery life by providing maximum GPU performance only when needed.
Proprietary implementation from NVIDIA called Optimus and it could be used only with nvidia-drivers. For an open source implementation of Optimus that can be used on systems with nouveau driver, see Bumblebee.
Available software and articles
- NVIDIA/nvidia-drivers — The x11-drivers/nvidia-drivers package contains the proprietary graphics driver for NVIDIA graphic cards.
- Nouveau — the open source driver for NVIDIA graphic cards.
- NVIDIA/Optimus — a proprietary technology that seamlessly switches between two GPUs.
- NVIDIA/Bumblebee — an open source implementation of NVIDIA Optimus.
- Nouveau & nvidia-drivers switching — describes how to switch between NVIDIA's binary driver and the open source nouveau driver.
- Hybrid graphics — details the system management of NVIDIA or AMD switchable graphics and Intel hybrid graphics.