Benchmarks of nouveau latest code
Nouveau developers don’t stop to amaze me. Really.
Not only did they manage to reverse engineer one of the most complex chips is the world, but
the performance recently improved quite a lot:
This is low-mid end mobile Geforce 8400M GS card running at 1280×800.
| 3D application | nvidia binary (FPS) | nouveau (FPS) | comments |
|---|---|---|---|
| compiz | 220 | 300 | nouveau beats blob here! |
| neverball | 140 | 90 | the 1st level of easy pack, few seconds into the game |
| nexuiz | 160 | 80 | in tutorial level, just as you start it. Overall, in real play it levels around 50FPS (nouveau) |
| etracer | 120 | 50 | Level: secret valleys, default if you just hit ok,ok,ok… |
| supertuxkart | 100 | 30 | level: race track |
| TORCS | 80 | 17 | default level on quick race |
| Alien arena | 45 | 25 | nouvaeu had blinking artifacts, cured by disabling compiz – game was full screen, default game level |
| Sauerbraten | 45 | 20 | Highest settings, the big valley level |
So, nouveau is slower, but it is around 50%-30% of blob performance, and thats is actually better that other open source drivers!
And that with zero documentation!
And since today is special, that is really not a hoax, just ask nouveau developers.
Of course, to achieve these figures I set the card to the highest performance level (blob does that too) and used latest git versions of all nouveau components.
I own my computer 
How did you set the card to the highest performance level?
I want to set it to the lowest. Please let me know
Well, you need to load the nouveau module with option perflvl_wr=7777
This is done on purpose because perf level switch isn’t stable, and so I must warn you too that it can destroy physically your card.
Then you choose perf levels like this:
echo $LEVEL > /sys/class/drm/card0/device/performance_level
Or you can specify the level on boot using perflvl=$LEVEL module option in addition of course to perflvl_wr=7777
I suggest you to just join #nouveau irc channel on freenode and ask the developers.
They are quite friendly.
thanx a lot!
my laptop’s burning at 80 degrees maybe this will calm it down a bit
did you apply any patches?
where did you get the code?