NAME

nouveau – NVIDIA video driver  

SYNOPSIS

Section "Device"
  Identifier "devname"
  Driver "nouveau"
  …
EndSection
 

DESCRIPTION

nouveau is an Xorg driver for NVIDIA video cards. The driver supports 2D acceleration and provides support for the following framebuffer depths: (15,) 16 and 24. TrueColor visuals are supported for these depths.

 

SUPPORTED HARDWARE

The nouveau driver supports PCI, PCI-Express and AGP video cards based on the following NVIDIA chips:
RIVA TNT
NV4
RIVA TNT2
NV5
GeForce 256, QUADRO
NV10
GeForce2, QUADRO2
NV11 & NV15
GeForce3, QUADRO DCC
NV20
nForce, nForce2
NV1A, NV1F
GeForce4, QUADRO4
NV17, NV18, NV25, NV28
GeForce FX, QUADRO FX
NV30, NV31, NV34, NV35, NV36, NV37, NV38
GeForce 6XXX
NV40, NV41, NV43, NV44, NV45, C51, MCP61
GeForce 7XXX
G70, G71, G72, G73, MCP67, MCP68, MCP73
GeForce 8XXX, 9XXX, 2XX, 3XX
G80, G84, G86, G92, G94, G96, G98, G200, GT215, GT216, GT218, MCP77, MCP79, MCP89
GeForce 4XX, 5XX
GF100, GF104, GF106, GF108, GF110, GF114, GF116, GF117, GF119
GeForce 6XX, 7XX
GK104, GK106, GK107, GK110, GK208
GeForce GTX 750
GM107

 

CONFIGURATION DETAILS

Please refer to xorg.conf(5) for general configuration details. This section only covers configuration details specific to this driver.

The driver auto-detects the chipset type and the amount of video memory present for all chips.

The following driver Options are supported:

Option "HWCursor" "boolean"
Enable or disable the HW cursor. Default: on.
Option "AccelMethod" "string"
Specify the acceleration method. One of "none", "exa", or "glamor". Default: exa, except for GMxxx which default to glamor.
Option "NoAccel" "boolean"
Disable or enable acceleration. Default: acceleration is enabled.
Option "ShadowFB" "boolean"
Enable or disable use of the shadow framebuffer layer. Default: off.
Option "WrappedFB" "boolean"
Enable or disable wfb, only affects nv50+. Useful for some legacy configurations where high rendering latency is perceived. Default: wfb is disabled.
Option "GLXVBlank" "boolean"
Synchronize GLX clients to VBlank. Useful where tearing is a problem, harmful if the GPU isn’t fast enough to keep up with the monitor refresh rate. Default: on.
Option "ZaphodHeads" "string"
Specify the randr output(s) to use with zaphod mode for a particular driver instance. If you use this option you most use this option for all instances of the driver.
For example: Option "ZaphodHeads" "LVDS,VGA-0" will assign xrandr outputs LVDS and VGA-0 to this instance of the driver.
Option "PageFlip" "boolean"
Enable DRI2 page flipping. Default: on.
Option "SwapLimit" "integer"
Set maximum allowed number of pending OpenGL double-buffer swaps for a drawable before a client is blocked.
A value of 1 corresponds to double-buffering. A value of 2 corresponds to triple-buffering. Higher values may allow higher framerate, but also increase lag for interactive applications, e.g., games. Nouveau currently reliably supports a maximum value of 2 on XOrg 1.12+. A maximum setting of 2 on older x-servers is allowed, but it will break conformance with the OpenML OML_sync_control specification and will cause failure of software that relies on correct presentation timing behaviour as defined in that specification.
Default: 1.
 

Willie has over 15 years of experience in Linux system administration and DevOps. After managing infrastructure for startups and enterprises alike, he founded Command Linux to share the practical knowledge he wished he had when starting out. He oversees content strategy and contributes guides on server management, automation, and security.