Nvidia on Linux: Is It FINALLY Good Enough for Gaming? Deep dive, performance, features in fall 2024

This video explores the latest Nvidia driver performance on Linux, comparing it to Windows and highlighting both successes and ongoing challenges for specific games. Expect insights into future improvements and a discussion on the overall outlook for Nvidia Linux gaming! Enjoy!

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Software used:
►CachyOS (Arch BTW)
►GIMP
►DaVinci Resolve Studio 19

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Keywords: #LinuxGaming, #A1RM4X, #nvidia , #linux

Chapters:
00:00 Intro
06:53 Open Source drivers?
09:38 Understanding the graphic stack
12:54 Performance examples
17:39 Which Nvidia card to avoid?
19:11 Other issues
20:40 Features supported on Linux (ie DLSS, Reflex, etc...)
26:53 Final Thoughts

[mostly.harmless]

Heads up: as of 25 NOV 2024, DLSS Frame Generation is now available through Proton Experimental

[iExpertxCx]

Thank you for your videos, rare to see someone explain in-depth Linux layers

[coocoobau]

To me today, one of the biggest factors for gaming smoothness, was enabling adaptive sync in KDE Plasma on Wayland.

[Mattscreative]

it's been more than enough for gaming god since the first release of dxvk and onward it was never an issue until wayland came along and used implicit sync which was an outdated horrid method for sync which wasted frames and NVIDIA spent nearly 3 years building explicit sync for Linux and than 555 changed everything and nvidia has been 99% perfect on wayland also minus some distro being so outdated like ubuntu and mint and debian they don't have 560 drivers or Xwayland 24.1 to support proper wayland.

Upcoming nvidia driver will fix : 1. VRR on multi monitor 2. HDR 3. buttload of otherbugs and issues 4. more wayland support! 5. 6.12 kernel support without hacks

[dinckelman]

With a 1080ti on 560.35.03 and latest Kwin on Wayland, i genuinely don't have a single problem anymore

[solarpowder]

Hi A1RM4X, thanks for the great video! About the Undervolt topic:
i have undervolted my 4070Ti on CachyOS in Wayland to a fixed Voltage (900mV) in my case. That being said, it is not straight forward. There is a an instruction for it on the official CachyOS Wiki.
In short: You will set the minimum and maximum frequency of your GPU. Based on that Max Frequency, the driver will have a max Voltage. In my case i set my max Frequency to 2550MHz and thus get a max voltage of 900mV (you are basically parsing through the Frequency-Voltage curve by picking the Frequency).
The clue is now, that you set a Offset frequency value, in my case 150MHz. This will increase the GPU frequency under load by that 150MHz, BUT WITHOUT increasing the Voltage. Therefore, i reduce my GPU power usage from 280W to 170W with a performance decrease of about 5% (measured in Unigine Heaven).

I will not say it is easy or fool proof to set up, but it is certainly possible to get a good undervolt (I get the same performance/power numbers in WIndows). Again, this is based on a CachyOS Wiki instruction.

Cheers!

[borantube]

I'm a long time Linux and Nvidia user. One of the only reason that keeps lots of people stay away from Linux like me is undervolting. There are ways to do power limiting etc but I couldn't make any of them to work. It would be amazing if you can show a nvidia undervolting video. Its also very strange that there is no video about this on youtube. Thanks

[blunelson]

I would still go with an AMD RX/XT/XTX GPU CARDS.

While its good to know that Nvidia Support is improving, it seems like its not going to be big compared to AMD GPUs, which haves much MUCH better support than Nvidia on Linux.

My advise? Go with the PC/Laptop that at least haves AMD RX/RTX GPUs within.

[pju]

thank you for your effort and explanation! - Greetings from Austria

[RinLovesYou]

My experience without watching:

Yeah it's "fine" but still suffers from random issues here and there. For VR (foss) we need custom vulkan layers and some weird patches in monado. Wayland is fine now as well but the road has been rocky. Every driver release some new random issue crops up, gets fixed in the next one which introduces its own new weird issue. 555 just borked VR by having broken fence logic, 560 started out with pipewire capture issues, etc etc. i am so looking forward to nvk

[magnummer]

I used various distros from 2008 to 2020. But got really tired of having to fix small little issues here and there. And I remember wayland being borderline unusable back then.
For example, I remember installing flatpack apps and having it install old versions of the nvidia driver and never deleting them automatically. To the point where some text editor was using multiple gb of space and forcing me to fix that manually.

I wonder, is it a plug and play experience now? Like, can I just install the OS and do absolutely zero tinkering before using it? Like, will the fractional scaling not only work but be configured out of the box on my 4k screen like in other OS's?

[SvenHeidemann-uoyl]

I have the bios of my 980ti modified to run undervolted.
Would Linux ignore my bios settings?

[GedebeKomain]

dear brother can you make a video for amd gpus in linux with this format? discussing which features are available or not in linux?

[alexmit]

what is that app which he is using to draw sketches on screen called?

[wise-succubin]

did you text x11 performance with compositor on or off? because disable compositing boosts fps dramatically

[sjoer]

Finally good enough?

I've been gaming on nVidia on Linux for over a decade...

[cybernit]

So by you using Hyprland instead of Kwin (KDE Plasma) this will help a little decrease the % loss in fps by like 2-5% estimated? In the future like you said for the Nvidia driver patches will improve things but also Wine/Proton will work better using Wayland fully and try to eliminate XWayland being used. Another thing hopefully more game titles will be ported to Linux (Native).Thank you for explaining about all this.

[Flixerine]

I really like this Linux hype train that we are on right now, so tempted to switch to Linux on my gaming desktop as well.

[questytw]

Is the gsync multi monitor also a problem on wayland? sadly the control panel on wayland is basicaly empty so i cant activate the gsync status watermark

[Apemania]

good video, i am on AMD atm but knowledge is knowledge.
rly hope the bigger marketshare linux get the better it get with software. like amd radeon suite is very nice with the tools it gives you, same for nvidia on windows. both are lackluster on linux sadly and hope we got like the big one linux os for all so devs go more into linux software for us all
SteamOS could be the one as they now work together with Arch for the system