NVIDIA Open-Sources Tegra K1 Graphics Support 66
An anonymous reader writes "NVIDIA's next-generation Tegra K1 ARM processor now has open-source support for its Kepler-based graphics. NVIDIA decided to submit a large queue of patches to the open-source, reverse-engineered Nouveau project for supporting their ARM Kepler graphics with the open-source driver. The patches are still experimental but this is the first time NVIDIA has contributed open-source code to Nouveau."
Re:Nvidia has NOTHING to lose at this stage (Score:5, Insightful)
If you can't compete, make your documentation open-source in the hope this will boot-strap some extra business.
Too little too late. For YEARS we have been screaming for nvidia drivers that aren't buggy, closed and unstable, to the point of writing Nuveau, an open source hack (remarkably good but still crippled). Rot in hell, NVIDIA - I have wasted enough money on your hardware.
Re:Nvidia has NOTHING to lose at this stage (Score:4, Insightful)
"AMD also was all proprietary and their FOSS drivers are not as feature rich as the closed source."
Their Free drivers may not be as 'feature rich' but they're a heck of a lot more stable and compatible than the blobware.
I'm planning to buy new video hardware about the middle of the year and their chances of getting my money just went from 0 to... well to nonzero at least.
Re:Nvidia has NOTHING to lose at this stage (Score:2, Insightful)
The days where Intel's graphics sucked are long over. It's not the 1990s. Intel's graphics are pretty good. Intel's 3rd generation graphics were decent. Almost comparable at the low end with NVIDIA. The newer 4th generation stuff is pretty impressive although unfortunately Iris Pro has been restricted to integrated CPUs and thus no socketed CPUs have it. As a result motherboard manufacturers have chosen to opt out in protest. Nobody ships an Intel Iris Pro mini itx motherboard. In fact there are very few Iris Pro systems. I have one of the very few that exist in fact. It's an ultrabook-like form factor 14â screen.
Iris Pro is decent by laptop standards – reasonably competitive with Nvidia's mid-range discrete offerings (750M).
But on the desktop, even if you could get Iris Pro (which as you noted, you can't), it is decisively beaten by pretty much every graphics card over $100. You can't game at 1080p or use MadVR with maximum settings on Iris Pro.
To be competitive on the desktop, Intel needs something about as powerful as a Radeon HD 7850 or GeForce GTX 650 Ti Boost. As of now they aren't even close.