the context is: the 470 legacy driver doesn’t compile on the linux 6.12 kernel. because of that, debian decided to officially drop support to that driver. i tried installing the driver myself using nvidia’s official installer, but the installation indeed fails during the module compilation stage.

this means i am stuck with nouveau. it got better since i last tested it on bookworm, but one major pain in the ass is that nouveau has no support for performance levels for my card and it runs at the lowest clock bc of that (~400 megahertz instead of its max ~900 mhz).

this causes a noticeable performance hit, even for desktop usage, but it’s good enough for work. waching full hd 60 fps video is a bit painful, but it’s possible. but gaming, which was possible, got way worse. even a lightweight game like celeste got frustrating to play due to stuttering.

i guess i’ll have to deal with it and maybe this is the cue to buy another graphics card and never buy nvidia again, but i’m thinking about what my options would be here:

  1. downgrade to bookworm. not easy to do, would only delay the problem.
  2. install an older kernel and use only that. not sure how, the official repos only have the 6.12 kernel. i could get the older kernel from the bookworm backports and pin it to prevent any updates, but mixing repos from different versions makes me uneasy.
  3. patch the driver. there are a few patches floating around that make nvidia’s driver compile on the 6.12 kernel. applying the patch by hand is annoying and i would have to re-apply it at every kernel update.
  4. cope.

any ideas?

edit

and it runs at the lowest clock bc of that (~400 megahertz instead of its max ~900 mhz).

that was a mistake. i was reading the clock off of my onboard video chip, which also happens to be nvidia. the onboard chip is at .../dri/0; my graphics card is at .../dri/1. nouveau seems to support reclocking for my card, but i’m trying to change the clock and the video signal goes crazy when i do it

  • beleza pura@lemmy.eco.brOP
    8·
    2 days ago

    i’m actually okay with hardware suggestions, but they tend to be useless since a $50 or 40€ graphics card normally translates to a R$900 one. a few factors contribute to this

    1. exchange rates. currently, 1USD ~= 5,5BRL
    2. purchasing power. the avg income of brazil is around ~$8500/yr. 1USD is way more money to us than it is to usians and euros
    3. taxes. based on exchange rates alone, $50 converts to around R$270, but most electronics in brazil are imported and are subject to heavy taxation. the “$50 video card” recommended to me by someone in the comments is sold online for R$870 at its cheapest.

    although i’m talking specifically about brazil, the same applies to any other emergent market (the rest of latam, india, etc).

    this is why hardware recommendations are rarely useful to us. i’m still open to them, though. once in a while something useful pops up.

    • Echedelle (she/her)@lemmy.blahaj.zone
      4·
      2 days ago

      I am aware too of the Brazil case, specially for imports, the taxes and the inflation.

      I have a friend there. I know that my options did not cover the difficulty of import and taxes because I tend to be general. I know that for GPUs and such, unless you want to pay the expensive pricing you have inside from people who scam locals (people who import laptops from US at 200 and sell at 800 as example), must be gotten from outside and such.