this post was submitted on 01 Jul 2025
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Curious about performance of nouveau on old laptops with discrete graphics (lemmy.ml)
submitted 3 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) by monovergent@lemmy.ml to c/linux@lemmy.ml
12 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

Got myself a Dell Latitude ~~E4310~~ E6410 and Thinkpad T510 for free, both with discrete Nvidia graphics soldered to the mainboard. I've installed Linux on them and just went with the nouveau driver since the proprietary Nvidia driver for such old cards is no longer in the Debian 12 repo. Not going to do anything cutting edge on them, but it does leave me wondering:

  • I read that I could, with some effort, install the proprietary driver manually. Am I missing out on anything at all without them, or is nouveau mature enough and the graphics old enough that I wouldn't notice?
  • Is nouveau with old discrete graphics better or worse than having just Intel's integrated graphics?
  • Does power consumption vary significantly between nouveau and proprietary drivers?

EDIT

Answering myself after going down a rabbit hole with the T510:

  1. The dGPU is the NVS 3100M, which does have some level of hardware acceleration support under nouveau, so at least it isn't draining power for zero benefit. However, the dGPU is unable to go past its lowest power state without manually manipulating /sys/kernel/debug/dri/0/pstate (I did not try to) and I suspect that this is what kneecaps 3D performance. There should be a marked difference, but I won't be doing any serious work on these machines, so I'm leaving everything as-is.

  2. This situation is worse than having just integrated graphics due to the inherent power consumption of the GPU core while unable to benefit from higher power states and other optimizations.

  3. Power consumption is probably less, but for much worse performance. At least it is a much better fallback than leaving at maximum.

  • A later variant has the BIOS option to disable the dGPU, mine is an early variant with no options
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[–] nyan@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 day ago

One thing to keep in mind about older versions of the nvidia proprietary drivers is that they will only work with specific kernel versions (and specific X versions—not sure about Wayland). Once the driver series your card needs stops being updated, you can't update your kernel without patching the driver. Assuming you have the skills to patch the driver, or someone who does makes their patches public.

I went through this song-and-dance with a very old laptop that had a card of the NV40 generation as its only GPU (no integrated graphics). Eventually I did install nouveau on it, and used it for several years without any issues.

[–] DaPorkchop_@lemmy.ml 4 points 2 days ago

In my experience, nouveau is painfully slow and crashes constantly to the point of being virtually unusable for anything. The developers agree, as in the last couple months nouveau has been phased out of Mesa entirely. More recent Mesa versions now implement OpenGL on Nvidia using Zink on NVK, and the result is quite a bit faster and FAR more stable.

If your distribution currently still ships a Mesa version which uses nouveau, I would personally recommend you just stick with the Intel graphics for now.

[–] just_another_person@lemmy.world 6 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (2 children)

  1. No, you can't install the drivers manually if they aren't supported. Nvidia does rolling driver releases removing aged out hardware, and the drivers do not support new versions with older hardware. Same with Windows.

  2. Nouveau is the only option you have as far as hardware acceleration goes, but if these are laptops, you'd be better off just using the Intel graphics, because that's what's available, and they are very power efficient.

  3. Power consumption is immediately bad once you engage the Nvidia hardware. Disable it in the BIOS. You won't have better performance in any meaningful way, just horrible battery life, especially since these are devices so old the modern drivers won't support the hardware.

[–] piexil@lemmy.world 3 points 3 days ago

Re: 1, there are some community efforts to keep the drivers alive longer.

[–] monovergent@lemmy.ml 2 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Neither laptop BIOS offers the option to disable discrete graphics :(

[–] fuckwit_mcbumcrumble@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (2 children)

Are you sure? I know the successor the T420 supports disabling the graphics. I dont think my 410 ever had it though. It's under display settings in the bios. Not sure about dell though, they might not have had it.

https://download.lenovo.com/bsco/index.html#/textsimulator/ThinkPad%20W530%20(2447,2436,2438,2439,2441,2449,2463)

Lenovo's bios simulator sadly only goes as old as the T530. But it's config > display > graphics device.

[–] monovergent@lemmy.ml 3 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

Unfortunately, I'm only given a choice between Boot Display Devices under that menu.

edit: Apparently, there is a menu for it if the T510 is a later model with Optimus support. Early dGPU variants like mine are forced to use the discrete graphics, even if the BIOS is hacked to reveal the menu.

[–] brickfrog@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 3 days ago

Perhaps just uninstalling Nouveau and falling back to the Intel driver, if it's already installed, is sufficient? Or if that doesn't work, worst case OP could blacklist Nouveau and and update initramfs? I'm just guessing as long as the Nvidia driver is never actually active perhaps that's enough to avoid excess power consumption.

OTOH there isn't much harm in OP keeping Nouveau enabled and seeing how things go though I'm in agreement with you, on an older laptop there's not much advantage to be gained with the older Nvidia hardware.

[–] eugenia@lemmy.ml 3 points 3 days ago

Honestly, if these laptops also have Intel gpus, just use these to do your 2D work. And if you feel adventurous, then install the 390 drivers as secondary, only for the apps that need computing (e.g. Blender). For anything else, just use Intel, they work great for both video and 2D desktop acceleration.

[–] StrangeAstronomer@lemmy.ml 2 points 3 days ago

voidlinux still has the 390 drivers available. I'm sure others do too:

[-] nvidia390-390.157_6 NVIDIA drivers (GeForce 400, 500 series) - Libraries and Utilities [-] nvidia390-dkms-390.157_6 NVIDIA drivers (GeForce 400, 500 series) - DKMS kernel module [-] nvidia390-gtklibs-390.157_6 NVIDIA drivers (GeForce 400, 500 series) - GTK+ libraries [-] nvidia390-libs-390.157_6 NVIDIA drivers (GeForce 400, 500 series) - common libraries [-] nvidia390-opencl-390.157_6 NVIDIA drivers (GeForce 400, 500 series) - OpenCL implementation

[–] ogeist@lemmy.world 1 points 2 days ago

For Arch.

Check here for your card: https://nouveau.freedesktop.org/CodeNames.html#NV160

Check here for which driver to install: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/NVIDIA

[–] glitching@lemmy.ml 1 points 3 days ago

don't know about that latitude, but for the thinkpad you'd do well to disable the nvidia graphics in BIOS setup. intel graphics is adequate for daily stuff and you can actually use the thing as a mobile device i.e. on battery,