NVIDIA
NVIDIA is a popular graphical chipset manufacturer. NVIDIA GPUs can use either the open source (nouveau, x11-drivers/xf86-video-nouveau ) or proprietary (closed source) drivers (nvidia-drivers, x11-drivers/nvidia-drivers ).
Which driver to choose?
For best performance in heavy 3D workloads and games, the proprietary driver is usually preferred, especially on newer hardware. It is available only on amd64 and arm64. For older/legacy GPUs, the open-source Nouveau driver may be a viable option as NVIDIA is actively phasing out support for these older cards in the proprietary driver.
Feature support
| Chipset | Code name | Series | OpenGL | OpenCL | VAAPI [1] / VDPAU | Vulkan | CUDA compute capability [2] | Latest nvidia-drivers support[3] | Open source kernel module support[4] | nouveau support[5] |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| NV04 | Fahrenheit | Riva TNT, Riva TNT2 | 1.2 | No | No | No | No | 71.86.xx | No | Yes |
| NV10 | Celsius | GeForce 256, GeForce 2, GeForce 4 MX | 1.2 | No | No | No | No | 71.86.xx | No | Yes |
| NV20 | Kelvin | GeForce 3, GeForce 4 Ti | 1.3 | No | No | No | No | 96.43.xx | No | Yes |
| NV30 | Rankine | GeForce 5 / GeForce FX | 1.5 | No | No | No | No | 173.14.xx | No | Yes |
| NV40 | Curie | GeForce 6, GeForce 7 | 2.1 | No | No | No | No | 304.xx | No | Yes |
| NV50 | Tesla | GeForce 8, GeForce 9, GeForce 100, GeForce 200, GeForce 300 | 3.3 | No | Yes | No | 1.1 | 340.xx | No | Yes |
| NVC0 | Fermi | GeForce 400, GeForce 500 | 4.6 | 1.1 / 1.2 | Yes | No | 2.1 | 390.xx | No | Yes |
| NVE0 | Kepler | GeForce 600, GeForce 700, GeForce GTX Titan | 4.6 | 1.1 / 1.2 | Yes | 1.2 / 1.3 | 3.0 | 470.xx | No | 3.14 |
| NV110 | Maxwell | GeForce 700, GeForce 900 | 4.6 | 3.0 | Yes | 1.4 | 5.2 | 580.xx[6] | No | 4.6 |
| NV130 | Pascal | GeForce 10 series | 4.6 | 3.0 | Yes | 1.4 | 6.1 | 580.xx[6] | No | 4.8 |
| NV140 | Volta | Titan V | 4.6 | 3.0 | Yes | 1.4 | 7.0 | 580.xx[6] | No | 4.19 |
| NV160 | Turing | GeForce 16 series, GeForce 20 series | 4.6 | 3.0 | Yes | 1.4 | 7.5 | latest | Yes | 6.7 |
| NV170 | Ampere | GeForce 30 series | 4.6 | 3.0 | Yes | 1.4 | 8.7 | latest | Yes | 6.7 |
| AD10x | Ada Lovelace | GeForce 40 series | 4.6 | 3.0 | Yes | 1.4 | 8.9 | latest | Yes | 6.7 |
| GB20x | Blackwell | GeForce 50 series | 4.6 | 3.0 | Yes | 1.4 | 12.0 | latest | Yes | No |
A full list of NVIDIA GPU capabilities can be found here.
Hybrid GPUs systems
Some systems allows seamlessly switches between two GPUs. It is typically used on systems that have an integrated Intel GPU and a discrete NVIDIA GPU. The main benefit of using that technology is to extend battery life by providing maximum GPU performance only when needed.
See the Hybrid graphics article for steps to enable this function.
Available software and articles
- NVIDIA/nvidia-drivers — The x11-drivers/nvidia-drivers package contains the proprietary graphics driver for NVIDIA graphic cards.
- Nouveau — an open source driver for NVIDIA graphic cards.
- Hybrid graphics — details the system management of NVIDIA or AMD switchable graphics and Intel hybrid graphics.
- Nouveau & nvidia-drivers switching — describes how to switch between NVIDIA's binary driver and the open source nouveau driver.