A new benchmark analysis examines the performance of open-source Nouveau and Mesa drivers against NVIDIA's proprietary 580 series on Linux, focusing on aging Maxwell and Pascal GPUs as support ends. The tests highlight significant limitations in re-clocking and power management for GeForce 900 and 1000 series cards. Newer Turing and beyond GPUs fare better with GSP support.
As NVIDIA's 590 Linux driver series drops support for the GeForce 900 series Maxwell and GeForce 10 series Pascal graphics cards, shifting them to a legacy branch, users face choices between sticking with the 580 series or relying on upstream open-source alternatives. The 580 series, version 580.95.05, remains available in Ubuntu repositories, while the open-source path involves the Nouveau kernel driver paired with NVK in Mesa 26.0-devel on Linux 6.18.
Open-source support varies by generation. First-generation Maxwell cards like the GTX 750 and GTX 945A enable re-clocking for proper performance. However, the GM200-based GTX 900 series introduced signed firmware requirements, preventing Nouveau from achieving full power management and leaving GPUs stuck at low boot clock speeds. Similarly, Pascal GTX 1000 series cards suffer the same constraints, lacking effective re-clocking. In contrast, the GeForce GTX 700 series offers complete open-source compatibility without firmware hurdles, allowing manual clock adjustments to rated frequencies.
Turing architecture, starting with the RTX 20 series, improved the landscape by introducing the GPU System Processor (GSP) for handling power tasks. Nouveau leverages NVIDIA-released GSP firmware, enabling better support for RTX 20 and newer cards. The emerging Rust-based Nova kernel driver, developed with NVIDIA input, also focuses on GSP for these generations.
Benchmarks conducted on an AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D system running Ubuntu 25.10 tested x80 series cards, including GTX 980 Ti, GTX 1080, RTX 2080 SUPER, RTX 3080 Ti, RTX 4080, and RTX 5080. Hardware issues arose: the GTX 980 and GTX 1080 often failed to POST on the ASRock X870E Taichi motherboard, limiting NVIDIA driver tests. For the RTX 4080 Founder's Edition, Nouveau caused DisplayPort signal loss, yielding no data. Tests focused on OpenGL and Vulkan games suitable for underclocked older cards, plus Vulkan compute and OpenCL workloads via Rusticl Gallium3D, which supports OpenCL 3.0.
These results underscore the challenges for Maxwell2 and Pascal users in open-source environments, recommending GTX 700 or Turing-and-newer for robust Linux compatibility.
