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It seems to be a busy weekend! NVIDIA have put out a new version of their Vulkan beta driver and it's an interesting one.

Today, NVIDIA 415.22.05 became available and as expected of this driver series it adds in new Vulkan extensions. Specifically, it adds support for VK_KHR_depth_stencil_resolve, VK_EXT_buffer_device_address, VK_EXT_memory_budget, VK_EXT_memory_priority (only for Windows currently) and VK_EXT_pci_bus_info.

The extra interesting bit is the improvement they listed in this driver version. They mention that it has "Better pipeline creation performance when there is a cache hit" so it will be an interesting driver to test out. Good to see NVIDIA continue working on performance!

Find the driver info here.

For those on Ubuntu wishing to test out the beta driver, there is this PPA which sadly hasn't been updated since October last year. Hopefully they will get moving on that sometime soon. I'm unsure how other distributions handle beta drivers like this, hopefully they make it easy.

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dubigrasu Jan 7, 2019
Quoting: mahagrI don't know what are their reasons to keep the drivers closed source, but some likely reasons are legal issues, code quality or hardware secrets.
I've read somewhere (sorry, forgot the source) that among whatever reasons they may have to keep the code secret, are also partnership agreements with various external companies using their hardware/drivers, due to bits of code not owned by them (nVidia).
slaapliedje Jan 8, 2019
Quoting: mahagr
Quoting: dubigrasuAt the same time I don't remember the drivers stuck on performance mode while in desktop mode, sure the modes were alternating depending on desktop activity, but stuck on max power, no.

For me my GTX 1080 Ti is always in the p0 state (max clocks) until I switch to the console. There's a known issue for this in nVidia bug tracker as well as a public thread in nVidia forums. I am running my computer with two 4K G-Sync monitors, which seems to make the issue worse. Windows shares the same power management code, but the difference between Windows and Linux is that in Windows they have information if more draw calls are coming to the pipeline or not, which allows the graphics card to go to a lower power state earlier.

I agree that keeping the clocks high is great when you're gaming (but only if your game needs 100% of your GPU), but it's not great if your card runs hot 24/7 and never stops the fans because of the power saving doesn't work for a few users.

Do not get me wrong: I am and have been nVidia user for a long time (just threw away a broken GT 8800 card among with some other old hardware) and I will likely be using nVidia graphics cards in the future, too.

PS. Regarding to my first comment on nVidia Linux driver quality.. That came from an nVidia employee who I know. I have also worked in a few companies where the main reason not to release source code was a bad code quality (not because of bad workers but because of there was no time to polish the code).
Try this?

https://forums.geforce.com/default/topic/454144/geforce-drivers/190-42-linux-how-to-change-powermizer-settings-to-underclock-gpu-/
mahagr Jan 8, 2019
@slaapliedje Like the poster said, it will not work, I already tried it.
Purple Library Guy Jan 8, 2019
Quoting: jens
Quoting: Purple Library GuyI've never talked to Mussolini, and yet I feel fairly confident in calling him a jerk and reject the idea that it is cheap to do so.

If people's actions and statements are on the public record one can often be quite justified in forming judgements about their character without actually meeting them. I don't personally know whether the information about NVidia management is such as to justify such a judgement, but it certainly could be; insisting personal contact is needed is just mistaken.
And actually contrariwise, it's also possible to have met and talked to someone and not have the information you would need to determine whether they're a jerk. So personal contact is neither necessary nor sufficient for knowledge of jerk-hood.

Well, yes and no ;)
Your statement is technically completely correct and you have effectively proven that my statement is wrong. :)

That said, my opinion is still that I grant people the advantage if I don't know them. Lets say "innocent until proven guilty". Furthermore I draw quite a clear distinction between judging actions of someone "his actions are jerky" versus judging the person itself "he is a jerk". Actually I'm quite sensible on this, may be that's why my reactions here were quite strong. I do agree that there are actual jerks out there that deserve to be called jerks. Though I'm pretty convinced that the typical manager of a company is doing the best in his capabilities to help his company and his team to prosper. There are most likely jerks among them, but as stated, I prefer to grant advantage and prefer not to judge the person based on actions that seem jerky to me or anybody else. I'm fine with calling some action jerky, but I prefer to keep the respect of the actual person until there is really no way to misjudge like with your example.

Related to that a question, how offending is the word "jerk"? I, non native English speaker, would give it lets say a 6 on a scale from 1 (like you would talk with kids when they behave somewhat clumsy) to 10 (very offending). Is this correct?

On a side note: I understand that your example was to effectively highlight your point and not to compare a random NVidia manager with Mussolini. With the last US election I decided for myself to skip pseudo comparisons with actual criminals of mankind. During that time you could read quite some columns of people that compared the new US administration with the German Nazi regime. As a response to that I read in another column that no matter how "evil" one thinks of the new Potus, he is not and will most likely never be a mass murderer of millions of people. That is a completely different magnitude. Any comparison like this will not paint a better picture of what to expect in the future but will only soften/weaken the crimes of the Nazi regime and hurt the victims of that time.
I decided for myself to keep that in mind. As stated, I did not read that comparison in your statement, but I thought I would share this.
Fair enough.
Jerk is fairly mild . . . I suppose it depends who you're talking to, but I might rate it a 5, or even a 4. It's not a cussword, for one thing. And I'd probably consider it milder than "creep", and certainly milder than "scum". It suggests an unpleasant, deliberately inconsiderate person, but not deep immorality or massive inferiority. Someone who would inconvenience other people in traffic so they can move two car-lengths ahead is a jerk.

As to the political thing . . . (spoilering because it's OT and will probably bore most)
Spoiler, click me
it has certainly become all too common for people, apparently seriously, to make that comparison, which does devalue it. Saddam was Hitler, Ahmadinejad was Hitler, Assad was Hitler, Gaddhafi was Hitler, Putin is Hitler, now Trump is Hitler. And I'd have to agree that Trump is . . . no more likely than any other president of the United States to become responsible for the deaths of millions of people. Which is to say, only moderately likely. I believe George W. Bush's total in Iraq if you count all excess deaths from the Iraq invasion is around a million, while Clinton's sanctions on Iraq killed around half a million children (which was not disputed by his secretary of state, but deemed "worth it"). It's unclear just how many Obama did in in Libya, Afghanistan etc. but not a huge total by US presidential standards. The Vietnam war killed a couple million Vietnamese (and Laotians and Cambodians), but that was spread over multiple presidents. So I'm not aware of any individual president that could singlehandedly have millions, plural, ascribed to their account. Trump, for all his failings, seems no more aggressive, and sometimes less so, than the general US foreign policy consensus, so unless he actually goes for an invasion of Iran I'd say millions are pretty unlikely.
kido Jan 8, 2019
I have a big trouble with this driver. In ETS2 i have a glitch and freeze graphics. Back to 396.54.09
slaapliedje Jan 8, 2019
Quoting: mahagr@slaapliedje Like the poster said, it will not work, I already tried it.
Huh, seemed to work well on my laptop, and my battery actually went from 2.5 hours to like 5.
jens Jan 8, 2019
  • Supporter
Quoting: Purple Library Guy
Quoting: jens
Quoting: Purple Library GuyI've never talked to Mussolini, and yet I feel fairly confident in calling him a jerk and reject the idea that it is cheap to do so.

If people's actions and statements are on the public record one can often be quite justified in forming judgements about their character without actually meeting them. I don't personally know whether the information about NVidia management is such as to justify such a judgement, but it certainly could be; insisting personal contact is needed is just mistaken.
And actually contrariwise, it's also possible to have met and talked to someone and not have the information you would need to determine whether they're a jerk. So personal contact is neither necessary nor sufficient for knowledge of jerk-hood.

Well, yes and no ;)
Your statement is technically completely correct and you have effectively proven that my statement is wrong. :)

That said, my opinion is still that I grant people the advantage if I don't know them. Lets say "innocent until proven guilty". Furthermore I draw quite a clear distinction between judging actions of someone "his actions are jerky" versus judging the person itself "he is a jerk". Actually I'm quite sensible on this, may be that's why my reactions here were quite strong. I do agree that there are actual jerks out there that deserve to be called jerks. Though I'm pretty convinced that the typical manager of a company is doing the best in his capabilities to help his company and his team to prosper. There are most likely jerks among them, but as stated, I prefer to grant advantage and prefer not to judge the person based on actions that seem jerky to me or anybody else. I'm fine with calling some action jerky, but I prefer to keep the respect of the actual person until there is really no way to misjudge like with your example.

Related to that a question, how offending is the word "jerk"? I, non native English speaker, would give it lets say a 6 on a scale from 1 (like you would talk with kids when they behave somewhat clumsy) to 10 (very offending). Is this correct?

On a side note: I understand that your example was to effectively highlight your point and not to compare a random NVidia manager with Mussolini. With the last US election I decided for myself to skip pseudo comparisons with actual criminals of mankind. During that time you could read quite some columns of people that compared the new US administration with the German Nazi regime. As a response to that I read in another column that no matter how "evil" one thinks of the new Potus, he is not and will most likely never be a mass murderer of millions of people. That is a completely different magnitude. Any comparison like this will not paint a better picture of what to expect in the future but will only soften/weaken the crimes of the Nazi regime and hurt the victims of that time.
I decided for myself to keep that in mind. As stated, I did not read that comparison in your statement, but I thought I would share this.
Fair enough.
Jerk is fairly mild . . . I suppose it depends who you're talking to, but I might rate it a 5, or even a 4. It's not a cussword, for one thing. And I'd probably consider it milder than "creep", and certainly milder than "scum". It suggests an unpleasant, deliberately inconsiderate person, but not deep immorality or massive inferiority. Someone who would inconvenience other people in traffic so they can move two car-lengths ahead is a jerk.

As to the political thing . . . (spoilering because it's OT and will probably bore most)
Spoiler, click me
it has certainly become all too common for people, apparently seriously, to make that comparison, which does devalue it. Saddam was Hitler, Ahmadinejad was Hitler, Assad was Hitler, Gaddhafi was Hitler, Putin is Hitler, now Trump is Hitler. And I'd have to agree that Trump is . . . no more likely than any other president of the United States to become responsible for the deaths of millions of people. Which is to say, only moderately likely. I believe George W. Bush's total in Iraq if you count all excess deaths from the Iraq invasion is around a million, while Clinton's sanctions on Iraq killed around half a million children (which was not disputed by his secretary of state, but deemed "worth it"). It's unclear just how many Obama did in in Libya, Afghanistan etc. but not a huge total by US presidential standards. The Vietnam war killed a couple million Vietnamese (and Laotians and Cambodians), but that was spread over multiple presidents. So I'm not aware of any individual president that could singlehandedly have millions, plural, ascribed to their account. Trump, for all his failings, seems no more aggressive, and sometimes less so, than the general US foreign policy consensus, so unless he actually goes for an invasion of Iran I'd say millions are pretty unlikely.

Thanks a lot for the clarification and also for sharing your thoughts on my side note.
Spoiler, click me

I guess it will take several decades to really judge the effect of the current US foreign policy. But indeed, at least it seems not targeted on aggressive expansion, more likely on total chaos and cluelessly. I think we'll have some interesting years before us.
mahagr Jan 11, 2019
Quoting: devnullThink you meant P3, P0 is minimum (yes it's opposite from from CPU pstates.. or nivida-settings is broken). What is your GPU use sitting at though? Likely a browser/steam causing use. fwiw nvidia-smi does say p0 is max

Nope, I meant that it's running on P0 according to nvidia-smi and the lowest power state is P8 for GTX 1080 Ti. I know this because of my card goes from P0 go all the way down to P8 when I'm in the terminal.

Quoting: devnullnvidia-settings however is 0-3 and backward

Yup, nvidia-settings use Performance levels between 0 and 3 (with opposite meaning, highest is the highest), but they aren't GPU power states as stated above.
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