nvidia driver for FX2700M

[hughtmccullough]

Taking Cheiron at his word, I am hoping that someone can help me get started with installing the nvidia driver for the FX2700M card.

A bit of background first:

I have now got WattOS 32 bit running stably on my HP 8730w, after a lot of effort.  I tried some benchmarks to check that things were more or less right.  The first thing I noticed was that, compared to LXLE 64 bit, some of the benchmarks were twice as slow.  I am using the 32 bit version of WattOS because I couldn't get my printer driver to play with the 64 bit version.  I tried loading the 686-pae kernel and this brought most of the benchmarks more or less into line with LXLE, presumably because it was using the other core of my core duo processor.  So far, so good.  The one exception was the FPU raytracing benchmark (part of the hardinfo package).  It was only running at about a quarter of the speed that I achieved on LXLE.  I still have the 64 bit version of WattOS installed, that I abandoned after failing to set up the printer driver.  This gave me similar performance to LXLE.  On exploring further I found that the Nouveau driver in WattOS 32 bit didn't seem to be recognising the graphics card and wasn't doing "direct rendering".  I believe that the FPU raytracing benchmark uses the GPU if it can and hence the difference.  That left me with two options - get Nouveau working or load the non-free nvidia driver.  I have read elsewhere that the nvidia driver is much better, particularly for 3D and CUDA, and decided that would be worth trying.

The nvidia web site says the version 340 driver is the one for my graphics card.  It also says that rather than follow their rather convoluted installation process I may be better using the one for my distro as it could manage a lot of the interactions.  I had a look in Synaptic Package Manager and, sure enough, there are a lot of nvidia driver packages.  I then had to guess what package to try to install (I have cloned the partition in case I mess things up completely).  A likely candidate seemed to be the nvidia version 340 binary kernel module for my 686-pae kernel.  However, this came up as broken.  I did a more specific search for nvidia-driver and the only one that came up was the version 304 legacy driver.

This site looked promising:
https://wiki.debian.org/NvidiaGraphicsDrivers

However, my system doesn't recognise the aptitude command.  I was able to load the linux headers for my kernel in Synaptic Package Manager but got stuck trying to do the next line:
aptitude -t wheezy-backports -r install nvidia-kernel-dkms

Synaptic Package Manager doesn't seem to have an nvidia-kernel-dkms for version 340.  It only does one for version 304 and some other legacy ones.  Is that why the kernel module for version 340 came up as broken?

Any help on where to go next, or an explanation of how this all actually works, would be appreciated.

[cheiron]

With the nix versions where graphics have been concerned... to be honest i have always used the inbuilt propriety drivers (xorg and stuff) rather than seek out the full drivers as they can be problematic.


they always used to be found in system updates under settings.. cant remember where they are with the Debian WattOS though sorry as i am away from that terminal atm having been caught up with a massive pc build over the last few days


Have a look at the propriety drivers though first.


Also as a point of note... The debian WattOS was designed and released as a NON-PAE version. So changing it to PAE by way of updates and upgrades will inevitably give you some problems

[hughtmccullough]

Cheiron,  Your message is a little confusing.  I had actually asked in my post about downloading the proprietary nvidia drivers but you seem to be suggesting I should use Nouveau, the open source driver.  Is this correct?

If not, then the questions in my original post still stand.

If so, then I did some more research on Nouveau and found that I needed to downloaded the mesa package.  This now shows up in hardinfo.  However, the fpu raytracing benchmark remains as poor as ever.  It is possible that this is a function of the benchmark and that complicates things a little.

I may want to use the CUDA facility of the graphics card and the Nouveau driver doesn't support this.  So, I think I will park this all for now and come back to it when I want to make serious use of the GPU.

Your sting in the tail could be a show stopper for WattOS.  If the 686 pae version is likely to cause problems, then I am left with no workable option:

1) If I use the 64 bit version, I can't get my printer to work as the 32 bit driver doesn't seem to recognise the i386 multi-architecture libc6 libraries.

2) If I use the non-pae 32 bit version, my cpu performance is crippled and I only have access to 3/4 of my RAM.

3) If I continue with the pae version, you are saying that I may experience other problems.

ergo, there is no solution...

[leenie]

If you use the Nouveau driver, install mesa-utils to get direct rendering.
What kind of printer do you have? Lexmark is basically unsupported...
I have to use Windows XP in VirtualBox to run my printer.

[cheiron]

Hi Hugh


My reply was based on actually going to nvidia direct and downloading the driver as this can be done which is where i got a bit mis-understood when you mentioned the nvidia drivers sorry.


Yes you can use nouveau off the shelf but follow what leenie said.. or you can use the nvidia proprierty driver from system updates (propriety drivers)


Nvidia / amd will not have the most up to date there.. only a stable that works


 

[hughtmccullough]

leenie, I had already discovered the mesa package and that brought up the direct rendering driver as you say.  Maybe it's a little hidden in my last post.  It won't give me CUDA though when I need it later on.  I have an Epson c900 which so far has worked perfectly in the 32 bit version of WattOS but refuses to install in the 64 bit version.  The packages all complain about missing dependencies, even though I have added i386 as a foreign architecture.  It may be that I have to rebuild the .deb packages or something but I haven't a clue where to start with that.

chieron, Thanks.  I think I understand now what you meant.  I was actually trying to use Synaptic Package Manager using the Debian site I referred to for information to determine what packages to download and in which order.  I just couldn't find the right one for nvidia-kernel-dkms.  How do I find the "system updates (proprietary drivers)" that you refer to? 

[cheiron]

i cant get my vm to fire up for some reason to answer this one.. each time i fire up wattos my pc crashes on vm.
will have to wait on leenie or one of the others here sorry