[vectorEQ]

i think you will be happy to hear since 2014 they can alterr the clock speeds and get out of the boot frquency of the cards which gives them somewhat normal performance. there is a bit of an issue still to reverse features implemented on the cards. this is a daunting task. these features make some functions in games or renderers run much smoother than directly rendering them or using non-specific resources for them ,which is why on a lot of places there is still considerable performance loss compared to nvidias own drivers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nouveau_(software) here is some interesting info on the state, with a lot of references

nvidia are a bunch of dicks who have no real reason to keep their specifications closed other than to (speculating) hide things they don't want you to see. patents and other things will still protect their IP / featuresets even if they open it.... intel/amd are where people should invest, especially people who are using alternate (non-windows) platforms, since nvidia will never open their sources, and amd/intel will never improve the way you want if you don't invest in their future!

[pimeys]

What I understood one of the reasons they keep their source closed is that it's full of stuff like:

`if (game == "Fifa2016") use_nvidia_custom_shaders() ...`

So games don't work quite fast and the game companies ask nVidia to fix it in their drivers, which might do stuff such as adding custom shaders to get that good fps. That's why many major games require you to update to the latest nVidia drivers before running.

I don't know how much AMD does this, their open source support is excellent nowadays.

[simion314]

Other reason I believe(no proof) NVIDIA is not publishing specifications or open sourcing the driver is related with FreeSync an open protocol for monitors, NVIDIA does not support it because they have an expensive proprietary version (compatible monitors can will be more expensive) though I read recently that someone managed to trick the NVIDIA driver to work with FreeSync on some hardware.

[auanfaz]

>patents and other things will still protect their IP / featuresets even if they open it....

That's not how it works. Even if you patent something others can copy it (and I don't mean just the source, but the idea, algorithm, implementation) and use it in their products and then you're left with the work of completely reverse engineer them, figure it all out, then sue them, etc.

So you can either do that or just never open your source. Who can blame them?

[franga2000]

> and then you're left with the work of completely reverse engineer them, figure it all out, then sue them, etc. That isn't that difficult if your competitors also make their drivers open source. There is no doubt in my mind, that nvidia already has a team looking at every commit AMD and Intel make to their Linux drivers. If one of them started using their IP, nvidia would know.

[auanfaz]

The performance of the AMD drivers on Linux is much lower than on Windows, so it goes without saying that the spicy parts are still closed source.