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Operating Systems => Linux and UNIX => Topic started by: Agent007 on 10 September 2002, 21:00

Title: Downloading NVIDIA drivers!
Post by: Agent007 on 10 September 2002, 21:00
hi,

Am using Redhat7.3. What is the meaning of SMP and uni-processor? I went to dl the nvidia

driver from http://www.nvidia.com/view.asp?IO=linux_display_1.0-2960 (http://www.nvidia.com/view.asp?IO=linux_display_1.0-2960)

and dont know which driver  to dl for Redhat7.3, SMP or U-P? Also what is the difference

between 386 and 586? Can the same software be used for both?


pls help
thanks,
007
Title: Downloading NVIDIA drivers!
Post by: KernelPanic on 10 September 2002, 21:02
SMP = Symmetric Multiprocessing
UP = Uni-Processor, ie ONE

So, I am guessing you have one CPU in which case you need the uni-processor one.
If you needed SMP you would already know about it..
Title: Downloading NVIDIA drivers!
Post by: Agent007 on 10 September 2002, 22:31
Thanks for the quick reply. Btw, whats the diff between 386, 586, 686
Title: Downloading NVIDIA drivers!
Post by: flap on 10 September 2002, 22:41
You probably want the 386 UP driver. A 686 kernel is optimised for a 686-class cpu and, as far as I know, the default Red Hat installation is always i386. A kernel built for i386 will run on anything higher than that, but an i686 kernel won't run on a 386.

On the other hand, the safe bet is to get the source rpm and build the driver from that. You'll need to do that anyway if you ever want to build your own kernel.
Title: Downloading NVIDIA drivers!
Post by: KernelPanic on 11 September 2002, 00:30
i386 = Intel 80386 CPU
i486 = Intel 80486 CPU
i586 = Intel 80586 aka Pentium Class CPU
i686 = Intel 80686 aka Pentium II Class CPU

[ September 10, 2002: Message edited by: Tux ]

Title: Downloading NVIDIA drivers!
Post by: voidmain on 11 September 2002, 01:43
And of course if you have an Althlon, you'll want to use the Athlon NVIDIA drivers.  That's what I used.  And if in doubt you can grab the *src.rpm files and just let the system build them according to what it detects you have.
Title: Downloading NVIDIA drivers!
Post by: choasforages on 11 September 2002, 01:57
but nvidia still hase me piss about he binary stub driver that they use
Title: Downloading NVIDIA drivers!
Post by: Agent007 on 11 September 2002, 10:39
WOW!! Thanks a million for the info guys. Btw, I do use the Athlon system, so thanks for the info void main.

007
Title: Downloading NVIDIA drivers!
Post by: mobrien_12 on 12 September 2002, 07:09
quote:
Originally posted by choasforages:
but nvidia still hase me piss about he binary stub driver that they use


It made my Linux box less stable than windows.  No, I'm not kidding.  I wiped it and went back to the stock XF86 driver.

Why the hell do they need to make the driver binary only???  It's not like it would hurt their  business if it were GPL.  I don't think that 3dfx's support of open source was a contributor to their demise.
Title: Downloading NVIDIA drivers!
Post by: Agent007 on 13 September 2002, 21:57
Does the NVIDIA driver actually make the system unstable? R u sure?

thanks,
007


 
quote:
Originally posted by M. O'Brien:


It made my Linux box less stable than windows.  No, I'm not kidding.  I wiped it and went back to the stock XF86 driver.

Why the hell do they need to make the driver binary only???  It's not like it would hurt their  business if it were GPL.  I don't think that 3dfx's support of open source was a contributor to their demise.
Title: Downloading NVIDIA drivers!
Post by: voidmain on 13 September 2002, 22:02
All I can say is it has been working fine on my system for close to a year now (Athlon 1600+, GeForece2).
Title: Downloading NVIDIA drivers!
Post by: KernelPanic on 13 September 2002, 23:02
me too (athlon TB 1GHz + GF2MX)
It also worked fine when I had a TNT2
Title: Downloading NVIDIA drivers!
Post by: mobrien_12 on 13 September 2002, 23:31
quote:
Originally posted by Agent007:
Does the NVIDIA driver actually make the system unstable? R u sure?

thanks,
007


 


Dead sure.
Title: Downloading NVIDIA drivers!
Post by: voidmain on 14 September 2002, 00:06
I do remember having a problem with mine at first. It's been quite a while ago but I believe I either used the wrong driver or ended up compiling from the src.rpm, either way, one of those two fixed my initial problem.
Title: Downloading NVIDIA drivers!
Post by: badkarma on 14 September 2002, 00:11
O'Brien: try and fiddle around with the AGP speed settings in the bios and the AGP driver you use (see the nvidia driver README for how to change this)

I've never had any problems with my geforce 3 at home though ....
Title: Downloading NVIDIA drivers!
Post by: mobrien_12 on 14 September 2002, 04:08
Void Main and Karma,

I did all of that.  I worked very hard and tried every trick in the book and the newsgroups.  My linux box still froze multiple times a day.  Thank goodness I installed ext3.  After a week I decided that DRI just wasnt'worth it.  

Some people don't have problems with them, but alot of others do.  I posted to the alt.os.linux group and got several replies from people who had the same experience.
Title: Downloading NVIDIA drivers!
Post by: choasforages on 14 September 2002, 04:40
my computer dies every 3 days, and i have to reboot. could my nvidia drivers really be the cuase. i was kinda thinking that the whole machine is getting ready to go toast, i mean, the floppy has stopped working, and other stuff
Title: Downloading NVIDIA drivers!
Post by: voidmain on 14 September 2002, 05:10
Hmmm, well I couldn't live without the NVidia drivers and VMware sucks without them...