RH8,Nvidia drivers and GF4MX440

[rammstein69er]

I have a fresh install of RH8.0 with no updates to kernel or anything. I do have the kernel source installed like all the FAQs say to. What i want to know is, will it be safe for me to compile the Nvidia Kernel 1.0-3123 and the Nvidia GLX 1.0-3123 from .tar.gz or should i rebuild some source RPMs......
Are the current drivers compatible with Geforce4MXs and am i likely to run into any trouble?

My system is as follows
Duron 900Mhz
256mb SDRAM
Dual boot OS's:
1, 20Gb hdd with Windows XP (FAT32)
1, 10Gb hdd with Redhat Linux 8.0 (EXT2)
Geforce 4 MX440 videocard
and an onboard C-media8738 soundcard.

[bwkaz]

From the README:

NVIDIA has a unified driver architecture model; this means that one driver set can be used with all supported NVIDIA hardware. Please see Appendix A for a list of the NVIDIA hardware supported by the current drivers. The GF4 MX 440 is indeed listed in Appendix A. So that won't be a problem.

The difference between .tar.gz drivers and .src.rpm ones is, well... not much.

The only thing is, if you install NVIDIA_kernel from .tar.gz, you'll have to install NVIDIA_GLX from .tar.gz as well, because NVIDIA_GLX depends on NVIDIA_kernel, and if you install the first without using rpm, then rpm won't know that it's installed, and will refuse to install the other. But as long as you use the same format for both, you should be fine.

There are people reporting long X load times with GF4 MX series cards, though, and I don't really know the solution for sure. It might have something to do with probing modelines, but that seems to be a hit-or-miss solution (unfortunately, mostly miss).

If you do plan on updating your kernel, then do it first. And grab the sources for the new kernel as well, while you're at it, you'll need them. The reason is that a kernel module (NVdriver, in this case) built for one kernel version won't load properly (or at all) when you're running another kernel, at least not in the vast majority of cases. Just FYI. ;)