Does the 8800 memory bug affect linux also ?

[Christian_Frank]

Hi @all,


at the moment i'm really thinking about replacing my 7800gt with a 8800gts.

But i found different kind of this news at different sites:

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Yesterday the good folks at The Tech Report reported on an issue affecting a good chunk of GeForce 8800 users, where 3D graphics performance would fall into the toilet at random and wouldn't come back until you restarted the game or tabbed out and back in.

NVIDIA got back to them and said it was a driver issue and that the driver team were working on a fix. Not enough info, Nick! So we did a bit of poking and it turns out to be caused by texture eviction from device memory. Textures aren't being evicted when they should be, causing a loss of available device memory for other resources.

So it stands to reason that if you restart the app or tab out and back in, both of which reset the device which causes a VRAM flush, you'll be good to go again. It's somewhat application dependent and depends on how the app does surface management, but a general fix should be possible for all but the most misbehaved programs.

We're not sure the fix will make it in to a driver this month, as TR noted yesterday, but fingers crossed.

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So, is the linux driver also affected by this bug ?

Do you think i can double my fps with the new card ?


Regards,
Christian

[Linuxhippy]

Do you think i can double my fps with the new card ?

No

[Christian_Frank]

Originally Posted by Linuxhippy

No

What do you think i can expect of the card ?

30% more ? This should be the minimum fps increase.. otherwise upgrading would not make much sense ..

My System: Athlon X2 4600, 2GB Ram

[Christian_Frank]

Does really nobody (especially nvidia employees) has info about this ?

[Christian_Frank]

Originally Posted by Christian_Frank

Does really nobody (especially nvidia employees) has info about this ?

Hi,

today i found this news on the net:

http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=41351


Seems the 8800 memory problem is a really tricky one..

But it would be really nice if an nvidia employee would tell us wether the linux driver is affected also or not ?

Cause this would have great impact on my upgrading 7800gt->8800gts plan.

I will not buy this card until i know it is not affected by this bug or they say, yes it is affected an will be fixed until ...

Thanks,
Christian