Re: reports from the GPU trenches

[nia <nia%NetBSD.org@localhost>]

On Sat, Sep 13, 2025 at 08:03:22PM +0000, nia wrote:
> NVIDIA GeForce GT 630 - nouveau is stable and tear-free. This surprised
> me because I have previously tried GT 640s which panicked.
> NVIDIA GeForce GT 730 - nouveau panics on boot.

After being poked by kre@, I checked GT 730 again.

It seems just as stable as the GT 630, so it's now my primary GPU.

The panic appeared to be a thing that was only briefly an issue
in -current last year.

Another note: picom's glx backend seems to play poorly with nouveau,
but the xrender backend is fine.

> AMD Radeon HD 6450 - radeon works, but there seems to
> be a problem with texture memory corruption. Not sure
> if this is a driver or hardware issue with my card.
> 
> 	Option "AccelMethod" "EXA"
> 
> in xorg.conf cleans everything up except OpenGL applications.
> Video playback is fine with the "xv" video output, which
> mpv recommends only as a fallback.

Unfortunately I can confirm that these caveats also apply
to the Radeon HD 5450 and HD 7350. Seems to be a regression
from -9.