[gentoo-user] nVidia & nouveau on nVidia 8600M GT

[Alan McKinnon]

Hi all,

I'm not completely happy with my driver setup for an 8600M GT.

Using nvidia.ko, KDE with desktop effects enabled (especially translucent 
popup thumbnails on the task bar, and blur effect on) makes my notebook fan 
run all the time and kwin uses 20% cpu according to top. Oddly enough, the fan 
runs faster with the screensaver on (displaying a single static jpeg) and 
settles down when I unlock the screen.

Nouveau is supposed to be useable (if not entirely stable yet) but it makes 
the fan run flat out, notebook gets hot very quickly, top reckons kwin is 
using 30% cpu even with all fancy effects off and gui events have a noticeable 
lag to them - a short but very noticeable delay after mouse clicks for 
example. It all looks very much like some process is blocking as when things 
get around to happening, they happen quickly - like glxgears spins it's wheels 
at a terrific rate and very little gets in it's way once it starts.

I reckon it should not be this way and I have yet again done something stupid. 
I've scoured the net and forums for howtos but found nothing and this has been 
going on for at least 5 kernel versions.

Are there any known issues that cause things like this that I've overlooked? I 
strongly suspect it's not an obscure detail peculiar to me, more like I 
absolutely need kernel feature X for best results. 

-- 
alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com