November 28, 2025
Half speed, full drama
Open-Source Nouveau+NVK vs. Nvidia 580 Linux Gaming&Compute Driver Performance
Open drivers finally playable; Nvidia still faster — users cheer, roast, and hope
TLDR: Open-source Nvidia drivers now run modern GPUs and have improved a lot, but still deliver about half the speed of Nvidia’s official 580 driver and lack ray-tracing. Commenters are split: surprised and optimistic, or sticking with AMD until open drivers match speed and reliability on Linux.
The open-source Nvidia driver stack — Nouveau (kernel driver) + NVK (Vulkan graphics) + Zink (OpenGL-on-Vulkan) + Rusticl (OpenCL compute) — just got a big Black Friday spotlight, and the crowd is buzzing. Tests on RTX 4070/4080 SUPER and the new RTX 5080 show the open drivers are roughly half as fast as Nvidia’s official 580 driver, with ray-tracing still missing. But since July, NVK has matured, Blackwell (RTX 50) finally works, and performance jumped on newer Linux and Mesa versions. Translation: the free drivers aren’t winning yet, but they’re no longer a joke.
The comment section is a mood board. One veteran summed up the vibe: “This is much better than I would have guessed,” then dropped the meme of the day — “fastest brick.” After years of Nvidia cards breaking desktop effects on Linux, the AMD crowd flexed: “90% performance per dollar beats fancy hardware that won’t behave.” Meanwhile, open-source fans are celebrating “finally playable” frames and the joy of not needing proprietary stuff. Skeptics clap back: half-speed is still half-speed. Jokes landed hard: “ray tracing? see you next Black Friday,” and “open drivers are diet Nvidia.” For the curious: Vulkan is modern 3D graphics, OpenGL is older, and OpenCL powers compute tasks. It’s messy, it’s nerdy, it’s dramatic — and it’s getting better fast.
Key Points
- •The open-source Nouveau + NVK stack (with Zink and Rusticl) was benchmarked against NVIDIA’s official 580 Linux driver across gaming and compute workloads.
- •Testing used Ubuntu 25.10 with Linux 6.17/Mesa 25.2 (stock NVK), Linux 6.18 Git/Mesa 26.0-devel via Mesa ACO PPA (NVK Git), and NVIDIA 580.95.05 (proprietary).
- •GPUs tested included GeForce RTX 4070 SUPER, RTX 4080 SUPER, and RTX 5080; all worked with Nouveau/NVK, with prior Blackwell kernel issues resolved.
- •NVK has gained more Vulkan extensions and performance optimizations; Rusticl and Zink have also advanced since July.
- •In GravityMark, NVK improved but remains around half the performance of the NVIDIA 580 driver and does not support Vulkan ray tracing.