Open-Source Nouveau Performance With Linux 7.0 + NVK Mesa 26.1-dev vs. NVIDIA Linux Driver

Written by Michael Larabel in Display Drivers on 26 March 2026 at 12:00 PM EDT. Page 3 of 7. 37 Comments.

👁 Cyberpunk 2077 benchmark with settings of Resolution: 3840 x 2160, Graphics Setting: Low. NVIDIA 590.48.01 was the fastest.

👁 Cyberpunk 2077 benchmark with settings of Resolution: 3840 x 2160, Graphics Setting: Medium. NVIDIA 590.48.01 was the fastest.

👁 Cyberpunk 2077 benchmark with settings of Resolution: 3840 x 2160, Graphics Setting: High. NVIDIA 590.48.01 was the fastest.

👁 Cyberpunk 2077 benchmark with settings of Resolution: 3840 x 2160, Graphics Setting: Ultra. NVIDIA 590.48.01 was the fastest.

The NVK/Nouveau driver stack was able to run at around half the speed of the NVIDIA R590 driver when playing Cyberpunk 2077 but only with low quality settings. Hangs were encountered at the higher quality visuals at 4K.

👁 HITMAN 3 benchmark with settings of Resolution: 3840 x 2160, Quality Level: Ultra. NVIDIA 590.48.01 was the fastest.

👁 HITMAN 3 benchmark with settings of Resolution: 3840 x 2160, Quality Level: Ultra, Total Frame Time. NVIDIA 590.48.01 was the fastest.

The upstream open-source NVIDIA driver stack was running HITMAN at around half the performance of the NVIDIA R590 driver, which was significantly faster than it was able to out-of-the-box on Ubuntu 25.10.

37 Comments - Next Page

Page: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Next Page

URL: https://www.phoronix.com/review/linux-70-nouveau/3

⇱ Open-Source Nouveau Performance With Linux 7.0 + NVK Mesa 26.1-dev vs. NVIDIA Linux Driver - Phoronix

Open-Source Nouveau Performance With Linux 7.0 + NVK Mesa 26.1-dev vs. NVIDIA Linux Driver