Nouveau vs. NVIDIA R595 Linux Driver For Workstation Graphics Performance

Written by Michael Larabel in Display Drivers on 6 May 2026 at 12:00 PM EDT. Page 3 of 5. 22 Comments.

For the SPECViewPerf 2020 benchmarks that are using OpenGL, the NVK+Zink open-source combination allowed for decent performance in some of the sub-tests but hung/crashed in a majority of the tests where the NVIDIA R595 Linux driver was working fine. Still for the sub-tests that did run on Nouveau+NVK, the performance was better than I was anticipating.

👁 ParaView benchmark with settings of Test: Many Spheres, Frames: 3000, Resolution: 1920 x 1080. NVIDIA R595 was the fastest.

👁 ParaView benchmark with settings of Test: Many Spheres, Frames: 3000, Resolution: 3840 x 2160. NVIDIA R595 was the fastest.

👁 ParaView benchmark with settings of Test: Wavelet Volume, Frames: 3000, Resolution: 1920 x 1080. NVIDIA R595 was the fastest.

👁 ParaView benchmark with settings of Test: Wavelet Volume, Frames: 3000, Resolution: 3840 x 2160. NVIDIA R595 was the fastest.

👁 ParaView benchmark with settings of Test: Wavelet Contour, Frames: 3000, Resolution: 1920 x 1080. NVIDIA R595 was the fastest.

👁 ParaView benchmark with settings of Test: Wavelet Contour, Frames: 3000, Resolution: 3840 x 2160. NVIDIA R595 was the fastest.

The Nouveau+NVK Mesa driver combination also had a fairly decent showing with the ParaView workstation visualization software compared to the official NVIDIA R595 Linux driver.

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URL: https://www.phoronix.com/review/nvidia-nouveau-nvk-may2026/3

⇱ Nouveau vs. NVIDIA R595 Linux Driver For Workstation Graphics Performance - Phoronix

Nouveau vs. NVIDIA R595 Linux Driver For Workstation Graphics Performance