sony-vaio-z-series team mailing list archive

[Albert Vilella <avilella@xxxxxxxxx>]

>
> now that graphics switching works, I have some minor questions:
>
> 1. What exactly is the difference between the nv driver from xorg and
> the proprietary nvidia driver? Performance? The card works with both of
> them. However, the xorg driver doesn't need library switching on my
> system.


Both the nv driver and the nvidia driver are provided by the Nvidia guys,
but nv is open source, although slightly obfuscated code, and the nvidia
driver is a propietary binary driver. The nv driver only provides 2D
support, and the nvidia driver provides 2D and 3D support, which should be
very apparent when running 3D demanding applications.


> 2. When the nv driver is in use (possibly same with nvidia, don't
> remember), the cursor down and left keys don't autorepeat by default. I
> have to add "xset r 113; xset r 116" to my .xinitrc. Not a problem, but
> can anybody explain that? What the heck has the keyboard to do with the
> graphics driver?
>
> 3. Klaus said that before graphics switching the laptop should be
> powered off. Out of curiosity, I switched it on a running system and
> rebooted normally. This didn't cause any problems. The content of
> /sys/devices/platform/sony-laptop/speed_stamina may be wrong, but that can
> easily be corrected. So I wonder if powering down is really necessary and if
> so, why?


Here I can add that the previous Vaio model, the SZ series, has both the
intel and nvidia graphics, and a simple cold reboot switch which doesn't do
hot-switching, unlike the Z-series on Windows Vista. The switch works most
of the times, but even Windows-only users have complained that when doing
reboots, not poweroffs and restarts, the switch fails to take place. So this
may be some sort of physical limitation of the switch procedure both on the
Z-series and the SZ-series that doesn't happen with doing a more radical
poweroff and restart switch...


> Regards,
> Bernd
>
> --
> Bernd Eggink
> http://sudrala.de
>
>
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