# NVidia performance between driver versions

## leej

After monitoring the NVidia & Linux newsgroups and the NVidia Linux Discussion Area it's become clear that some users are experiencing difficulties with the latest drivers (1.0-2960).  From what I've read - most complaints appear to be coming from owners of VIA chipsets with an Athlon TB or Duron processor.

Most notably (and what I've experienced) - occasional lockups and the framerate is 700-1000fps slower (direct rendering/glx/etc all working correctly).  Going back to 1.0-2880 completely eliminates the problem.

Anyway, I've noticed the 2880 glx ebuild has just been masked.  Is there any way to keep these old NVidia (2880) drivers available in the Portage tree - just for those of us who require them to keep our 3d rendering fast & our systems stable?  At least until NVidia release another set of drivers that will hopefully solve the problem.

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## delta407

Yeah, copy the ebuild file somewhere and edit your package.mask. Simple enough, just don't do an emerge rsync --clean.  :Smile: 

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## leej

 *delta407 wrote:*   

> Yeah, copy the ebuild file somewhere and edit your package.mask. Simple enough, just don't do an emerge rsync --clean. 

 

Is it as simple as that to preserve it?  I've been meaning to go through the Developer HOWTO (to learn more about Ebuilds) for about six weeks but just seem to find excuses to be doing something else every time.  :Wink: 

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## delta407

Well, yeah, it is. Or you could change the permissions on it to 444, though I don't know if emerge rsync --clean will reset them. Anyway, to backup an ebuild, you should be able to just copy it away and copy it back as necessary, making sure it's unmasked before doing any emerge -u world or other such behavior that may "upgrade" you to the later version.

Heck, you could write an emerge rsync wrapper that copies back the old ebuild and changes package.mask from masking 2880 to masking 2960, solving two problems at once.  :Very Happy: 

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## leej

Well thanks for the info!   :Smile:   I'm going to back it up right now and definitely read that HOWTO tomorrow night.

...famous last words.   :Wink: 

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## delta407

Yeah, I should probably read it too...

Oh, but it's so much fun to gather these kinds of things from staring at miles and miles of Python and dozens of ebuild files!

Oh well... RTFM.  :Rolling Eyes: 

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