There has been lots of discussion on the internet comparing the Nouveau open-source drivers to the Nvidia closed-source drivers on liuux. We put it to the test. Many of these games did not have a benchmark feature, so a simple circuit was tested on each driver for each game listed. All games were tested full-screen at 1440p.

Test System Specs:

i7-6700k

16GB DDR4 3200mhz

980ti @ 1440p144hz

Arch Linux

Nvidia Drivers 378.13

Nouveau Drivers 1.0.13-2

Game #1: Amnesia Dark Descent

Ultra Settings

Nouveau: 13fps

Nvidia: 75fps

Low Settings

Nouveau: 46fps

Nvidia: 615fps

Clear winner is the Nvidia drivers. The Nouveau drivers had some artifact and texture issues, although it was totally playable. Nvidia drivers looked perfect.

Game #2: Kerbal Space Program

Ultra Settings

Nouveau: 35fps

Nvidia: 144fps

Clear winner is the Nvidia drivers. Some flickering on the Nouveau drivers. Nvidia drivers looked perfect.

Game #3: Tomb Raider 2013

Ultra Settings

Nouveau: Unplayable

Nvidia: 55fps

Clear winner is the Nvidia drivers. Tomb Raider was unstable on the open source drivers. It would run 25fps sometimes and eventually glitch/freeze down to 1-2 fps. Nvidia drivers looked perfect.

Game #4: Cities Skylines

Ultra Settings – Tested with a 800k population map zoomed out

Nouveau: 16fps

Nvidia: 70fps

Clear winner is the Nvidia drivers. Nouveau had issues rendering the shadows as well. Nvidia drivers looked perfect.

Game #5: Half Life 2

Ultra Settings 8x MSAA

Nouveau: 11-37fps

Nvidia: 225-288fps

Clear winner is the Nvidia drivers. It played without issue on the open source drivers, but HL2 was flawless on the Nvidia drivers. Nvidia drivers looked perfect.

Conclusion: Install the drivers by typing “sudo pacman -S nvidia nvidia-libgl” – no questions about it.