This is mostly a rant.

I have recently (well, even some time ago) found that the proprietary nvidia drivers are the only cause of system instability on my system. Here are some examples:

1) Random crashes (or so it seems) - Some time ago I noticed that my system would crash randomly, however the chances of crashing were higher when playing games (especially 3D intensive ones). I tried new drivers, underclocking, etc. Eventually I used nvclock to increase the fan speed and that seems to have helped. I haven't played too many games recently, so I can't say if it's now fixed. These types of crashes leave no clues behind and some driver versions are stable and don't cause crashes.

2) Random short hangs - This has been recently fixed in the latest drivers, but for a while the system would hang for a few seconds now and then ... well it seems that the sole cause was the nvidia drivers again.

I'm positive that I used the nv drivers my system would be perfectly stable, and I know this is true because I used them for a while.

I need 3D accel tho, so maybe when the nouveau devs get it to a minimally usable state I will switch to that.

I've never had a crash, but I do have the occasional system hang. This sometimes lasts for quite a few minutes. But I have never had a problem with 3d intensive games, and I have used nvidia drivers for a long time. That said, I have only had 3 different nvidia chips. The Riva TNT2-M64, 6150 SE Onboard Graphics, and presently a 9400GT. None of these are exactly top-of-the-line chips.

Any chance that you're using KDE? Whenever I try to play nexuiz under KDE (using nVidia's driver) it crashes on a regular basis. It appears to be stable if I play under fluxbox.

Well I've got one of these:
nVidia Corporation C61 [GeForce 6150SE nForce 430]

and I'm using the nvidia drivers with no problem. It's the on-board one that came with this Foxconn board. I use Fluxbox, and I never do anything that the nv driver couldn't handle though.

HP Compaq 8510W laptop, NVidia Quadro 570 graphics, nvidia driver**, ArchLinux

No issues traceable to the graphics.


**Using the installer from NVidia--not the Arch package. The only issue is the occassional need to re-compile whenever upgrading kernels.

Currently I have a GeForce 8800 GTS 512 running 190.53 drivers (updated yesterday). So far no crashes or hangs with these new drivers, but I'm sure there will be something soon. There were lots of hangs with the previous drivers the ones released just before these. I upgrade as often as I can if there are hangs or crashes with the current drivers, but I stick with the drivers if they have no problems (yet to try a driver with no problems).