Two Hacks For The NVIDIA Linux Graphics Driver

A Phoronix reader has shared two NVIDIA binary Linux graphics driver "hacks" he's written for overriding some functionality of the NVIDIA binary blob for GeForce hardware.

Sam Edwards, a Phoronix reader and NVIDIA Linux user, wrote in this weekend to share two project he's written: nvlinpatch and nvml_fix.

The nvlinpatch makes it possible for the NVIDIA graphics drivers to exceed the 400MHz pixel clock limit. For those wanting to output 1440p at 120Hz, the NVIDIA Linux graphics driver doesn't allow it since the kernel driver has an artificial limit on the pixel clock. Nvlinpatch overrides the 400MHz pixel clock limit and this patch works similar to NVIDIA Windows binary patches for resolving this issue.

The nvml_fix is a workaround for using NVIDIA's NVML library with GeForce graphics cards. NVIDIA supported nvidia-smi and the NVML library for GeForce GPUs, but then removed that support and only offered it to their workstation customers. This workaround makes it possible to use NVIDIA utilities designated for Quadro/Tesla on GeForce hardware.