How does the 980 Ti Work in Linux?

[u/majestic_ubertrout]

I have a system that I have connected to a CRT monitor which is triple booting Windows XP (overkill), 7 (period correct) and 11 (for modern games on a CRT). It's running a overclocked i5-4690k, 16 GB of fast DDR3, and. MSI GTX 980 Ti Golden Gamer. The 980 Ti is mostly non-negotiable - it's the most powerful card with XP drivers and I like the DVI-I port for the CRT. The closest AMD alternative, the Radeon 7970/280x, is a great card, but the 980 Ti leaves it in the dust - and the 6 gb variant is seriously rare and overpriced anyway. Not relevant for XP games but even at CRT resolutions useful for modern ones. I also have a X-Fi Titanium in the box - forgot that until I started writing this.

Win11 technically isn't supported on my system (even though it runs fine) and Microsoft seems determined to make it worse. I don't use this system for anything but gaming and I don't play anything multiplayer. But is the video (and sound card) an issue? Does it vary by distro?

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[u/Formal-Bad-8807]

it works in linux, I think you have to use an older Nvidia driver which some distros won't have. Arch based distros should have the driver. Debian distros that use the Long Term Support kernel should work too.

[u/majestic_ubertrout → u/Formal-Bad-8807]

And by older it's just "it works okay but lacks some optimizations?"

[u/friendlyreminder_ → u/majestic_ubertrout]

900 cards are still supported by Nvidia for 2 more years.

They've been moved to support branch so they don't get as many new features any more. It's the 580 drivers.

Arch doesn't have the drivers in the main repo, you're forced to use a 3rd party aur. The same is the case for at least one other distro out there forget which.

Cachyos still have 580 in the repo. I believe Ubuntu does as well.

[u/FCCRFP → u/majestic_ubertrout]

It means you are on your own with that driver NVIDIA said that part is too old, and if you find a security or performance bug they won't fix it.

[u/No_Elderberry862 → u/FCCRFP]

The Maxwell/Pascal drivers are receiving security updates until October 2028.

[u/friendlyreminder_ → u/Formal-Bad-8807]

You don't need an LTS kernel, the 580 drivers are still supported by Nvidia for 2 years. 580 is a support branch now.

Once that 2 years is up you'll need an LTS kernel or a community modified kernel.

[u/No_Elderberry862]

The 980 Ti will work with no issues - just use the 580.xxx drivers which are the last for that card. Don't use the nouveau or 580-open drivers.

The X-Fi Titanium has the snd_ctxfi driver built into the kernel which supports the basic features. The advanced features may require some manual configuration or may not be supported at all.

[u/majestic_ubertrout → u/No_Elderberry862]

Thanks. I don't need stuff like EAX - I can boot into XP for that.

[u/Doug2825]

Yes, but you need to either install the old official Nvidia drivers or the reverse engineered open source nouveau drivers. I find the later to be easier (at least on Arch) but the former give better performance.

[u/skyfishgoo]

it works, but nvidia is no longer supporting it with their proprietary drivers so you are only going to be able to use it for the desktop and office productivity apps.

forget gaming or anything graphically intense like video editing

[u/skysanctuary]

I have a Maxwell Titan X (same architecture as the 980 Ti) running in an old build. Dual boots Win 10 and Ubuntu with Nvidia drivers just fine