From Newsgroup: muc.lists.freebsd.ports

Hi.

As some may noticed, there is new Beta Branch of nvidia drivers
590.44.01 upstream.

https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/drivers/details/258753/

This version itself would not hit the ports tree, as -devel variant
of our nvidia driver ports are for New Feature Branch (NFB).
Whichever newer version of NFB or Productuon Branch (PB) of drivers
sits there, not Beta.

What's noticabully important is that this new Beta drops a singinifcant
amount of old GPUs, predate Turing generation of architectures which
don't have GSP (GPU System Processor) in them. And in its README,

https://us.download.nvidia.com/XFree86/FreeBSD-x86_64/590.44.01/README/supportedchips.html

580 series are noted as legacy driver, means, it would be kept on
maintained at least for a while like 470 series, without new GPU
supports / features added.

https://nvidia.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/3142

https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/drivers/unix/legacy-gpu/


And some may already noticed, 3xx series of legacy drivers are already
EoL'ed upstream since the end of Dec., 2022.
Why we still have 3xx variants of child ports in-tree is just because

*upstream tarballs are still available and buildable,

*no CVEs stating "wouldn't be fixed" cannot be found for them,

*and these are the last versions that supports i386.


Our current plan is as follows.

1. Once NFB based on 590 series or later is released, upgrade
-devel variant of child (slave) ports for it.

2. Once PB based on 590 series or later is released, upgrade
master ports and create new legacy variant of child ports. -580.

3. Once upstream tarball dissappears or CVEs that wouldn't be fixed
arises, relevant legacy port would be removed from ports tree.

Step 1 could be skipped, if nvidia releases PB without releasing NFB
first. (NFB prior to PB is NOT promised!)

Step 3 could be done immediately both on latest (aka main) and
on quarterly at once if the reason is "security".

But as we cannot know when 3xx series of drivers dissappear,
no DEPRECATED are set.


So,
For users running 580 series with pre-Turing GPUs:
Prepare for transition to upcoming -580 legacy branch.
Don't attempt to test 590.44.01 by overriding version.

For users running any of -304, -340 or -390 slave ports:
Consider replacing your GPUs to anything to-be-supportted
or transitioning to gneeric x11-drivers/xf86-video-scfb
(for UEFI boots) or x11-drivers/xf86-video-vesa (for legacy BIOS
boots).
are adviced.


Note that new Beta is the trigger for us to start investigating
for future upgrades on NFB and/or PB drivers.

Currently, confirmed that 590.44.01 can be built / packaged
sanely by overriding version as usual.
Running fine on Minisforum MS-01 with RTX A400 with iGPU disabled.
(Xorg only, not tested on Wayland, using nvidia-drm-66-kmod-devel).

Would investigate further if there are additional components
to be installed or not.

Regards.
--
Tomoaki AOKI <junchoon@dec.sakura.ne.jp>


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From Newsgroup: muc.lists.freebsd.ports

On Sat, Dec 6, 2025 at 2:15rC>PM Tomoaki AOKI <junchoon@dec.sakura.ne.jp> wrote:

Hi.

As some may noticed, there is new Beta Branch of nvidia drivers
590.44.01 upstream.

https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/drivers/details/258753/

This version itself would not hit the ports tree, as -devel variant
of our nvidia driver ports are for New Feature Branch (NFB).
Whichever newer version of NFB or Productuon Branch (PB) of drivers
sits there, not Beta.

What's noticabully important is that this new Beta drops a singinifcant amount of old GPUs, predate Turing generation of architectures which
don't have GSP (GPU System Processor) in them. And in its README,

https://us.download.nvidia.com/XFree86/FreeBSD-x86_64/590.44.01/README/supportedchips.html

580 series are noted as legacy driver, means, it would be kept on
maintained at least for a while like 470 series, without new GPU
supports / features added.

https://nvidia.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/3142

https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/drivers/unix/legacy-gpu/

And some may already noticed, 3xx series of legacy drivers are already
EoL'ed upstream since the end of Dec., 2022.
Why we still have 3xx variants of child ports in-tree is just because

*upstream tarballs are still available and buildable,

*no CVEs stating "wouldn't be fixed" cannot be found for them,

*and these are the last versions that supports i386.

Our current plan is as follows.

1. Once NFB based on 590 series or later is released, upgrade
-devel variant of child (slave) ports for it.

2. Once PB based on 590 series or later is released, upgrade
master ports and create new legacy variant of child ports. -580.

3. Once upstream tarball dissappears or CVEs that wouldn't be fixed
arises, relevant legacy port would be removed from ports tree.

Step 1 could be skipped, if nvidia releases PB without releasing NFB
first. (NFB prior to PB is NOT promised!)

Step 3 could be done immediately both on latest (aka main) and
on quarterly at once if the reason is "security".

But as we cannot know when 3xx series of drivers dissappear,
no DEPRECATED are set.

So,
For users running 580 series with pre-Turing GPUs:
Prepare for transition to upcoming -580 legacy branch.
Don't attempt to test 590.44.01 by overriding version.

For users running any of -304, -340 or -390 slave ports:
Consider replacing your GPUs to anything to-be-supportted
or transitioning to gneeric x11-drivers/xf86-video-scfb
(for UEFI boots) or x11-drivers/xf86-video-vesa (for legacy BIOS
boots).
are adviced.

Note that new Beta is the trigger for us to start investigating
for future upgrades on NFB and/or PB drivers.

Currently, confirmed that 590.44.01 can be built / packaged
sanely by overriding version as usual.
Running fine on Minisforum MS-01 with RTX A400 with iGPU disabled.
(Xorg only, not tested on Wayland, using nvidia-drm-66-kmod-devel).

Would investigate further if there are additional components
to be installed or not.

Regards.

--
Tomoaki AOKI <junchoon@dec.sakura.ne.jp>

Thank you TA for heads up and really amazing support of the nvidia
drivers packages and all related ports!! :-)
Hopefully the 590 will finally bring CUDA support to RTX50 series (I
noticed they mark RTX5070 as RTX50 series 5000 is for some older
cards) :-P
Regarding this new driver I noticed on windoze one problem - when
PCI-E is set to x8 and Gen5 there is a problem with that driver the
screen gets blank on driver load. I am using another part of x8 PCI-e
Gen5 route for nvme controller. This may affect someone on the BSD so
I am sharing my experience already. After several reboots my mobo (TUF
GAMING Z890-PRO WIFI) detected a problem and brought back PCI-E to
Gen3 that helped. Then I set Gen4 and all works. On Gen5 does not. I
have reinstalled windoze and this problem got back here but only after
nvidia driver install. I have also upgraded mobo bios 2006 -> 2207 ->
2401. On FreeBSD I am using nvidia-driver-devel-580.105.08.1403000 and
the problems was not here, so this seems closely related to the new
driver, maybe they know it already and will fix soon.
Regarding the older 300 series drivers maybe it would be good to place
source packages somewhere on our local mirror so the older cards are
still supported instead of deprecating working hardware? I have some
small old nvidia card in my local server it works really great for
local activities (much better than scfb) :-)
Thank you again! :-)
Tomek
--
CeDeROM, SQ7MHZ, http://www.tomek.cedro.info
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