Editing GeForce (section)

=== Third-party free and open-source ===
{{See also|Free and open-source graphics device driver#Nvidia}}
Community-created, free and open-source drivers exist as an alternative to the drivers released by Nvidia. Open-source drivers are developed primarily for Linux, however there may be ports to other operating systems. The most prominent alternative driver is the [[Reverse engineering|reverse-engineered]] free and open-source ''[[nouveau (software)|nouveau]]'' graphics device driver. Nvidia has publicly announced to not provide any support for such additional device drivers for their products,<ref name="NvidiaNouveau">{{cite web | url = https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NzgwNQ | title = Nvidia's Response To Recent Nouveau Work | publisher = [[Phoronix]] | date = 2009-12-14 | url-status = live | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20161007001143/https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NzgwNQ | archive-date = October 7, 2016 | df = mdy-all }}</ref> although Nvidia has contributed code to the Nouveau driver.<ref>{{cite web | url = https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTczOTg | title = NVIDIA Contributes Re-Clocking Code To Nouveau For The GK20A | last1 = Larabel | first1 = Michael | date = 2014-07-11 | website = Phoronix | access-date = 2014-09-09 | url-status = live | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20140725081426/http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTczOTg | archive-date = July 25, 2014 | df = mdy-all }}</ref>

Free and open-source drivers support a large portion (but not all) of the features available in GeForce-branded cards. For example, {{As of|2014|1|lc=yes}} nouveau driver lacks support for the GPU and memory clock frequency adjustments, and for associated dynamic power management.<ref>{{cite web | url = https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTU4MDU | title = Nouveau 3.14 Gets New Acceleration, Still Lacking PM | publisher = [[Phoronix]] | date = 2014-01-23 | access-date = 2014-07-25 | url-status = live | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20140703101418/http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTU4MDU | archive-date = July 3, 2014 | df = mdy-all }}</ref> Also, Nvidia's proprietary drivers consistently perform better than nouveau in various benchmarks.<ref>{{cite web | url = https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=nvidia_nouveau_linux316&num=1 | title = Benchmarking Nouveau and Nvidia's proprietary GeForce driver on Linux | publisher = [[Phoronix]] | date = 2014-07-28 | url-status = live | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20160816063214/http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=nvidia_nouveau_linux316&num=1 | archive-date = August 16, 2016 | df = mdy-all }}</ref> However, {{As of|2014|8|lc=yes}} and version 3.16 of the [[Linux kernel mainline]], contributions by Nvidia allowed partial support for GPU and memory clock frequency adjustments to be implemented.{{Citation needed|date=January 2017}}