I installed 64 bit Open SUSE 11.4. Since I installed updates earlier today, the Nouveau driver has been reporting one of the two monitors attached to the computer as being of an unknown type. It is a Philips Brilliance 109P4. Also, since that time, that screen has occasionally been blank for about a second. Until about the time I did the updates, neither of these problems were occurring and they don’t occur on the same computer when using an HDD with 64 bit Open SUSE 11.3.
I found serious underperformance with nouveau and nutso things like u describe. All became good when I switched to the proprietary drives put out by ATI and rolled into RPMs in the community repos.
The problems aren’t occurring now. I have no idea as to any likely reason for them appearing and disappearing. Both monitors are now being identified correctly and there has been no screen blanking so far today.
It will be interesting to see if the problems reappear.