Switched from nouveau to nvidia prop drivers and graphics improved

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1

I switched from nouveau open driver to nvidia proprietary driver. To me the crispness, and sharpness of my display has pleasantly improved. But, I am wondering what made this possible or am I hallucinating. Same monitor (ordinary 24" dell ), same graphics card (nvidia geforce gtx 1050), same fonts and themes.
I thought this was just worthy of a chat topic rather than tech question.
Not a graphics person but could it be rendering/shading capabilities that were improved? Perhaps it is just mind looking for an improvement. Stated improvements between the driver alternatives are touted to be in gaming due to higher response but I’ve seen nothing about improved display.

Anyone with any ideas pass them on. Just curious.

thanks, tom kosvic

2

What resolutions are available from that “ordinary 24” Dell" monitor? Is it possible that the proprietary driver can drive a higher mode that was just not available with nouveau due to not being optimized for the gtx1050?

3

Res is 1920x1080 on new proprietary drivers. Don’t have comparable from nouveau. I don’t think this was changed and was the same but not 100% on that. I do believe old res was also 1920x1080.

tom@mydesktop: ~ $ xrandr
Screen 0: minimum 8 x 8, current 1920 x 1080, maximum 32767 x 32767
DVI-D-0 disconnected primary (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
HDMI-0 connected 1920x1080+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 527mm x 296mm
   1920x1080     60.00*+  59.94    50.00    60.05    60.00    50.04  
   1600x900      60.00  
   1280x1024     75.02    60.02  
   1280x720      60.00    59.94    50.00  
   1152x864      75.00  
   1024x768      75.03    60.00  
   800x600       75.00    60.32  
   720x576       50.00  
   720x480       59.94  
   640x480       75.00    59.94    59.93  
DP-0 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
DP-1 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
tom@

tom@mydesktop: ~ $ inxi -Ga
Graphics:
  Device-1: NVIDIA GP107 [GeForce GTX 1050 Ti] vendor: EVGA driver: nvidia
    v: 580.159.03 alternate: nouveau,nvidia_drm non-free: 550-580.xx+
    status: current (as of 2025-11; EOL~2026-12-xx) arch: Pascal code: GP10x
    process: TSMC 16nm built: 2016-2021 pcie: gen: 3 speed: 8 GT/s lanes: 16
    ports: active: none off: HDMI-A-1 empty: DP-1,DVI-D-1 bus-ID: 01:00.0
    chip-ID: 10de:1c82 class-ID: 0300
  Display: x11 server: X.Org v: 21.1.21 with: Xwayland v: 24.1.11
    compositor: marco v: 1.28.1 driver: X: loaded: nvidia
    unloaded: modesetting,vesa alternate: fbdev,nouveau,nv
    gpu: nvidia,nvidia-nvswitch display-ID: :0 screens: 1
  Screen-1: 0 s-res: 1920x1080 s-dpi: 92 s-size: 530x301mm (20.87x11.85")
    s-diag: 610mm (24")
  Monitor-1: HDMI-A-1 mapped: HDMI-0 note: disabled model: Dell U2419HX
    serial: HC8YPS2 built: 2019 res: mode: 1920x1080 hz: 60 scale: 100% (1)
    dpi: 93 gamma: 1.2 size: 527x296mm (20.75x11.65") diag: 604mm (23.8")
    ratio: 16:9 modes: max: 1920x1080 min: 640x480
  API: OpenGL v: 4.6.0 vendor: nvidia v: 580.159.03 glx-v: 1.4
    direct-render: yes renderer: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 Ti/PCIe/SSE2
    memory: 3.91 GiB
  API: Vulkan v: 1.4.350 layers: 8 device: 0 type: discrete-gpu name: NVIDIA
    GeForce GTX 1050 Ti driver: nvidia v: 580.159.03 device-ID: 10de:1c82
    surfaces: N/A device: 1 type: cpu name: llvmpipe (LLVM 22.1.7 256 bits)
    driver: mesa llvmpipe v: 26.1.3 (LLVM 22.1.7) device-ID: 10005:0000
    surfaces: N/A
  API: EGL Message: EGL data requires eglinfo. Check --recommends.
  Info: Tools: api: glxinfo,vulkaninfo gpu: nvidia-settings,nvidia-smi
    x11: xdpyinfo, xprop, xrandr
tom@mydesktop: ~ $