Abstract: By means of four typical sets of nuclear parton distribution functions and three different parametrizations of quark energy loss,a leading order phenomenological analysis is performed on the nuclear Drell-Yan differential cross section ratio,and the incoming quark energy loss per unit path length is determined with dE/dL=(1.21±0.09)GeV/fm.Our results show that The theoretical value of the nuclear Drell-Yan differential cross section ratio from the linear energy loss has almost no difference with that given by the quadratic energy loss;with independence on the nuclear modification of parton distributions, the existing experimental data from lower incident beam energy rule out the incident-parton momentum fraction quark energy loss .