NVIDIA 169.04 Beta Linux Driver

Late last month NVIDIA released the GeForce 8800GT graphics card, however, today NVIDIA has finally delivered an updated Linux display driver to add this new product support as well as correct other outstanding issues. This new Linux display driver is version 169.04 Beta, which is a large version bump from the previous 100.14 series.

In addition to the GeForce 8800GT support there is improved mode-setting support on Quadro and GeForce 8 graphics cards, fixed stability issues for the GeForce 8 series and the GeForce 6200/7200/7300 graphics cards when using a multi-core system. The NVIDIA 169.04 driver also improves hot-key switching support on some Lenovo notebooks, fixes a Compiz problem after VT-switching, improved RENDER performance, and improved interaction with Barco and Chi Mei 56" DFPs and Gateway 19" DFPs.

While this driver is still in beta, it also includes a new nvidia-settings interface for monitoring PowerMizer state information, fixed rendering corruption in Maya's Graph Editor, improved interaction between SLI AFR and swap groups on certain Quadro FX GPUs, fixed a bug causing corruption with redirected X-Video on TurboCache graphics cards, improved display device detection for the GeForce 8 series, improved usability of nvidia-settings when using lower resolutions, improved GLX visual consolidation when using Xinerama, experimental support for running the X server at Depth 30, and worked out a Linux kernel/toolchain bug causing soft lockup errors when suspending on some Intel systems.

We're in the process of testing this new NVIDIA 169.04 display driver for Linux and will report back once we've completed this benchmarking. The download driver can be downloaded from NVIDIA's website. Share your experiences with this new NVIDIA Linux driver in the Phoronix Forums.