NVIDIA 1.0-9755 Display Driver

This morning NVIDIA released a new Linux display driver. While this driver was not the Linux 100.XX.XX driver that was expected, it was a minor update to append support for the new Quadro graphics cards. In addition, GeForce 8800 series SLI is now supported.

The new product support in the NVIDIA 1.0-9755 display driver is for the Quadro FX4600 and Quadro FX5600. The Quadro FX 4600/5600 was released two days ago, and this new series is based upon the G80 found in the 8800GTX. NVIDIA Corporation has dubbed the new Quadro solutions the greatest generational leap in company history. These new Quadros support Shader Model 4.0, 1.5GB frame buffers, a new unified architecture, and GPU computing support for visualization through NVIDIA's CUDA. In addition to the new product support, the 1.0-9755 display driver also features initial SLI support for the GeForce 8 series and the newly supported Quadros.

Starting with this release, support for GPUs older than the GeForce 4 has been dropped. The support for these graphics cards can, however, be found in the NVIDIA legacy drivers or the open-source 3D Nouveau drivers. It is also worth pointing out that this is NVIDIA's first official Linux driver release for 2007, and for most people, this driver will make no difference.

As this is only a minor update to NVIDIA's driver family, we have not conducted our usual benchmarking comparisons. We are, however, expecting the new 100.XX.XX to be delivered in beta or release form in the very near future. Some speculations on these new drivers can be found here. The Solaris and FreeBSD drivers have also been updated to version 1.0-9755.

If you run into any problems with the new NVIDIA 1.0-9755 display driver be sure to stop by the Phoronix Forums.