NVIDIA 169.07 Linux Display Driver

Just in time for the holidays, NVIDIA has released a new Linux display driver, which is a stable version of their previous 169.04 beta last month. In addition, the new NVIDIA 169.07 Linux driver has a few changes, while most of the release highlights were already found in the 169.04 release. We are preparing additional Linux tests with this new driver, but for right now we have the details on this proprietary display driver.

The NVIDIA 169.04 beta driver had introduced GeForce 8800GT support a month ago, while in this 169.07 driver the support is officially there as well as for the GeForce 8800GTS 512MB and GeForce 8800M. Another feature originally introduced in 169.04 was improved mode-setting support on Quadro and GeForce 8 graphics cards and addressing some stability concerns (including for SMP users). This driver also has some performance improvements for the GeForce 8 series.

As we had shared in our NVIDIA XRender performance article, the 169.04 driver had done some great things for this X.Org extension and it continues with 169.07 by fixing some other XRender issues. Another new fix in 169.07 is fix for scrolling ARGB X drawables in Qt and improved interlaced DVI, HDMI, and HDTV mode-setting.

For those using the NVIDIA proprietary driver for workstation purposes, the CUDA (Compute Unified Device Architecture) driver is now included with the executable file.

Aside from the mentioned changes, there doesn't appear to be anything else new in the NVIDIA 169.07 driver. The x86 release notes and download link can be found from the NVIDIA website. If you have any questions regarding the NVIDIA Linux drivers available, be sure to stop by the Phoronix Forums for the latest discussions.