NOOB > which NVIDIA binary Xorg driver to choose

[Iqscope]

Hi,

this is a very basic question.

I have a NVIDIA 480 GTX graphics card and want to install its driver.

Kubuntu shows me a list of available drivers for that card, which is very nice.
But I get the following entries
NVIDIA binary Xorg driver, kernel module and VDPAU library
exactly 5 times!

The only difference I see, is in the last sentence:
See /usr/share/doc/nvidia-313-updates/README.txt.gz for a complete listof supported GPUs and PCIIDs

Maybe it is a version number

So, the question is, which one should I pick?

I think this question should be asked a thousand times!

Thank you for your answer!

[oshunluvr]

It is a bit confusing.

You should have a program in your menu called Jockey (Additional Drivers) and it should have a list of what you now have installed and has the ability to activate those drivers. I would start with "nvidia-current" which should in theory install the latest-and-greatest stable version. You can install them all if you want because until you activate them, they aren't in use, but this is not necessary.

You must also have dkms installed and the kernel headers that match your kernel version to activate the driver.

If you want maximum performance, once you have your drivers installed and activated, install gtkperf to test your graphics speed and do some research on creating and tweaking a xorg.conf file. If you're satisfied with out-of-the-box performance you can skip this.

Also once installed - you'll have nvidia-settings which will give you a few more setup options and info.

[Iqscope]

Thanks for the answer.

The Additional Driver program is where I got the list from in my previous post.

There is no entry nvidia-current.

I only see 5 entries of NVIDIA binary Xorg driver, kernel module and VDPAU library

That's the problem.

Yesterday, I installed a random one.
And now the entry in the additional drivers list suddenly says nvidia-update.

I think this is a problem with displaying the correct text for each driver!?

[oshunluvr]

There's something funny going on here. I answered you yesterday from work on a Windows machine so I didn't have any way to verify stuff. On my system I have the drivers installed and in use but "Additional Drivers" says nothing is in use. Clearly, something is amiss.

Rather than mess something up, let's go to a terminal and try a few things. Open a terminal (konsole) and type:

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install dkms build-essential linux-headers-`uname -r`

and when that's done type,

dkms status

and report the results. This should set you up and make it ready for the drivers. Then install the latest drivers:

sudo apt-get install nvidia-313-updates nvidia-settings-313-updates

Report what happens.

[Iqscope]

Thanks for the answer, I will test it today and give a feedback...

[Iqscope]

This is the dkms status:
nvidia-313-updates, 313.30, 3.8.0-22-generic, x86_64: installed
nvidia-313-updates, 313.30, 3.8.0-23-generic, x86_64: installed

Do I have to execute sudo apt-get install nvidia-313-updates nvidia-settings-313-updates?

I think I already have the latest driver installed. It was luck, that I pick the right one?

[oshunluvr]

Lucky maybe. That dkms looks normal. I would install the nvidia-settings blob, but it likely already is.

Type this in:

cat /var/log/Xorg.0.log |grep Driver

and you should see this in the output somewhere:

(II) NVIDIA Unified Driver for all Supported NVIDIA GPUs

This shows if you're loading the driver.

[Iqscope]

Yes, the driver is loaded and I have the settings tool, too.

I hope this strange behavior in the additional drivers program get fixed somedays...

[oshunluvr]

Jockey (the Additional Settings program) worked fine for me in 12.04 and 12.10. Strange that it's behaving oddly now. I'm not going to mess with it at this point because everything else is fine.

Are you using the xorg default options or have you created an /etc/X11/xorg.conf file? You can get a but more performance with some fine tuning, but the majority of the needed options are default nowadays.