What's New:

• Added support for the following GPU:
  • GTX 1070Ti
• Fixed a regression that could cause driver errors when setting modes that include DisplayPort Multi-Stream Transport devices.
• Added an nvidia.ko kernel module parameter, NVreg_EnableBacklightHandler, which can be used to enable experimental handling of laptop backlight brightness through /sys/class/backlight/. This handler overrides the ACPI-based one provided by the video.ko kernel module.
• NVreg_EnableBacklightHandler is disabled by default.
• Added G-SYNC to all supported Vulkan swapchains for Maxwell and up. G-SYNC is enabled by default when using G-SYNC-ready monitors. For direct-to-display swapchains, an application profile with "GLGSYNCAllowed" setting set to 'false' can be used to disable this feature:
  • { "rules" : [
  • { "pattern" : [], "profile" : [ "GLGSYNCAllowed", false ] }
  • ]}
• Fixed a regression that caused some display connectors on some GPUs to not report a connected HDMI or DisplayPort audio device even if the connected monitor supports audio.
• Fixed a bug that sometimes prevented the "Reset Default Configuration" button in the nvidia-settings "ECC Settings" page from being available when the ECC configuration is set to a non-default state.
• Fixed a bug that caused nvidia-settings to enforce overly aggressive limits on display positions in the "X Server Display Configuration" page under some circumstances.
• Fixed a bug that could cause the "Enable Base Mosaic (Surround)" checkbox in nvidia-settings to disappear when an X screen, rather than a display, is selected in the "X Server Display Configuration" page.
• Fixed a race condition that could lead to crashes when OpenGL programs manipulated vertex buffer objects from multiple threads simultaneously.
• Fixed a bug that caused the nvidia-settings control panel to retain some settings that had been applied, but not confirmed. This resulted in unwanted settings being applied to subsequent settings changes.
• Improved performance of fullscreen Vulkan applications using X11 swapchains. This optimization will cause more events that trigger an out-of-date swapchain, such as when entering or leaving fullscreen mode. (This is commonly encountered when using the alt-tab key combination, for example.) Applications that do not properly respond to the VK_ERROR_OUT_OF_DATE_KHR return code may not function properly when these events occur. See section 30.8 of the Vulkan specification.
• Added support for YUV 4:2:0 compression for monitors connected via DisplayPort in configurations where either the display or GPU is incapable of driving the current mode in RGB 4:4:4. See the description in the "Programming Modes" appendix for details.
• Added framebuffer console hot plug handling to nvidia-modeset.
• Note that hot plugging is only handled when nvidia-modeset is initialized; for example, when Xorg or nvidia-persistenced is running or when nvidia-drm is loaded with the "modeset=1" parameter.
• Added an "AllowGSYNC" MetaMode attribute that can be used to disable G-SYNC completely. This can be use to allow enabling features that are incompatible with G-SYNC, such as Ultra Low Motion Blur or Frame Lock.
• Fixed several problems that prevented the "cc_version_check" sanity test from running correctly when building the NVIDIA kernel modules. As these problems would have masked mismatches between the compiler versions used to build the kernel and the NVIDIA kernel modules for an extended period of time, nvidia-installer has been updated to ignore CC version mismatches by default when they are detected.
• Updated nvidia-installer to use the init_module syscall directly to test load kernel modules instead of libkmod/insmod. This removes libkmod as a build dependency of nvidia-installer, and insmod as a run-time dependency.
• Tiled monitors formerly resulted in a separate Xinerama screen being reported for each tile. They will now, by default, be combined into a single large Xinerama screen.
• The individual panels in a tiled monitor will now be arranged based on the layout information provided in the monitor's EDID. This can be overridden by either manually specifying offsets or using the "MetaModeOrientation" option.
• Disabled interlaced modes over DisplayPort by default due to incomplete support in the GPU. Added "AllowDpInterlaced" mode validation token to override this default behavior and allow interlaced modes over DisplayPort protocol anyway.
• Fixed a bug that could cause some eDP G-SYNC displays to flicker at low refresh rates.
• Fixed a bug that could cause OpenGL applications to crash after a prolonged DPMS sleep state on a monitor driven with PRIME Sync.
• Fixed a bug that artificially limited the maximum pixel clock to 300 MHz when using certain more capable DisplayPort to HDMI adapters.
• Fixed a bug that prevented the NVIDIA kernel modules from building for non-SMP Linux kernels.
• Updated the output of 'nvidia-smi nvlink --status' to include reporting NVLink speed.
• Fixed a bug that caused incorrect PCI topology reporting in nvidia-smi on Intel Skylake systems.

The presence of multiple GLX client libraries in the package has implications for repackagers of the NVIDIA driver; see the libGL.so entry in the "Installed Components" chapter of the Readme for details.

The OpenGL Vendor-Neutral Driver (GLVND) infrastructure is now included and supported by the NVIDIA GLX and OpenGL drivers. This should not cause any visible changes in behavior for end users, but some internal driver component libraries have been renamed and/or moved as a result. These changes may affect scripts that rely on the presence of NVIDIA OpenGL driver components other than those specified in the Linux OpenGL ABI version 1.0, maintainers of alternative NVIDIA driver installation packages, and applications which rely on the presence of any non- OpenGL/GLX symbols in the libGL.so.1 library and its dependencies in any way. Learn more.