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I am using a Lenovo Y580 running Ubuntu 14.04/Windows 10, which has a GeForce GTX 660M Graphics card. I'm trying to train neural networks using Caffe and it would be really helpful if I could use my NVIDIA GPU. This requires me to install appropriate NVIDIA GPU drivers and the CUDA toolkit. Here's the problem :

I am using the NVIDIA-304.132 driver. The latest version of CUDA that I can use with this driver is CUDA 5, which isn't compatible with Ubuntu 14.04. I want to upgrade to NVIDIA-340(or above), so that I can use CUDA 6.5(or above) which is the earliest version of CUDA compatible with Ubuntu 14.04.

None of the drivers released after NVIDIA-304.132 seem to work with my laptop even though NVIDIA's site claims that all drivers up to NVIDIA-375 are compatible with GeForce GTX 660M. In fact, NVIDIA-375 is specified as the recommended driver for GTX 660M both on NVIDIA's site and when I run ubuntu-drivers devices in the terminal. I have already tried NVIDIA-340, 355, 358, 361, 367 and 375. I either get a black screen or am stuck on the purple start up screen every time I try the other drivers and am forced to login using CTRL+ALT+F1 and go back to NVIDIA-304. I have already tried setting nomodeset in etc/default/grub as suggested in some threads without any change.

Is it possible for me to use NVIDIA-340(or above) as recommended by the NVIDIA site ?

This link lists the appropriate drivers required for specific versions of the CUDA Toolkit.
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/30820513/what-is-version-of-cuda-for-nvidia-304-125

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  • "Is it possible for me to use NVIDIA-340(or above) as recommended by the NVIDIA site ?" - I have a system with a GTX 660 card, and a Ubuntu VM, I had no problem installing the current Linux drivers on it.
    – Ramhound
    Commented Dec 9, 2016 at 3:07
  • Can you tell me exactly which version of the driver you're using ? Also, How did you install it ? Did you download the .run file from the NVIDIA site or just run apt-get from the terminal ?
    – Nishant Prabhu
    Commented Dec 9, 2016 at 3:14
  • @Ramhound "I have a system with a GTX 660 card, and a Ubuntu VM" 660 != 660M, and a VM wouldn't use a physical graphics card without VT-D
    – Journeyman Geek ♦
    Commented Dec 9, 2016 at 7:08
  • @JourneymanGeek - It's a Hyper-V VM that I booted to.
    – Ramhound
    Commented Dec 9, 2016 at 15:23

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I finally figured it out. I just had to run sudo apt-get update and sudo apt-get upgrade. That's all it took. Now I'm runnin the NVIDIA-367 drivers and CUDA 8. I realise now that the solution was exceedingly simple, but I am new to Ubuntu and it took me some time to figure it out. If there's someone else facing this problem, hope this post helps!

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