14 DAY TRIAL // NVIDIA has released a new branch of Legacy drivers for the Linux platform and they are the most advanced versions you can get right now for old video cards.
People are usually concerned about new drivers for their video cards, but the truth of the matter is that there are also a lot of older cards out there, maybe more than we can imagine. If the developers don't provide regular updates for the drivers, those cards won't be usable with new kernel versions or new X.org releases.
Users might not be aware of this right now, but each time NVIDIA advances the version for this video cards, like the recently launched 900 series, an older one gets left behind, meaning it becomes legacy. It can live in this state for quite a while, but eventually the support will be dropped completely, even for the drivers.
NVIDIA Legacy drives are not for everyone
There are four legacy driver branches right now and users need to read very carefully what they want to install. It's difficult to say what users will need, but fortunately NVIDIA provides a comprehensive list of support chipsets.
"Fixed a bug that caused frequent AMD-Vi page faults on systems with some AMD 8xx/9xx-series chipsets when used with some NVIDIA GPUs. Fixed a regression that could cause system crashes when terminating the X server on systems with an NVIDIA Quadro SDI Capture card installed. Fixed a bug that caused audio over HDMI to not work on some GPUs while using a display that supports HDMI 3D," is noted in the changelog.
Everything below the GTX 800 series is supported by the new Legacy drivers, down to the GTX 8000 series. For anything below that, users will need get one of other branches.
Check out the announcement for a complete list of fixes and improvements. You can download NVIDIA Linux Display Driver 340.76 for Linux 32-bit and 64-bit. Keep in mind that you will need to manually install the drivers on your system.