14 DAY TRIAL // NVIDIA has released a new Linux driver in the Beta branch, and the developers have implemented support for a number of new GPUs and quite a few fixes and improvements.
It's been a while since the previous Beta release of the NVIDIA drivers for Linux was offered to users, and it looks like the developers have been really busy and have used the time well.
They didn't just add some much-needed support for some of the new GPUs that were released in the past few weeks, they also made a ton of improvements, and Linux users will definitely notice their presence.
NVIDIA doesn't release too many Beta updates for its drivers, so when it does, it's usually something interesting. This kind of version doesn't land in repositories, with very few exceptions like Arch Linux, meaning that users will probably have to install it manually in their distro, which is not the ideal situation. It can end up with missing kernel headers, but that's a risk people usually take.
NVIDIA 349.16 is very interesting
The fact that this is a Beta release should make users understand that they must be really careful because it's not stable. On the other hand, installing the latest drivers can also greatly improve the performance of the PC.
"Support for G-SYNC monitors when used together with non-G-SYNC monitors. When G-SYNC is enabled, non-G-SYNC monitors will display with tearing. A bug that caused Nvidia-settings to crash when assigning an attribute whose value is a display ID on a system with multiple X screens. Support for lossless H.264/AVC video streams to VDPAU has been added. Added Nvidia-settings commandline support to query the current and targeted GPU fan speed," reads the official changelog.
Also, support has been added for GeForce GTX TITAN X, GeForce GTX 960M, GeForce GTX 950M, GeForce 940M, GeForce 930M, GeForce 930A, GeForce 920M, Quadro M6000, and Quadro K1200. Users can download NVIDIA 349.16 Linux drivers from Softpedia, for both the 32-bit and 64-bit architecture, and give them a try.