Edit: Changed the subject to reflect that the 580 stable driver has been released.
I wouldn't ordinarily suggest people try a beta driver unless they're on high end hardware and chasing features, but the 580s have some notes I think might apply to things I've seen troubling people recently here. I make no guarantees, but:
Fixed a bug that could result in a black screen when setting specific modes on HDMI displays.
Fixed a bug that caused blank or frozen screens under the following conditions: nvidia-drm is loaded with the modeset=1 and fbdev=1 parameters, using a Maxwell or Pascal series GPU, and more than one display device of differing resolutions are connected.
I recall a fair few blank screen issues of late. Maxwell and Pascal apply to mid GTX 700 up to 10 series Nvidia cards.
Fixed a bug that led to increasing memory usage in X11 OpenGL and Vulkan applications after suspend/resume cycles.
I seem to recall someone complaining of increasing RAM use after suspend.
I'm currently running 580 without trouble, and because someone might try a beta as a result of this post, I've done quick checks on the following, to make sure it's less likely to be a headache. I was aiming for a wide variety of engines and levels of demand on hardware, but haven't extensively tested in each (takes time, after all).
Web browsing (Firefox, hardware acceleration disabled to avoid annoying DRM stuff)
Steam (Vulkan shader compilation, both background and foreground and basic UI rendering)
Death Must Die
Slay the Princess
Age of Wonders IV
Persona 5 Royal
Cyberpunk 2077
LLMs running via LM Studio
Like a Dragon Ishin hangs on a black screen at launch, but to be fair I don't know if it would've worked on previous drivers, either--it was in my backlog, untouched.
Naturally, if any of the fixes are interesting but you don't want to deal with beta drivers or the more complicated installation, you can watch for the PPA to include them eventually.
(Oh, and if anyone knows off the top of their head what's wrong with Like a Dragon: Ishin, plz halp.)
I haven't received any new Nvidia driver updates since version 570. Now, this could be because I'm still on OS 16, and I'm no longer receiving updates due to LTS EOL. I stayed on Nvidia driver 555, cause of all the reports of serious problems with versions 560 and beyond.
I've been holding off till Nvidia gets their act together, and puts out a driver that doesn't result in meltdown, possibly the 580 driver. But again, no driver updates available since 570 was dropped. I might have to wait till OS 18 is released.
Just a quick bump to report that the 580 stable driver has been released, and the one game that didn't run in my tests, Like a Dragon: Ishin, does run on 580. There's a substantial pause on a black screen, but unlike before, there was drive and CPU activity. Once through, it loaded to the title screen just fine.
Just a curiosity question, my zorin system just updated to the 580 nvidia drivers and a game i play has almost zero fps since, i think the previous version was 575 but thats not showing up in the additional drivers section of the software updater. the game "7 days to die" was working fine on the previous driver set. what would you suggest the best course of action would be? i'm trying the 550 set to see if that will work for me.
I agree - the 580 driver seems a step backward. The 550 seems much better; And of course many of the games you launch will pester you with incessant nagging that your game experience will be pitiful if you do not "upgrade" to the Glorious 580 driver.
I seem to have far fewer problems with Nvidia drivers than most people and would love to know why. Still, @Jazon, I recommend checking to see if you're using the proprietary or open drivers first. One of the few significant problems I HAVE had was with the proprietary driver. In Zorin, Launch Software and Updates, and look under additional drivers. These are the options I have at the top:
Ignore the manually installed driver for now; that's something I've done and you won't see that. The fourth option in my screenshot is for nvidia-driver-580-open (proprietary). You're likely using the first option, nvidia-driver-580. Try switching to the 580 open and see how it goes.
