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I want to install CUDA toolkit 8.0 on Ubuntu 16.04. My system has Nvidia GeForce 820M graphics card. CUDA 8 requires graphics drivers Nvidia-361 or higher.

System Settings > Software and Updates > Additional Drivers lists Nvidia-340 and Nouveau display driver to be the two options for drivers of graphics card. sudo ubuntu-drivers devices also recommends these two drivers, the following is the output:

== /sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1c.4/0000:08:00.0 ==
vendor   : NVIDIA Corporation
model    : GF117M [GeForce 610M/710M/810M/820M / GT 620M/625M/630M/720M] (GeForce 820M)
modalias : pci:v000010DEd00001140sv00001028sd00000652bc03sc02i00
driver   : nvidia-340 - distro non-free recommended
driver   : xserver-xorg-video-nouveau - distro free builtin

I however removed all the Nvidia graphics drivers using apt-get purge nvidia*, after which I installed the nvidia-361 using apt-get install nvidia-361. Now nvidia-smi lists following:

+------------------------------------------------------+                       
| NVIDIA-SMI 361.42     Driver Version: 361.42         |                       
|-------------------------------+----------------------+----------------------+
| GPU  Name        Persistence-M| Bus-Id        Disp.A | Volatile Uncorr. ECC |
| Fan  Temp  Perf  Pwr:Usage/Cap|         Memory-Usage | GPU-Util  Compute M. |
|===============================+======================+======================|
|   0  GeForce 820M        Off  | 0000:08:00.0     N/A |                  N/A |
| N/A   47C    P0    N/A /  N/A |    276MiB /  2047MiB |     N/A      Default |
+-------------------------------+----------------------+----------------------+

+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Processes:                                                       GPU Memory |
|  GPU       PID  Type  Process name                               Usage      |
|=============================================================================|
|    0                  Not Supported                                         |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+

But the System Settings > Software and Updates > Additional Drivers still does not show Nvidia-361 to be the selected or recommended driver. Nouveau drivers are selected by default:

default driver

My concern now is that are nvidia-361 drivers compatible with my system and whether Ubuntu is using those or the Nouveau default drivers. Refer image below for Nvidia X Server Settings window:

Nvidia X Server Settings

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  • Yes, multiple Nvidia drivers are available for your system. The recommended 340 driver has been offered, and, apparently, you've also been able to install the 361 driver. The nouveau driver is selected by default because it is the default one - no surprise here. The screenshots you posted do not show that anything is out of order. Hopefully, it will all work out, and you concerns will subside in due course. Nov 1, 2016 at 21:00

1 Answer 1

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You shouldn't be concerned with the Additional Drivers menu. As long as nvidia-smi works and shows the correct driver version, you should be fine. If you were using Nouveau, nvidia-smi wouldn't work correctly.

If you are still concerned, you can always blacklist Nouveau from your system.

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    The additional drivers menu can be blank one week and have 8 drivers lusted the next week with real driver checked property. Nov 1, 2016 at 22:13

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