Ubuntu 16.04: nvidia drivers for GeForce GTX 960M

Solution 1:

This file was modified by the Community with no fresh time stamps after May 7 2016, but there should be one for Sep 16 2016 because it showed up on the active list.

The answer above sudo apt-add-repository ppa:graphics-drivers/ppa today results with:

 Fresh drivers from upstream, currently shipping Nvidia.

## Current Status

We currently recommend: `nvidia-367`, Nvidia's current long lived branch.
For GeForce 8 and 9 series GPUs use `nvidia-340`
For GeForce 6 and 7 series GPUs use `nvidia-304`

nvidia-370 is the current BETA release!

## What we're working on right now:

- Normal driver updates
- Investigating how to bring this goodness to distro on a cadence.

## WARNINGS:

This PPA is currently in testing, you should be experienced with packaging before you dive in here. Give us a few days to sort out the kinks.

Volunteers welcome! See also: https://github.com/mamarley/nvidia-graphics-drivers/

### How you can help:

## Install PTS and benchmark your gear:

    sudo apt-get install phoronix-test-suite

Run the benchmark:

    phoronix-test-suite default-benchmark openarena xonotic tesseract gputest unigine-valley

and then say yes when it asks you to submit your results to openbechmarking.org. Then grab a cup of coffee, it takes a bit for the benchmarks to run. Depending on the version of Ubuntu you're using it might preferable for you to grabs PTS from upstream directly: http://www.phoronix-test-suite.com/?k=downloads

## Share your results with the community:

Post a link to your results (or any other feedback to): https://launchpad.net/~graphics-drivers-testers

Remember to rerun and resubmit the benchmarks after driver upgrades, this will allow us to gather a bunch of data on performance that we can share with everybody.

If you run into old documentation referring to other PPAs, you can help us by consolidating references to this PPA.

If someone wants to go ahead and start prototyping on `software-properties-gtk` on what the GUI should look like, please start hacking!

## Help us Help You!

We use the donation funds to get the developers hardware to test and upload these drivers, please consider donating to the "community" slider on the donation page if you're loving this PPA:

http://www.ubuntu.com/download/desktop/contribute
 More info: https://launchpad.net/~graphics-drivers/+archive/ubuntu/ppa
Press [ENTER] to continue or ctrl-c to cancel adding it

Be advised there are instructions on Nvidia site about disadvantages of upgrading Debian (which Ubuntu is based on) versus clean install.

Also be advised Nvidia website might have special instructions for Haswell, however their current drivers use the same one from my lowly GT650M up to OP's GT760M but there can be all kinds of recommended changes in other areas of the system based on Intel CPU and/or systemd or Debian.

Also there are special circumstances like the OP where Integrated Graphics and Discrete Graphics aka "Hybrid Graphics" are built into the Motherboard.

The Nvidia website does talk about black screens that are common questions in A.U. (Ask Ubuntu) so it's a worthwhile visit for most reading the OP's question.

Solution 2:

According to the Nvidia driver web site the GTX 960M is supported by driver 367.35 & driver 364.19. An earlier driver such as 340.96 does not support GTX 960M.

The newest version of Ubuntu is preferable. And if it is an LTS version then we should be installing the latest point release. With 14.04 that would be 14.04.2 with 14.04.3 being released at the end of August. And 16.04 should be getting its first point release (16.04.1) at the end of July. The purpose of these point releases is to keep the release up to date with hardware drivers for hardware that came out after the LTS was released.

How have you been going about installing the proprietary video driver? There are three methods. (1) When installing Ubuntu tick the box to install third party software. (2) After installation we go to System Settings>Software & Updates>Additional Drivers tab. (3) We use the terminal and run this command

sudo ubuntu-drivers autoinstall

That will install the recommended proprietary video driver. What method are you using? This command will list the officially available proprietary video drivers:

ubuntu-drivers list

Allow time for the command to work. A Nvidia settings utility will also be installed. Use that to switch from integrated graphics to Nvidia graphics.

Solution 3:

If you add the graphics drivers PPA you will get a lot more versions of the nvidia driver, one of which should work for you , i would guess nvidia-364

ppa info page https://launchpad.net/~graphics-drivers/+archive/ubuntu/ppa

To add the ppa and install the nvidia-364:

sudo apt-add-repository ppa:graphics-drivers/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install nvidia-364 nvidia-prime

If the problem persists try one of the other nvidia driver packages you can generate a list using this command:

sudo apt-cache search '^nvidia-[:digit]' --names-only