X lock up and/or blank screen when using the 64-bit binary driver

Problem

When using the Nvidia 64-bit binary driver (1.0-7167,7174,7676), starting X might lock up the system or produce a blank screen. This only occurs under 2.6.11 kernel or higher.

The symptom has occurred on the Marquis K825, C610, C620 and C625. Systems that are configured with 4GB memory or higher might experience the symptom.

http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=49340

Solution

Use the open source driver (nv) or use the ASL customized Nvidia binary driver provided on the ASL Driver CD version 3.88 or higher. The executable file is NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-1.0-7676-pkg2-ASL2.run stored under ASL-packages. This customized binary driver includes two patches described here:

http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=58498

Note: The open source driver (nv) have some limitations including:

  1. The driver can only support 2D acceleration. There is no 3D acceleration.
  2. The driver can only support single head display. There is no dual head support.
  3. The driver can only support up to 1280x1024 resolution in digital mode (DVI)
  4. The driver might not display correctly on external LCD projector.
  5. Depending on the version of XFree86 or Xorg provided, the driver might not recognize certain Nvidia graphic chipsets. Latest and greatest Linux distributions such as Fedora Core 4 or SuSE Linux 9.3 have better driver support. RHEL distributions (version 3 and version 4) have limited support since they include older XFree86/Xorg drivers.