NVIDIA 595.45 Beta Linux Driver Released With Vulkan Updates and Wayland Changes

NVIDIA has released a new 595.45 beta graphics driver for 64-bit Linux systems, bringing a mix of Vulkan improvements, better power management, and several stability fixes.

One of the key highlights is expanded support for Vulkan through the addition of the VK_EXT_descriptor_heap and VK_EXT_present_timing extensions. These additions enhance capabilities for developers and applications that rely on Vulkan for high-performance graphics. The update also improves the way Vulkan swapchains are recreated, helping reduce stuttering when users resize application windows.

Gaming stability has also been addressed. The driver fixes an issue that could trigger GPU hangs and Xid errors while running Black Myth: Wukong, and resolves a problem where Vulkan swapchains would stop displaying new frames in X11 environments.

The new release adds support for DRI3 version 1.2 and now enables the modeset=1 option for the nvidia-drm module by default. In addition, the minimum supported versions for Wayland and glibc have been raised to 1.20 and 2.27 respectively.

Power management and system suspend behavior also receive improvements. When using NVIDIA’s open kernel modules with the NVreg_UseKernelSuspendNotifiers=1 option enabled, the nvidia.ko module can now handle video memory preservation directly during suspend. Systems using proprietary kernel modules will continue to rely on the /proc/driver/nvidia/suspend interface for suspend and resume notifications.

Another notable addition is a new CudaNoStablePerfLimit application profile, allowing CUDA workloads to reach the P0 performance state for maximum GPU performance. The update also allows nvidia-smi to reset GPUs even when the nvidia-drm module is active with modesetting enabled, provided that no running processes are using the GPU.

Several desktop-related issues have also been resolved. For example, the update fixes a bug that prevented the PowerMizer preferred mode dropdown in nvidia-settings from working correctly under Wayland. It also addresses a problem where adaptive sync monitors could go blank when connected via certain active USB-C-to-HDMI adapters.

The 595.45 beta driver is now available for download for 64-bit Linux systems from NVIDIA’s official driver page. As with most beta releases, users should keep in mind that it may still contain unresolved issues and might not be ideal for production environments.