can i use "normal" nvidia drivers instead of the dev drivers for cuda ?

Accelerated Computing CUDA CUDA Programming and Performance
1

I’m trying to figure out the nvidia numbering process. Seems like the dev driver version right now is 270.41.19 - but the non-dev version is up to 275.09.07 - is there any relationship between the numbers - i.e. are the changes made to the dev version of the driver ever rolled into some version of the non-dev version ? or are there more pervasive difference like extended debug info etc ?

I ask because ever since switching to the dev driver, my computer’s graphics performance under gnome is noticeably worse. i’m running ubuntu 11.04 with gnome classic desktop.

2

You can use the normal drivers, if they have been released some time after the dev drivers. The dev drivers are just intended to provide a minimum baseline of support for that CUDA release, which is folded into later driver releases.

There have been a few (maybe one, I vaguely recall) cases where the higher version numbered normal driver hadn’t yet pulled in all the features from the dev driver, but I think you will probably be OK here. Give it a try.