[REVISITED] Matching cuda toolkit version with drivers for older cpu

  • I have a laptop with Geforce GT 420M.
  • I am running Debian 9 Stretch 64bit.
  • I have successfully (I hope) installed driver 390,87 (which appears to be the latest driver for the chipset).
  • I am wanting to install a cuda toolkit so I am curious if they naturally try to install a driver, whether the install is smart enough to cope with the driver version etc.

So, given my chip and driver limitations, what would be the latest version of the cuda toolkit that I could install over top please?

Cheers,
A

Ah, never mind. The documentation for cuda is brilliant. I appear to be able to use 9.1 of toolkit - based upon the mapping of Debian 9 to Ubuntu 17.

The latest version of CUDA that supports a Fermi GPU (compute capability 2.x) is CUDA 8. A GeForce GT 420 is a Fermi GPU. Debian 9 Stretch is not a supported OS for any CUDA Version, ever.

Yep. But I never got to try out the toolkit install in any event. I got an app crash with desktop up. Rebooted and found I had to login by console. SDDM was broken by the NVIDIA driver install by the look of it. CUDA toolkit now uninstalled as I won’t be bothering with it.