Has anyone had any experience with installing 15.04 on a machine with NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970?
I just put together a new gaming PC with the GTX 970 and attempted to boot to USB thumb drive with Live Ubuntu Mate 15.04 and received a blank screen just after seeing the Ubuntu keyboard symbol at the bottom.
I know the thumb drive is good because I installed 15.04 on my laptop with it.
Thanks.
Hi T3kg33k,
You will need to boot that with nomodeset the first time or with nouveau.noaccel=1 parameters in the boot string. you can do that by hitting the tab key when the menu first comes up. at the bottom of the screen you will see several F key options choose F6 and select nomodeset , hit esc and hit enter. It will then boot but the resolution will not be correct. – after you install the system you’ll have to do the same thing nomodeset , until you install the correct Nvidia driver for your card. It may be in the repository but I’m not sure, If not there is a PPA repository found here PPA Launchpad
Good Luck 
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Cool. Thanks. I will try that out.
I have the GTX 960, and @kc1di’s suggestion of using nomodeset should do the trick for your system.
For now, it seems that the Nouveau (open source) driver isn’t quite optimised for these series of graphic cards and will fail to display the screen properly at its native resolution. (Must be too new cards)
The NVIDIA driver is essential once you have Ubuntu MATE up and running for 3D acceleration. The current nvidia-346 should be available in Administration → Software & Updates under the “Additional Drivers” tab.
let us know how you make out.
Ooh! A PPA with 352 in it! Pretty sure I’ll be testing this tonight!
I finally got around to getting to installing Ubuntu (been running it as a VM in Windows 7 since July). Worked like a charm. Thanks @kc1di. Also thanks to @lah7 for pointing me in the direction of installing the Additional Drivers.
No problem. Since then, the Ubuntu team have created a repository to allow easier updating to the latest driver, mainly targeted for gamers.
I’ve heard a tiny minority of games may demand a newer version that Ubuntu doesn’t have in its normal repositories.
It’s up to you if you would like to install these newer drivers, but I would definitely recommend having a full backup in case something does wrong. Worked very well for me. 
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:graphics-drivers/ppa
sudo apt-get update
You should then find an updated driver is available in Software & Updates.
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Just FYI, I’m running 16.04 with a Gtx 980 Titan and added Steam. No problems playing Team Fortress 2.
Using NVIDIA binary driver - version 361.42 from nvidia 361(proprietary, tested)
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