Phew, after a lot of reinstalling and testing out random things, managed to get this to work. Things that turned out to be critical:
1. Installed nvidia-370 driver that just recently came out. 2. In GRUB boot, replaced "quiet splash" with "nomodeset" (detailed instructions here: http://askubuntu.com/a/38782) 3. In motherboard BIOS (SuperMicro X10DAX), disabled Intel I/O Acceleration Technology (ftp://supermicro.com/CDR-INTC-Q_1.01_for_Intel_quad_platform/Intel/LAN/v12.2/PRO1000/DOCS/SERVER/ioat.htm). This idea came to me based on reading 'dmesg' logs which had some failure prints regarding "ioatdma" driver and googling had led me to http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/linux/kernel/1638783 I am not perfectly sure if 2) was necessary, but did that since it was mentioned in several sources. Now, I'm able to get 3D acceleration with nvidia-370 and the system is able to do cold boots to desktop properly. Closing this as resolved. ** Changed in: linuxmint Status: New => Fix Released -- You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu Bugs, which is subscribed to Ubuntu. https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1611544 Title: The bundled nvidia-361 driver in Mint 18 crashes on GTX 980 Ti To manage notifications about this bug go to: https://bugs.launchpad.net/linuxmint/+bug/1611544/+subscriptions -- ubuntu-bugs mailing list ubuntu-bugs@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-bugs
