Proprietary driver wizard installs incorrect NVidia driver version

[Nick Parker]

The proprietary driver installation wizard installed 173.xx when 260.xx would have been the correct driver* for my card model. While the machine was technically functional on 173.xx, the performance was noticeably/subjectively poor and videos were showing the wrong hue**. I was able to manually solve the problem by installing 'nvidia-current' and removing 'nvidia-173' using apt-get. After doing so (and rebooting), videos were showing the correct colors and the compiz ui was much more responsive. I used the 'NVIDIA Driver Version' field in nvidia-settings to verify which version of the driver was running.

Lenovo Thinkpad T61p, running Ubuntu 10.10 stock.

$ lspci -nn
[...]
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: nVidia Corporation G84M [Quadro FX 570M] [10de:040c] (rev a1)
[...]

*See 'supported products' tab: http://www.nvidia.com/object/linux-display-ia32-260.19.12-driver.html
**Example of incorrect video (same effect, different cause): http://www.wiredrevolution.com/ubuntu/fix-blue-tinted-video-in-ubuntu