I never patched the 7676 driver, I have installed it the Debian way, I
have both Debian kernels and self-built kernels. I have a 7800GT.
I have never ever had any problems with the nvidia driver.
_BUT_ I have never ever touched the nvidia-installer since my last fresh
install.
Many people try it the Nvidia way before the Debian way - I believe therein lays many problems.
Just my little rant about NVidia believing that every Linux-system are
either based on SuSE or RedHat - which of course is so utterly wrong.