NVIDIA draws beta-fied ForceWare 177.79 Vista, XP drivers

Sometimes possessing the bleeding edge in consumer graphics isn’t enough. Having cards dancing at the knife edge is also a quest for some. Its this fact in a hardware enthusiast’s life that news of the official Beta drivers from NVIDIA ring like angels’ voices in their ears, and you can be sure that the first few hundred thousand downloads are the guys with rigs to boast. Learn what’s cooking with NVIDIA’s latest official “test” drivers at the full story.

 

NVIDIA drew another card for its UDA test phase – the latest in the company’s Beta driver set. Driver version 177.79 of the Unified Driver Architecture comes out with good excuse, however, as NVIDIA allowed the new GeForce 9800 GT and 9500 GT SKUs to hit the market. In lieu with their release, the 177.79 Beta revolves mostly around the two cards.

That might not be the only reason though, as many other enthusiast site has claims of fractional improvements to framerate performance (and in Crysis v1.2 – take note), while others report a solid increase in 3DMark06 and 3D Mark VANTAGE scores as well.

A few even have reported faster framerates in newer Games for Windows games, including Funcom’s Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures (disputed). Here’s a quick rundown of what NVIDIA knowingly fixed (or would like to officially share with us) on the Vista front:

Fixed Issues–Windows Vista 32-bit
Single- GPU Issues

• GeForce GTX 280/260: Call of Duty 4 and Counterstrike–hitching occurs in the game. [439993]
• GeForce 9800 GX2: Civilization 4–white flickering occurs on the map after zooming out at high resolutions and with antialiasing enabled. [391640]
• GeForce 9800 GX2, GeForce 8800 GTX: With multiple displays connected, the NVIDIA Control Panel crashes when loading any saved profile after switching single display modes to another display. [401488]
• [SLI], GeForce 9600 GT: PT Boats: Knights of the Sea (DirectX 10) – there is texture corruption at 1600×1200 resolution and 8xAA. [374320]

Multi-GPU Issues

• [SLI], GeForce 9600 GT, GeForce 8600 GTS: Crysis–the sky becomes corrupted after changing the resolution while playing the game with SLI mode enabled. [385470]
• NVIDIA recommends that you save and then exit the game before changing the resolution.
• [SLI], GeForce 9600 GT, GeForce 6600: Prey– the SLI visual indicator does not appear when viewing SLI load balancing even though SLI mode is enabled and active. [379824]

Fixed Issues–Windows Vista 64-bit
Single-GPU Issues

• GeForce 9800 GX2: Civilization 4–white flickering occurs on the map after zooming out at high resolutions and with antialiasing enabled. [391640]

Multi-GPU Issues

• [SLI], GeForce GTX 280/260: Medusa demo (DirectX 10) – the demo flickers when the character starts turning into stone, during the glow effect. [434883]
• [Quad SLI], GeForce 9800 GX2: Painkillerverdose–the game slows down periodically when Quad SLI is enabled. [396665]
• [Quad SLI], GeForce 9800 GX2: Repeatedly enabling/disabling SLI may cause the
• desktop to corrupt. [408652]
• [SLI], GeForce 9600 GT, GeForce 8600 GTS: Crysis – the sky becomes corrupted after changing resolution with SLI mode enabled. [385470]
• NVIDIA recommends that you save and then exit the game before changing the  resolution.
• [SLI], GeForce 9600 GT, GeForce 6600: Prey – the SLI visual indicator does not appear when viewing SLI load balancing even though SLI mode is enabled and active. [379824]

Now here’s where things get seriously iffy. Some reports failures of driver installations. Others report slower framerates on their games and systems. Others have found that PhysX features have been disabled on their card, while plenty of others found PhysX enabled for theirs.

We don’t have the full picture yet, so if you’re still hell-bent on getting the latest drivers, know that you proceed at your own risk. The link to the Windows XP version (32-bit) is provided at the source below.

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Related articles:

• NVIDIA steps up: presenting GeForce 9800 GT, GTX+
• NVIDIA caves in: SLI technology arriving on Intel Bloomfield CPU platforms
• Sweet mother: NVIDIA GTX 280, GTX 260 prices slashed

Via NVIDIA