14 DAY TRIAL // Now that NVIDIA has made the official introduction of its GeForce GTX 470 and GTX 480 graphics cards, consumers are patiently, or impatiently, waiting for April 12 to come, when they will finally be able to get their hands on one. The supposed reasons behind the late release were multiple, with the main ones being the restricted availability of 40nm chips, TDP and temperature issues and, of course, driver development. Now, at least one of these problems seems to have finally been surpassed, with the Santa Clara GPU maker having put up for download the first versions of GTX 400 drivers.
The GeForce Driver Release 197.41 WHQL will support all of the advanced features of the new video controllers, including, of course, DirectX 11 graphics technologies such as DirectCompute and, especially, Tessellation. In addition, the software will enable CUDA, support for OpenGL and OpenCL and, of course, NVIDIA SLI technology.
It is interesting to note that the drivers are a key element in a component's performance and, for graphics cards, they can significantly boost base capabilities, as proven by how the ATI FirePro 8.702 improved performance by 20 percent. This means that, with this and future driver releases, NVIDIA's GTX 400 series might gain capabilities higher than those available when they were reviewed. If nothing else, this should give enthusiasts something to look forward to. For now, those that have managed to get one of the two adapters will benefit from the following:
Bundled Components:
- Installs PhysX system software version 9.10.0129; - Installs HD Audio driver version 1.0.9.1.
Technology and API Support:
- Supports CUDA Toolkit 3.0. See CUDA Zone for more details; - Supports OpenCL 1.0 (Open Computing Language); - Supports OpenGL 3.2.; - Supports single GPU and NVIDIA SLI technology on DirectX 9 and OpenGL.
Those lucky enough to acquire the GeForce GTX 470 or the GTX 480 may download the driver from NVIDIA's website or by following the links below.
Nvidia GeForce Display Driver 197.41 WHQL for XP Nvidia GeForce Display Driver 197.41 WHQL for XP64 Nvidia GeForce Display Driver 197.41 WHQL for Vista/Win7 Nvidia GeForce Display Driver 197.41 WHQL for Vista64/Win7x64