14 DAY TRIAL // If you're an NVIDIA fanboy, as some of you probably are, you've been probably reading about this company's plans of updating its graphics drivers to the new 256 family of drives. News about this new release has hit the Internet for a long time now, but it appears that the Santa Clara, California-based graphics company has now unleashed its much-anticipated drivers, but coming to consumers willing to test out the Beta version. Now available for download here at Softpedia, as well as the graphics card maker's website, the new release intros a couple of new features that we'll go through in the next couple of paragraphs.
According to a recent blog post, on NVIDIA's site, one of the major features of the new release is the inclusion of the support for Blu-ray 3D, enabling NVIDIA to claim another first in field of 3D graphics. This support makes sense, as the outfit outlines in the aforementioned page, as Hollywood film makers have already started making Blu-ray 3D movies, consequently enhancing the visual experience for multimedia consumers worldwide.
[admark=1]New Visual Quality Modes and Multi-GPU Setup controls, are just a few more features that will be ready with release 257.15 beta version of NVIDIA's new graphics drivers. The first addresses the performance requirements of those enthusiasts that own two or three NVIDIA GPU-based cards, which will now be able to enable 48x and 96x SLI Antialiasing , respectively. The second one will open a few more options in the NVIDIA control panel, for users looking to work with the SLI and PhysX capabilities of their NVIDIA GPUs.
There's also an upgrade to PhysX System Software version 9.10.0222, but the feature that is probably most interesting to gaming enthusiasts is the performance increase that the new release will enable. For that, just take a look at the numbers included in the release highlights:
Up to 14% in Aliens vs. Predator (1920x1200 noAA/AF – Tessellation on) Up to 4% in Batman: Arkham Asylum (1920x1200 4xAA/16xAF PhysX=High) Up to 5% in BattleForge (1920x1200 4xAA/16xAF – Very High settings) Up to 5% in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (1920x1200 4xAA/16xAF) Up to 4% in Crysis: Warhead (1920x1200 4xAA/16xAF – Enthusiast setting) Up to 24% in Enemy Territory: Quake Wars (1920x1200 no AA/AF) Up to 9% in Far Cry 2 (2560x1600 8xAA/16xAF) Up to 25% in Just Cause 2 (2560x1600 no AA/AF - Concrete Jungle) Up to 7% in Metro 2033 (1920x1200 no AA/16xAF – Tessellation on) Up to 40% in Metro 2033 with SLI ((1920x1200 4xAA/16xAF – Tessellation on) Up to 8% in S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat (1920x1200 no AA/AF – Day) Up to 110% in Stone Giant with SLI (2650x1600 – Tessellation on, DoF on) Up to 6% in The Chronicles of Riddick: Dark Athena (2560x1600 no AA/AF) Up to 9% in Unigine: Tropics (2560x1600 no AA/AF – OpenGL) Up to 5% in 3DMark Vantage (Performance and Extreme Presets) Up to 19% with Transparency AA (1920x1200 4xTrSS – measured in Crysis)
The new release is also included in the company's Verde series of drivers, which essentially means that they will be available to notebook consumers, using an NVIDIA GPU-based laptop. Finally, NVIDIA reminds us that they are preparing 3D Vision Surround-support, with a future release of its new driver series.
Now, without further ado, we give you the download links to the beta release of NVIDIA's GeForce/ION 257.15 graphics drivers:
NVIDIA GeForce 257.15 Beta drivers for Windows XP 32-bit NVIDIA GeForce 257.15 Beta drivers for Windows XP 64-bit NVIDIA GeForce 257.15 Beta drivers for Windows Vista/Windows 7 32-bit NVIDIA GeForce 257.15 Beta drivers for Windows Vista/Windows 7 64-bit