The Santa Clara-based graphics card manufacturer NVIDIA released yesterday a new version of its GeForce drivers, the WHQL-certified 178.13. As we are already accustomed with, the new drivers come with support for the entire GeForce 6, 7, 8 and 9 series, as well as the GTX 200 family. The recently released PhysX 8.09.04 software has been included in the new drivers, which also come with a wide range of features and enhancements.

According to the release notes of GeForce 178.13 WHQL, the drivers feature support for 2-way and 3-way NVIDIA SLI technology with GeForce GTX 200-series graphics cards on Intel D5400XS motherboards, as well as support for single GPUs and NVIDIA SLI technology on DirectX 9, DirectX 10, and OpenGL, including 3-way and Quad SLI technology and support for CUDA and for the Folding@home distributing computing application.

The green company has operated numerous 3D application compatibility fixes, and added performance improvements for some 3D applications, including single GPU increases up to 11% in 3DMark Vantage (performance preset), the same in Assassin's Creed DX10, up to 15% in Bioshock DX10 and Call of Duty 4 and up to 8% in Enemy Territory: Quake Wars.

The performance of multiple GPU technology hasn't been left aside either, and the new drivers bring 2-way SLI increases up to 7% in Bioshock DX10, up to 10% in Company of Heroes: Opposing Fronts DX10, up to 12% in Enemy Territory: Quake Wars and up to 10% in World in Conflict DX1. The graphics card manufacturer claims that these performance improvements were measured with the 178.13 versus 175.19 versions of its drivers.

The new release includes drivers compatible with both Windows XP (32-bit and 64-bit) and Vista (32-bit and 64-bit). The new NVIDIA GeForce 178.13 WHQL drivers are available for download on Softpedia.com as well, see the links above.