A few months ago, NVIDIA announced its plans to release a GeForce R180 series of drivers meant to bring new features and technology innovations to its graphics cards. Finally, the company has put a beta version of these drivers, code-named Big Bang II, on its site. The most important feature of the beta release is the fact that it brings significant FarCry 2 performance enhancements. Of course, this is only a facet of the new drivers, and there is more to come with the final version, says the company.

The release highlights on NVIDIA's site state that the FarCry tweaks are able to deliver the best gaming experience to users. “Since we first began working on Far Cry 2 in early 2005, we have used GeForce GPU’s to develop the game and worked closely with NVIDIA’s excellent engineers. While Far Cry 2 represents an outstanding PC gaming experience for a wide range of systems, GeForce users can expect to enjoy the game quite literally ‘The Way It Was Meant To Be Played’,” states Louis-Pierre Pharand, Ubisoft, Far Cry 2 Producer.

The new release is also said to enable “NVIDIA SLI technology on SLI-certified Intel X58-based motherboards with the following GPUs: GeForce GTX 280, GeForce GTX 260, GeForce 9800 GX2, GeForce 9800 GTX+, and GeForce 9800 GTX.” We must say that these are the first GeForce drivers from NVIDIA that come with SLI support for the X58 chipset, as well as with new multi-display SLI modes and expanded PhysX support. On a recent NVIDIA briefing, the company showcased the new drivers, and below are some slides that speak for themselves.

The new release also enables users to configure one GPU of their choice to work as dedicated to PhysX, while another is used for graphics, an option unavailable until now. Also, the multi-display support in SLI mode is a long-awaited feature. The company said that it still had some work to do on the multi-display feature, but it would be completed soon enough.

Those interested in seeing the new release at work can download the Vista 32-bit and 64-bit versions from our site.