14 DAY TRIAL // Santa Clara, California-based NVIDIA, the company that everybody is waiting for to release the much-anticipated Fermi-based GeForce GTX 470 and 480 graphics cards, has just unveiled a new set of Beta Drivers for their current graphics cards. Designed to boost performance but also to deal with some of the issues that have been encountered with a previous version of its drivers, the new release is still in beta stage, but it should soon get its WHQL certification.
There are several advantages to the new release, according to the graphics card maker, including several performance increments, when compared to release 196.21 WHQL. Depending on the user's GPU and system configuration, NVIDIA claims that the following results may be noticed:
Up to 13% performance increase in Crysis: Warhead with a single GPU Up to 30% performance increase in Crysis: Warhead with SLI technology Up to 13% performance increase in H.A.W.X with single GPU Up to 15% performance increase in H.A.W.X with SLI technology Up to 30% performance increase in Left 4 Dead with single GPU Up to 28% performance increase in Left 4 Dead with SLI technology
In addition, the new release also includes a number of features, such as SLI and multi-GPU support for new gaming titles, such as Assassin Creed II, Battlefield: Bad Company 2, Command and Conquer 4: Tiberium Twilight, Grand Theft Auto IV: Episodes from Liberty City, Mass Effect 2, Napoleon: Total War, and Zombie Driver.
According to the documentation, the driver enables support for the outfit's GeForce GT 320, 330 and 340 graphics cards, as well as the next-generation ION chipset. We should further mention that the driver resolves the fan speed issues reported with version 196.75 as well, which NVIDIA later pulled down from its drivers page.
The drivers are available for download through the links below:
NVIDIA GeForce 197.13 Beta Graphics Driver for Windows XP 32-bit NVIDIA GeForce 197.13 Beta Graphics Driver for Windows XP 64-bit NVIDIA GeForce 197.13 Beta Graphics Driver for Windows Vista/Windows 7 32-bit NVIDIA GeForce 197.13 Beta Graphics Driver for Windows Vista/Windows 7 64-bit