Download NVIDIA GeForce/ION Release 263.09 WHQL Drivers for GTX 580/GTX 460 SE Cards

The launch of the GeForce GTX 580, as well as the GTX 460 SE (a lot more low-key), have been NVIDIA's most important achievements in early November, and, as we all expected, they've also brought with them a new driver release, namely the GeForce/ION 263.09 WHQL version, which brings about a few useful improvements. As you'll certainly notice, this is not the first driver release pertaining to the new GTX 580, but this one also includes the GTX 460 SE, that, as we've mentioned one of our previous articles, was rolled out in a much more “under the radar” manner, simply appearing as available via NVIDIA's usual retail channel. Before going any further, we'll have to say that, strange enough, the Windows Vista/7 x64 version of the drivers seems to have been left out, for some reason, but we'll be sure to check back with NVIDIA and update this entry as soon as the respective software becomes available. However, if you've purchased one of the GTX 580 monsters or the much more affordable GTX 460 SE, then you'll be able to find the new drivers right here, on Softpedia, whether your machine is running Windows XP (download here), Windows XP x64 (download here) or Windows Vista/7 (download here). Beside providing the necessary support for the aforementioned graphics cards, the driver release installs HD Audio driver to version 1.1.9.0., includes PhysX System Software to version 9.10.0514., and also supports DirectCompute with Windows 7 and GeForce 8-series and later GPUs. Moreover, the driver offers OpenCL 1.0 (Open Computing Language) support for all GeForce 8-series and later GPUs and also supports OpenGL 4.1 for GeForce 400 series and later GPUs. Last, but certainly not least, it's important to mention that the new drivers support GPU overclocking and temperature monitoring by installing NVIDIA System Tools software, which means that users will be able to freely tweak the cards' settings in order to push up the performance levels.