NVIDIA Releases GeForce 180 Series Drivers

by Marco Chiappetta — Wednesday, October 22, 2008, 04:50 PM EDT

NVIDIA has just recently released a fresh set of beta drivers from some GeForce cards with plenty of noteworthy changes and updates. The GeForce 180 series drivers as they are known are still currently in the beta phase, but NVIDIA wanted to get them out the door ASAP because these new drivers incorporate significant FarCry 2 performance enhancements of the 170 series drivers. But there's more to these drivers than just some FarCry tweaks. First, here are the release highlights as per NVIDIA's website:

Beta driver for GeForce 200-series, 9-series, and 8800-series desktop GPUs (refer to the products supported tab for more detail).

Recommended for the best experience on Far Cry 2: “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’.” - Louis-Pierre Pharand, Ubisoft, Far Cry 2 Producer

Enables 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.

In addition to what's mentioned here, however, this is the first GeForce driver release from NVIDIA that's going to support SLI on the X58 chipset (many more details here), new multi-display SLI modes, expanded PhysX support. Here are a few slides from a recent NVIDIA briefing covering some of the specifics:

With these new drivers, users will be able to dedicate a GPU of their choice to PhysX and another for graphics, which was not previously available. Multi-display support in SLI mode is a feature many users have been clamoring for, but we should note that as of now, the code for multi-display SLI modes is not complete. It is coming though.

If you'd like to give these drivers a shot for yourself, they're available on NVIDIA's site right now. Go get grab them and let us know your thoughts below.

Tags: Nvidia, GeForce, drivers, drive, driver, ease, force, Ive, ses, release, EA, IE, 180, id

Marco Chiappetta

Marco's interest in computing and technology dates all the way back to his early childhood. Even before being exposed to the Commodore P.E.T. and later the Commodore 64 in the early ‘80s, he was interested in electricity and electronics, and he still has the modded AFX cars and shop-worn soldering irons to prove it. Once he got his hands on his own Commodore 64, however, computing became Marco's passion. Throughout his academic and professional lives, Marco has worked with virtually every major platform from the TRS-80 and Amiga, to today's high end, multi-core servers. Over the years, he has worked in many fields related to technology and computing, including system design, assembly and sales, professional quality assurance testing, and technical writing. In addition to being the Managing Editor here at HotHardware for close to 15 years, Marco is also a freelance writer whose work has been published in a number of PC and technology related print publications and he is a regular fixture on HotHardware’s own Two and a Half Geeks webcast. - Contact: marco(at)hothardware(dot)com