NVIDIA Releases WQHL Forceware 178.13 Drivers

by Marco Chiappetta — Friday, September 26, 2008, 12:20 PM EDT

NVIDIA has posted a fresh set of Forceware drivers for all of you GeForce owners out there. The new Forceware 178.13s are WHQL-certified drivers for GeForce 6-series, 7-series, 8-series, 9-series, and 200-series GPUs, including the recently released GeForce 9800 GTX+, 9800 GT, 9500 GT and 9400 GT GPUs.

In addition to a number of bug fixes, NVIDIA has updated support for PysX in these new drivers and they also allow for two- and three-way SLI configurations on the Skulltrail platform.

A number of performance enhancement are offered with the drivers as well, which include...

Single GPU increases up to 11% in 3DMark Vantage (performance preset)
Single GPU increases up to 11% in Assassin's Creed DX10
Single GPU increases up to 15% in Bioshock DX10
Single GPU increases up to 15% in Call of Duty 4
Single GPU increases up to 8% in Enemy Territory: Quake Wars
2-way SLI increases up to 7% in Bioshock DX10
2-way SLI increases up to 10% in Company of Heroes: Opposing Fronts DX10
2-way SLI increases up to 12% in Enemy Territory: Quake Wars
2-way SLI increases up to 10% in World in Conflict DX10

That's a healthy dose of "free" performance if those games are currently on your playlist. I have tried these drivers on my personal Vista 64-bit machine with a 9800 GX2 and on a Vista 32-bit tech machine with a handful of mid-range cards and so far all is well. Go grab 'em if you need 'em.

Tags: Nvidia, drivers, drive, driver, ease, Forceware, force, Ive, ses, release, EA, 8.1, id, AR

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