News

Nvidia’s Christmas Present; Geforce 290.53 Beta Driver Is Now Available

Leave a comment

As promised, Nvidia released a new ForceWare beta driver for its cards. This new driver is essential to all 3D Vision owners as it includes 3D profiles for a lot of games that were released these past days. Moreover, there are some updated SLI profiles so be sure to download them if you own an SLI system. Last but not least, the company has included native ambient occlusion support for Skyrim and Modern Warfare 3. Download link and release notes after the jump.
Those interested can download these drivers from here (scroll down the page, it’s Option 3).
ForceWare Beta 290.53 Release Notes:
Optimizations for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
• Increases performance by up to 25% in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim vs. 290.36 drivers (measured with GeForce GTX 560 at 19×10 Ultra – Indoor Scene). Results will vary depending on your GPU, system configuration, and in-game location.
• Updates the NVIDIA Control Panel ambient occlusion support for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim to a higher performance profile.
• Added new 3D Vision laser sight /crosshair options to better match Skyrim crosshairs.
• For a full Skyrim tweak guide, visit GeForce.com.

NVIDIA SLI
• Adds SLI profiles for Trine 2, WRC 2: FIA World Rally Championship 2011, and Afterfall: InSanity.

3D Vision
• Added or updated the following 3D Vision game profiles:
o The Adventures of Tintin: The Game – rated 3D Vision Ready
o Ignite – rated Good
o Orcs Must Die! – rated Good
o PT Boats – Knights of the Sea – rated Good
o PT Boats – South Gambit – rated Good
o Stronghold 3 – rated Good
o Trine 2 – rated 3D Vision Ready

Key Bug Fixes
• Fixes some random instances of triangular artifacts when playing Battlefield 3 (fix is now enabled for GeForce 400 and 500 series GPUs).
• Fixes a default panel resolution/ timing bug in 290.36.

Other Details
• Supports multiple languages and APIs for GPU computing: CUDA C, CUDA C++, CUDA Fortran, OpenCL, DirectCompute, and Microsoft C++ AMP.
• Supports single GPU and NVIDIA SLI technology on DirectX 9, DirectX 10, DirectX 11, and OpenGL, including 3-way SLI, Quad SLI, and SLI support on SLI-certified Intel and AMD motherboards.