Thursday, April 2nd 2009
NVIDIA Releases GeForce 185.66 BETA Drivers
The day after releasing the GeForce 182.50 WHQL drivers, NVIDIA has also released a GeForce BETA driver with version 185.66, for both Windows Vista and XP.
New in Release 185.66:
UPDATE: The day following the release of the 185.65 BETA drivers this article originally covered, NVIDIA removed the driver links and updated the BETA to 185.66, this article has therefore been updated accordingly.
New in Release 185.66:
- Adds support for the new GeForce GTX 275 GPU.
- Adds support for Ambient Occlusion - the newest NVIDIA Control Panel feature to offer enhanced 3D gaming realism exclusively to GeForce GPUs. (Vista Only)
- Adds support for CUDA 2.2 for improved performance in GPU Computing applications. See nvidia.com/cuda for more details.
- Accelerates performance in several 3D applications. The following are examples of improvements measured with Release 185 drivers vs. Release 182 drivers (results will vary depending on your GPU, system configuration, and game settings):
- Up to 11% performance increase in Call of Duty: World at War
- Up to 5% performance increase Company of Heroes: Opposing Fronts
- Up to 22% performance increase Crysis: Warhead with antialiasing enabled
- Up to 11% performance increase in Fallout 3 with antialiasing enabled
- Up to 14% performance increase in Far Cry 2
- Up to 45% performance increase in Mirror's Edge with antialiasing enabled - Supports GeForce Plus Power Pack #3. Download these FREE PhysX and CUDA applications now!
- Numerous bug fixes. Refer to the release documentation notes.
UPDATE: The day following the release of the 185.65 BETA drivers this article originally covered, NVIDIA removed the driver links and updated the BETA to 185.66, this article has therefore been updated accordingly.
27 Comments on NVIDIA Releases GeForce 185.66 BETA Drivers
that was fast lol need to wait till the tweakforce set come out
You know, 11%-22% performance gain is as much as going UP a graphics card, like GTX260 to GTX275, or 4870 to 4890.
source
I have been updating drivers with ATI cards and now Nvidia for 3 years with NO problems ~ what the hell :twitch:
I don't know whether to try again or just stay with 182.08, which worked just fine for me with VISTA 32bit :confused:
Edit:
Okay ~ tried again with same result. I am going to try 182.50 :cool:
Lot better:laugh:
EDIT:
Nope these broke my HL2 :(
Back to 182.50 I go.
I know its beta, but official ones on their site are usually pretty good
I used to use these settings in Crysis Wars :
Everything Best visuals except the Shader which was Good visuals, 2xAA and 1280 x 1024, I got 35~48 fps.
But with this new driver I didn't feel the change until I raised the graphic settings and increased the AA to 4x.
Now my settings are Everything on Best visuals, 4xAA and 1280 x 1024, I lost only 7 fps O_o.
The only bugs I had were :
1. EVGA voltage tool won't work anymore.
2. All HL2 games crash when you start it.
Other than that, this driver is a kickass !!! I really don't know how they did it.
I gave it 8.5
185.66
I will have to give these another go and see if HL2 works again! :)
Might try editing the inf file to get it to install. If they've improved performance with AntiAliasing it'll be worth installing.
EDIT: Installed. Just about to try it with cod5/crysis/f@h.
EDIT #2: wow, big diff in crysis warhead. DX10 mode, 64bit. 1680x1050, 4xAA, all settings @ enthusiast and it's playable!! kinda.. lol 14-20fps. Was getting around 8-12 before.
Attached is the modded inf I made. It supports the 8800GTX/Ultra/GTS