Tuesday, February 21st 2012
NVIDIA Releases the GeForce 295.73 WHQL-certified Drivers
NVIDIA Corp. has now made available the first WHQL driver of the R295 family, the GeForce 295.73. This release comes with support for GeForce 6, 7, 8, 9, 100, 200, 300, 400 and 500 Series cards, and for ION GPUs, it's bundled with the PhysX System Software v9.12.0209, and features the following highlights:
- Game-changing performance boost of up to 45% in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, "the fastest selling title in Steam's history"
- Up to 2x performance Mass Effect 3 with SLI technology.
- GeForce-exclusive quality enhancements with ambient occlusion support for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, Diablo III, and The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim.
- New 3D Vision and SLI profiles for over 50 titles.
- New PhysX software for the best experience in top PhysX titles like Alice: Madness Returns and Batman: Arkham City.
Download: Windows 7/Vista (32-bit) / Windows 7/Vista (64-bit) / Windows XP (32-bit) / Windows XP (64-bit)
Full changelog:
Performance
- Increases performance by up to 45% in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (measured with GeForce GTX 560 at 1080p Ultra settings in indoor scenes vs. 285.62).
- Updates the NVIDIA Control Panel ambient occlusion support for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim to a higher performance profile.
- Boosts Mass Effect 3 SLI performance to up to 2x.
Ambient Occlusion
- Adds ambient occlusion support for Diablo III.
- Updates the ambient occlusion support for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim to a higher performance profile (also in 290 beta drivers).
- Adds ambient occlusion support for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 (also in 290 beta drivers).
NVIDIA SLI
- Adds or updates SLI profiles for:
Mass Effect 3
Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning
The Darkness II
F1 2011
Oil Rush
Red Faction: Armageddon
7554
Trine 2
WRC 2: FIA World Rally Championship 2011
Afterfall: InSanity.
ArcheAge
Core Blaze
NVIDIA 3D Vision
- Adds support for 3D Vision windowed mode on DLP HDTVs and on Optimized for GeForce passive 3D monitors.
- Added new 3D Vision laser sight /crosshair options to better match Skyrim crosshairs.
- Adds or updates 3D Vision profiles for:
The Adventures of Tintin - rated Good
Afterfall: Insanity - rated Fair
ANNO 2070 - rated Not Recommended
Apache: Air Assault - rated Fair
Black Prophecy - rated Not Recommended
Chaos Online - rated Fair
Choplifter HD - rated Good
Cities XL 2012 - rated Good
Da Vinci Online - rated Fair
Dino D-Day - rated Good
DotA 2 - rating upgraded to Fair
Dungeon and Dragons: Daggerdale - rated Fair
Edge - rated Excellent
Ferrari Project - rated Not Recommended
The First Templar - rated Fair
Fractal - rated Excellent
FreeStyle 2 - rated Good
The Haunted Halls Reach - rated Excellent
Insane 2 - rated Excellent
King Arthur II - rated Not Recommended
Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning - rated Fair
Kong Fu Ying Xiong - rated Fair
Love Beat - rated Good
Marvel Super Hero Squad Online - rated Good
Microsoft Flight - rated Fair
Perpetuum - rated Fair
Post Apocalyptic Mayhem - rated Fair
Prototype 2 - rated Fair
Q.U.B.E. - rated Excellent
Quan Qiu Shi Ming - rated Excellent
Red Bull X-Fighters - rated Excellent
rFactor 2 (mod mode) - rated Good and updated convergence
Risen 2: Dark Waters - rated Fair
Saints Row: The Third - Rated Not Recommended
Shadow Company: Left for Dead - rated Not Recommended
Special Force - Rated Good
Tera - rated Good
Top Gun: Hard Lock - rated Not Recommended
Tropico 4 - rated Good
Worms Blast - rated Good
NVIDIA PhysX
- Updates PhysX System Software to 9.12.0209 for improved compatibility with Alice: Madness Returns and Batman: Arkham City.
NVIDIA Surround
- Enables WHQL-certified support for NVIDIA Surround on Intel X79 SLI-certified motherboards.
HD Audio
- Updates HD Audio to version 1.3.12.0.
Battlefield 3
- Fixes instances of texture corruption/artifacts in Battlefield 3 when memory constrained (typically 1 GB or less graphics cards running Ultra settings and high resolutions).
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.
- Game-changing performance boost of up to 45% in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, "the fastest selling title in Steam's history"
- Up to 2x performance Mass Effect 3 with SLI technology.
- GeForce-exclusive quality enhancements with ambient occlusion support for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, Diablo III, and The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim.
- New 3D Vision and SLI profiles for over 50 titles.
- New PhysX software for the best experience in top PhysX titles like Alice: Madness Returns and Batman: Arkham City.
Download: Windows 7/Vista (32-bit) / Windows 7/Vista (64-bit) / Windows XP (32-bit) / Windows XP (64-bit)
Full changelog:
Performance
- Increases performance by up to 45% in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (measured with GeForce GTX 560 at 1080p Ultra settings in indoor scenes vs. 285.62).
- Updates the NVIDIA Control Panel ambient occlusion support for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim to a higher performance profile.
- Boosts Mass Effect 3 SLI performance to up to 2x.
Ambient Occlusion
- Adds ambient occlusion support for Diablo III.
- Updates the ambient occlusion support for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim to a higher performance profile (also in 290 beta drivers).
- Adds ambient occlusion support for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 (also in 290 beta drivers).
NVIDIA SLI
- Adds or updates SLI profiles for:
Mass Effect 3
Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning
The Darkness II
F1 2011
Oil Rush
Red Faction: Armageddon
7554
Trine 2
WRC 2: FIA World Rally Championship 2011
Afterfall: InSanity.
ArcheAge
Core Blaze
NVIDIA 3D Vision
- Adds support for 3D Vision windowed mode on DLP HDTVs and on Optimized for GeForce passive 3D monitors.
- Added new 3D Vision laser sight /crosshair options to better match Skyrim crosshairs.
- Adds or updates 3D Vision profiles for:
The Adventures of Tintin - rated Good
Afterfall: Insanity - rated Fair
ANNO 2070 - rated Not Recommended
Apache: Air Assault - rated Fair
Black Prophecy - rated Not Recommended
Chaos Online - rated Fair
Choplifter HD - rated Good
Cities XL 2012 - rated Good
Da Vinci Online - rated Fair
Dino D-Day - rated Good
DotA 2 - rating upgraded to Fair
Dungeon and Dragons: Daggerdale - rated Fair
Edge - rated Excellent
Ferrari Project - rated Not Recommended
The First Templar - rated Fair
Fractal - rated Excellent
FreeStyle 2 - rated Good
The Haunted Halls Reach - rated Excellent
Insane 2 - rated Excellent
King Arthur II - rated Not Recommended
Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning - rated Fair
Kong Fu Ying Xiong - rated Fair
Love Beat - rated Good
Marvel Super Hero Squad Online - rated Good
Microsoft Flight - rated Fair
Perpetuum - rated Fair
Post Apocalyptic Mayhem - rated Fair
Prototype 2 - rated Fair
Q.U.B.E. - rated Excellent
Quan Qiu Shi Ming - rated Excellent
Red Bull X-Fighters - rated Excellent
rFactor 2 (mod mode) - rated Good and updated convergence
Risen 2: Dark Waters - rated Fair
Saints Row: The Third - Rated Not Recommended
Shadow Company: Left for Dead - rated Not Recommended
Special Force - Rated Good
Tera - rated Good
Top Gun: Hard Lock - rated Not Recommended
Tropico 4 - rated Good
Worms Blast - rated Good
NVIDIA PhysX
- Updates PhysX System Software to 9.12.0209 for improved compatibility with Alice: Madness Returns and Batman: Arkham City.
NVIDIA Surround
- Enables WHQL-certified support for NVIDIA Surround on Intel X79 SLI-certified motherboards.
HD Audio
- Updates HD Audio to version 1.3.12.0.
Battlefield 3
- Fixes instances of texture corruption/artifacts in Battlefield 3 when memory constrained (typically 1 GB or less graphics cards running Ultra settings and high resolutions).
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.
30 Comments on NVIDIA Releases the GeForce 295.73 WHQL-certified Drivers
EDIT: LOL suddenly slowed down to 2 hours. :laugh:
Are you talking about timing? or what they say the driver does? or what the driver actually does? or what?
Also, "- Increases performance by up to 45% in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (measured with GeForce GTX 560 at 1080p Ultra settings in indoor scenes vs. 285.62)."
Man those older drivers must have sucked hard if you can get such a performance jump out of new drivers, still great they got it right now but damn :S
Anyway it's more on the fact that during that time the Nvidia drivers were better than the AMD drivers for Skyrim, rather than the drivers being automatically "great."
We are talking about Nvidia drivers vs Nvidia drivers.
I guess the big thing we can get out of this is Nvidia comes with its percentage encreases by comparing new drivers with drivers released 5 drivers prior.
Which imo is off.
I mentioned AMD because of your statement: "Man those older drivers must have sucked hard if you can get such a performance jump out of new drivers", which obviously implies that 285.62 "sucked hard", I therefore added that even assuming that you are correct, that 285.62 "sucked hard", it wasn't "enough" to be worse than AMD's drivers at that time. Additionally, I also mention the actual performance increase from the previous beta to that older WHQL drivers. Which was already quite significant, making the promised performance increase between the two WHQL drivers quite optimistic.
Unless of course you have such high standards that the performance increase between the older WHQL driver and it's preceding beta driver still constitutes something that "sucked so hard."Which I also did, unless the phrase "Going from 280.26 to 285.62" doesn't exist in my post.And which I've also addressed, since going to THAT older WHQL driver from the previous beta already brought much performance increases already, which makes this more recent one quite unlikely to happen.
I have a question though. I have been on ATI/AMD GPUs for a while, Do I have to do a full driver sweeper to install this new driver?
@Brandon you have option for clean install if you choose advanced. I do it everytime anyways and never EVER had issues with the drivers.
AMD driver release: "ahhhhhh okay guys,.. try and see if this fixes some stuff.... it still won't run our latest cards but it might fix... some.. thing... maybe..."
I'm curious if where Skyrim is CPU limited if there would be any increase. I would expect not, not unless the driver is now able to offload more from the CPU... the intricate workings of graphics drivers are beyond my comprehension.
If my setup determines the answer then I'm running a 1090t, and a 580 - and as I understand it I would expect to be CPU limited at present.
Physx 9.12.0213 has been put up on Guru 3D.