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.