graphics drivers
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NVIDIA GeForce R302 drivers get Windows 8 certification, available for download soon
With the Windows 8 Release Preview unveiled and available for all to download as of yesterday, you can bet that other companies are hustling to make their products compatible -- and that doesn't just go for hardware. NVIDIA announced that its new R302 graphics drivers have received Windows 8 certification, and they will be available for download early next week from GeForce.com. The drivers support all the new Windows Display Driver Model's features along with NVIDIA 3D Vision and 3DTV Play products. Not only are the R302 drivers Windows 8-compatible, but they also only work with that generation of the OS. Other versions of Windows will continue to use NVIDIA's R300 drivers. Update: NVIDIA has decided to postpone the driver release to "pick up some additional fixes that we feel are necessary for a great Windows 8 experience." [Thanks, Tim Whitfield]
Windows 7, Mac OS X, and Ubuntu 10.04 meet up for an OpenGL benchmarking session
So these three operating systems walk into a bar one night ... alright, we'll behave. With all the Steamy conversation about gaming on non-Windows desktop platforms going on, we thought you might care to peek at a little OpenGL performance comparison review. As the chief cross-platform API, it's the only way we're going to be seeing the latest games running natively on Mac OS and Linux, but how will that experience compare to the market leader? As it turned out, Windows maintains superiority in this field, with frame rates that were habitually above those on the latest Ubuntu and well ahead of what you might get on Mac OS 10.6.3. It's still early days -- after all, Steam's non-DirectX cupboard is pretty bare right now -- but at this point in time, OpenGL gaming is a crown that Microsoft retains with relative ease. Hit the source for all the line graph evidence, and let's hope things improve for the rest of us in rapid fashion.
NVIDIA pulls 196.75 driver amid reports it's frying graphics cards
One of the discussions that arise anytime we bring up a new graphics card from ATI or NVIDIA is about which company has the better drivers. Well, this should help sway the argument a little bit. It would seem StarCraft II Beta players were among the first to notice low frame rates while using the latest drivers from NVIDIA, and further digging has uncovered that the automated fan-controlling part of said firmware was failing to act as intended. The result? Overheated chips, diminished performance, and in some extreme cases, death (of the GPU, we think the users will be okay). The totality of it is that you should avoid the 196.75 iteration like the plague, and NVIDIA has temporarily yanked the update while investigating the reported issues. Shame that the company hasn't got any warnings up on its site to tell those who've installed the update but haven't yet nuked their graphics card to roll back their drivers, but that's what you've got us for, right? [Thanks, Shockie] Update: Credit where it's due -- NVIDIA has dutifully put up an alert on its site advising users to roll back to the 196.21 driver while it investigates the root cause of the reported fan problems.
New Nvidia beta drivers, and a fix for WoW in SLI mode
I have to admit, sometimes I dread it when new video card drivers come out. It always seems like something about them goes wrong, and one of my favorite games refuses to work well with them, and I end up having to roll back to some old drivers just to play what I want to play again. That said, sometimes they also work well, and your graphics run smoother, and life is good. As Alex said to me earlier, Azeroth is a whole lot prettier when it's at 90 fps instead of 10 fps. But seriously, to the point. Here's a heads up to all our Nvidia card users who like living on the edge as far as upgrading goes. Nvidia has just released new beta drivers for their graphics cards. We repeat: these are beta drivers, so only install if you know what you're doing. Here's the links: Windows XP Windows XP x64, Server 2003 x64 Windows Vista 32-bit Windows Vista 64-bit WoW gets a mention in the release notes as well. If you've been having performance problems in WoW lately and you have a Geforce 6800/6600 GT, it looks like there might be a fix for you. [Via worldofwar.net]
