Along with releasing the new 660 and 650 cards in the past week, NVidia are throwing out a new driver update to optimise their cards for the upcoming release of both Borderlands 2 and Mists of Pandaria, making sure all of the features that you would expect and are looking forward to in those games run in tip top shape.
For Borderlands 2 it’s PhysX and 3D vision, both of which seem to add a whole lot to the game, especially the former, as this video shows, and for Mists of Pandaria it’s 3D Vision and DirectX 11 support. Although I’m not sure there’s all that much in World of Warcraft that can be tessellated, although I could well be wrong. Maybe the fur on the Pandarian’s faces has become properly textured and blows in the breeze.
You can grab the driver updates here, and the patch notes are below.
New in R304 Drivers:
GPU Support
Adds support for GeForce GTX 660 Ti, GeForce GTX 660, and GeForce GTX 650.Legacy Support Notification: GeForce 6-series and GeForce 7-series GPUs will be moved to legacy support after GeForce R304 drivers. GeForce R310 drivers (the next major family of drivers) will not support these products.
Adds support for NVIDIA TXAA
NVIDIA TXAA is new film-style anti-aliasing technique designed specifically to reduce temporal aliasing (crawling and flickering in motion) through a combination of hardware AA, custom CG film style AA resolve, and a temporal filter.The Secret World is the first game to support TXAA. Read about it on GeForce.com.TXAA is supported on GeForce GTX 600-series Kepler-based GPUs.Learn more about TXAA on GeForce.com.
Performance Boost – Increases performance for GeForce 400/500/600 Series GPUs in several PC games vs. GeForce 301.42 WHQL-certified drivers. Results will vary depending on your GPU and system configuration:
GeForce GTX 680:
Up to 18% in Batman: Arkham City
Up to 15% in Dragon Age II
Up to 10% in S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat
Up to 60% in Total War: Shogun 2 (fixes performance issue with latest game patch)
GeForce GTX 560:
Up to 14% in Batman: Arkham City
Up to 5% in Battlefield 3 with SLI
Up to 4% in Dragon Age II
Up to 8% in The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings with SLI
Up to 7% in Lost Planet 2
NVIDIA SLI Technology – Adds or updates the following SLI profiles:
Alan Wake’s American Nightmare – added
Borderlands 2 – added
Darksiders 2 – added
End of Nations – added
F1 2011 – updated
F1 2012 – added
Final Fantasy XIV – updated
Nexuiz – added
Orcs Must Die! 2 – added
PlanetSide 2 – updated
Saints Row: The Third – updated
Shogun 2: Total War – updated
Sleeping Dogs – updated from latest beta
Spec Ops: The Line – added
The Secret World – updated
Torchlight II – added
Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Future Soldier – added
Tornado Force – added
Tribes: Ascend – updated
NVIDIA 3D Vision – Adds or updates the following 3D Vision profiles:
Alan Wake’s American Nightmare – rated Not Recommended
A New Dawn – rated Fair
All Zombies Must Die! Scorepocalypse – rated Good
ARMA 2: Operation Arrowhead – rated Fair
Bang Bang Racing – rated ExcellentB
orderlands 2 – updated profile with new convergence settings
Brave – rated 3D Vision Ready
Devil May Cry 4- rated Fair
Depth Hunter – updated rating to 3D Vision Ready
Dishonored – rated Good
End of Nations – rated Good
London 2012 The Official Video Game – rated Fair
Mad Doc Jr.’s Doom Rails – rated Excellent
Mass Effect 3 – updated in-game compatibility message and profile to be more compatible with community 3D mods
Max Payne 3 – updated rating to Excellent and updated in-game compatibility message to inform users to use DirectX 11, disable MSAA and use SSA0.Raiderz – rated Fair
Roller Coaster Rampage – rated 3D Vision Ready
SCANIA Truck Driving Simulator – rated Fair
Street Fighter X Tekken – rated 3D Vision Ready
Test Drive: Ferrari Racing Legends – rated Good
Tiger Woods PGA 12: The Masters – rated Good
Tribes: Ascend – rated Fair
The Secret World – rated Good
The Walking Dead – rating Good
World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria – rated Excellent
Other Profile Updates
Added NVIDIA Control Panel antialiasing support for Diablo III
Added NVIDIA Control Panel antialiasing support for L.A. Noire
Added NVIDIA Control Panel antialiasing support for Rayman Origins
Added NVIDIA Control Panel ambient occlusion support for Star Wars: The Old Republic
Added NVIDIA Control Panel ambient occlusion support Counter-strike: Global Offensive
Added NVIDIA Control Panel ambient occlusion support MechWarrior Online
Disabled FXAA for several Windows programs like Media Player and Movie Maker.
NVIDIA Surround
Surround settings now persisted after new driver overinstall.
NVIDIA CUDA
Includes support for applications built using CUDA 5 Preview or earlier version of the CUDA Toolkit. More information at http://developer.nvidia.com/cuda-toolkit
Key Fixes
Fixes an intermittent vsync stuttering issue with GeForce GTX 600-series GPUs.
Fixes an issue where some manufacturer’s factory overclocked cards default to and run at lower clocks.
Fixes a performance issue in Total War: Shogun 2 with the latest game patch.
Additional DetailsInstalls PhysX System Software v9.12.0604.
Installs HD Audio v1.3.18.0.
Supports DisplayPort 1.2 for GeForce GTX 600 series GPUs.
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.