Nvidia posts

It's a double whammy of graphics card update goodness today. AMD's ATI unit has just released their official Catalyst 9.11 drivers for their Radeon based video cards. The release notes have all the details about the new drivers which include some bug fixes for games like Tom Clancy's HAWX, Wolfenstein and World in Conflict.

Not to be outdone, ATI's main rival Nvidia has released new beta drivers for its GeForce family of graphics chips today. Among other things the beta drivers add new SLI support for a number of recently released PC games such as Borderlands, Modern Warfare 2, and others.

You may remember us reporting a little while ago that Nvidia was going to use Halloween to launch some kind of new product connected to their PhysX support. Well, that product is now outed as graphics card maker EVGA has announced the GTX 275 Co-op, a new card that has a chip dedicated just to hardware-accelerated game physics support.

The GTX 275 has a Nvidia GTX 275 graphics chip just for GPU duties plus another Nvidia chip, the GTS 250, that's set up specifically as a PhysX chip only. The card also has SLI support which means you can have three GPUs plus the extra just for PhysX support.. As you can see the card has the Joker's face just waiting to give you the creeps as EVGA and Nvidia are branding this card as the perfect way to play the PhysX-supported Batman: Arkham Asylum. Pricing for the card will be a bit high (over $300) but it looks like Batman: Arkham Asylum will be bundled with the card.

[Via PC Percepective]

It's a game that's been in development in Russia since at least 2006 but in early 2010 publisher THQ will finally release Metro 2033, a post-apocalypse first person shooter from developer 4A Games. The game itself is set after a massive disaster has devastated the Earth. In Moscow the survivors live underground in the former subway system of the city while radiation has mutated people and creatures above ground.

THQ is promoting the PC version with the promise of cool game physics effects provided by Nvidia's PhysX tech. It's rare that physics is used for more than eye candy and effects in a game but perhaps this title will be an exception.

AMD has the current edge over its main rival Nvidia in the PC graphics card race. AMD's new DirectX11-based cards under their ATI brand are out now while Nvidia's DirectX11 cards are not expected to launch until sometime in early 2010. However, Nvidia is apparently prepping some kind of new graphics card product for a launch this fall.

This week Nvidia sent out invites for people to come to their Santa Clara, California offices on October 30 for a Halloween-themed launch event that will introduce "a rocking new graphics card designed by NVIDIA and EVGA to take PhysX to the next level." That's all we know at this point but if you happen to be in the area on that date there may still be time to send in your RSVP.

This minor patch for Risen addresses the grey fog effects issue players using Nvidia GeForce 6 and 7 series video cards experience. The Risen demo can be downloaded here.

Download Risen v1.01 Hotfix Patch (6 MB)
Download Updated Risen Demo (1.08 GB)
Check out all Risen downloads

It's time to get your Nvidia GeForce-based graphics cards updated to the latest drivers (if you have them installed of course). The graphics card company has now issued their new official update with their 191.07 version of the drivers. They come in Windows XP, Vista and 7 flavors (32-bit and 64-bit for each).

The release notes for the new drivers show that a number of PC games get some performance improvements including a 12 percent performance upgrade in ArmA II. The new official drivers also carry over performance increases in a number of games from a previous beta driver release. In addition the new drivers add SLI support for a number of new and upcoming games including Aion, Dreamkiller and others.

PC graphics chip maker Nvida held a big press event this week to introduce folks to what you see above. That is their all new GPU architecture that they have code-named "Fermi". With 512 CUDA cores inside, the technology behind the Fermi architecture will be the basis for the next generation of GeForce-based graphics cards.

Which is all well and good but where are those cards? As we reported recently rival AMD has begun shipping their own next-gen cards which are the first to have true DirectX11 support. HardOCP posts up a quote from Nvidia's CEO Jen-Hsun Huang who states, " Nobody likes when the competition has a product. I don't like keeping our enthusiast waiting on our next generation processors. I would rather be shipping today, but we will ship when the product is ready to ship." However speculation on many hardware web sites state we may have to wait until sometime in the first quarter of 2010 before Nvidia has an actual shipping card with the Fermi technology. That gives AMD a pretty big head start.

Nvidia's latest driver release for its GeForce series of graphics chips is now available in beta form and this release happens to have some performance improvements for a number of games. The 191.03 drivers, for example, improve the performance of Batman: Arkham Asylum eight percent when PhysX support is enabled.

Other improvements in the driver release include a whopping 50 percent performance increase in Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood with SLI set-ups, a 34 percent improvement in Prototype with anti-aliasing enabled and a 14 percent improvement in Fallout 3's indoor scenes with anti-aliasing enabled. SLI support is also added to a number of games in this driver release including Need for Speed Shift and Majesty 2.

This patch for Darkest of Days fixes a number of gameplay issues and adds some gameplay enhancements, including NVIDIA PhysX improvements. Patch notes can be read after the jump. A playable demo can be downloaded here.

Download Darkest of Days v1.04 Patch (50 MB)
Download Darkest of Days Demo (784 MB)
Check out all Darkest of Days downloads

This patch for Batman: Arkham Asylum updates the game to v1.1 and adds in NVIDIA PhysX features. Continue after the jump to view the game trailer showing PhysX effects.

Download Batman: Arkham Asylum v1.1 Patch (270 MB)
Check out all Batman: Arkham Asylum downloads