Beta Drivers 260.89 are out

[Zantal]

New Beta drivers version 260.89, can anyone find the differences between this revision and the 260.63 one?

anyway here are the details for you lazy ppls =)

+ download link to nvidia website
http://www.nvidia.com/Download/Find.aspx?lang=en-us

This is a Beta release from the Release 260 family of drivers. This driver package supports GeForce 6, 7, 8, 9, 100, 200, 300, and 400-series desktop GPUs as well as ION desktop GPUs.

New in Release 260.89

New GPU Support

Adds support for the newly released GeForce GT 430 GPU.
Performance

Increases performance for GeForce GTX 400 Series GPUs in several PC games vs. v258.96 WHQL drivers. The following are examples of some of the most significant improvements measured on Windows 7. Results will vary depending on your GPU and system configuration:
GeForce GTX 480:

Up to 10% in StarCraft II (2560x1600 4xAA/16xAF Ultra)
Up to 14% in S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat (1920x1200 4xAA/16xAF)
Up to 16% in S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat (SLI – 2560x1600 4xAA/16xAF)
Up to 6% in Aliens vs. Predator (SLI – 1920x1200 noAA – Tessellation on)
GeForce GTX 460:

Up to 19% in StarCraft II (SLI – 1920x1200 4xAA/16xAF Ultra)
Up to 15% in Battlefield Bad Company 2 (SLI – 2560x1600 4xAA/16xAF)
Up to 12% in S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat (2560x1600 noAA)
Up to 9% in Aliens vs. Predator (1680x1050 4xAA/16xAF – Tessellation on)
Up to 7% in Metro 2033 (1680x1050 noAA – Tessellation on)
Up to 11% in Dirt 2 (SLI – 2560x1600 4xAA/16xAF)
Up to 12% in Crysis:Warhead (SLI – 1920x1200 4xAA/16xAF Gamer)
Up to 13% in Far Cry 2 (2560x1600 4xAA/16xAF)
Up to 12% in H.A.W.X (SLI – 1920x1200 4xAA/16xAF SSAO Very High)
Up to 5% in Just Cause 2 (1920x1200 4xAA/16xAF)
Up to 22% in Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena (1920x1200 noAA)
Up to 5% in 3DMark Vantage (Extreme Preset)
Blu-ray 3D

Adds support for playing back Blu-ray 3D discs when connecting your GPU to an HDMI 1.4 3D TV. Playback requires compatible software application from CyberLink, ArcSoft, Roxio, or Corel. For more information, NVIDIA Blu-ray 3D website.
HD Audio

Adds lossless DTS-HD Master Audio and Dolby TrueHD audio bitstreaming support for compatible Blu-ray movies with GeForce GTX 460 GPUs*.
Adds high definition 24-bit, 96 and 192 KHz multi-channel audio sampling rate support for compatible Blu-ray movies with GeForce GTX 400 Series ,GT 240, GT 220 and 210 GPUs*.
Upgrades HD Audio driver to version 1.1.9.0.
*Note: A Blu-ray movie player update may be required to enable these new features; check with your movie players software manufacturers for more details.These features are only supported on Windows 7.

Installation

New driver installer with enhanced user interface and new Express and Custom installation options.
Express – fast and easy one-click installation
Custom – customized installation
Option to perform a clean installation (completely removes older drivers from your system prior to installing the new driver).
Option to choose which driver components (ie. PhysX or 3D Vision) to install.
Improved installation time for multi-GPU PCs.
NVIDIA Surround

Updated NVIDIA Surround setup wizard
After first setup, wizard allows users to jump to any setup step.
Improved display connection diagrams and tooltips.
Improved UI for setup and arrangement of displays.
Improved bezel correction setup experience.
Adds help page to highlight which in-game resolution to select (e.g. how to pick bezel corrected resolutions)
Option to dedicate an extra GPU to PhysX or to drive an additional display.
Allows for portrait or landscape setup directly from the setup wizard.
Updated 3D Vision Surround and NVIDIA Surround game support list. Please visit the 3D Vision Surround web page for a full list of supported games.
NVIDIA 3D Vision

With Release 260 drivers, the installation process for 3D Vision has changed. Please view this knowledgebase article for more information on the changes.
Adds NVIDIA 3D Vision streaming support for Firefox 4 and Google Chrome web browsers.
Adds support for Sony’s 3D Sweep Panorama picture format added to NVIDIA 3D Photo Viewer (Sony digital cameras that can capture 3D Sweep Panorama pictures include NEX-5/NEX-3, Alpha a560/a580 and Cyber-shot DSC-WX5/DSC-TX9/DSC-T99 models).
Adds support for new 3D Vision Desktop LCD monitors: BenQ X2410 and NEC F23W2A
Adds support for new 3D Vision projectors: Sanyo PDG-DWL2500 and ViewSonic PJD6251
Added the following 3D Vision game profiles:
Arcania: Gothic 4
Fallout: New Vegas
FIFA 11
Formula 1 Racing
Final Fantasy XIV Benchmark
Guild Wars 2
Kane & Lynch 2 – Dog Days
Lead and Gold
Lego Harry Potter
Live For Speed
Lost Planet 2
Moonbase Alpha
Serious Sam HD – The Second Encounter
Shrek Forever After
Singularity
Vitua Tennis 2009
Virtua Tennis 3
Update the following 3D Vision game profiles
Drakensang: The Dark Eye – updated in-game compatibility text
Mafia II – updated profile to properly for 3D Vision-Rating
StarCraft II – fixed profile to properly recognize the retail game executable name and match the 3D Vision rating of “Good”
Super Commander – fixed HUD elements
TRINE – new profiles fixes that allow the game to be rated “3D Vision-Ready” when used with the TRINE patch v1.08, available via Steam.
NVIDIA SLI
Adds or enhances SLI profiles for the following PC games:
City of Heroes: Going Rogue
Alien Swarm
Dead Rising 2
Front Mission Evolved
Kane and Lynch 2: Dog Days
LEGO: Harry Potter
Other Improvements

Adds support for OpenGL 4.1 for GeForce 400 series GPUs.
Upgrades PhysX System Software to version 9.10.0514.
Improves compatibility for older PC games (DirectX 7 to DirectX 9) running on Windows 7 (examples: Gothic, Gothic II, Falcon 4.0: Allied Force, Links 2003, Independence War II - Edge of Chaos, and X2: Wolverine's Revenge).
Adds drag and drop display arrangement support to the “Set up multiple displays” page.
Includes numerous bug fixes. Refer to the release notes on the documentation tab for information about the key bug fixes in this release.
Users without US English operating systems can select their language and download the International driver here.
Additional Information

Supports the new GPU-accelerated features in Adobe CS5.
Supports GPU-acceleration for smoother online HD videos with Adobe Flash 10.1. Learn more here.
Supports the new version of MotionDSP's video enhancement software, vReveal, which adds support for HD output. NVIDIA customers can download a free version of vReveal that supports up to SD output here.
Supports DirectCompute with Windows 7 and GeForce 8-series and later GPUs.
Supports OpenCL 1.0 (Open Computing Language) for all GeForce 8-series and later GPUs.
Supports OpenGL 3.3 for GeForce 8-series and later GPUs.
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 X58-based motherboards.
Supports GPU overclocking and temperature monitoring by installing NVIDIA System Tools software.

 

[EarthDog]

Coolness. When I get mine back from RMA, I will have to install these!

 

[TonyMc]

Nice! I'll give this a try tonight.

 

[TonyMc]

OK. I installed the new driver and so far so good. 1 run of 3DMark, 1 hour of FurMark, and a quick game of SC2.
One hiccup though. After install the my PC monitor went black and would not return so I hit the restart and all is well. I guess that's why it's still beta.

 

[nd4spdbh2]

OK. I installed the new driver and so far so good. 1 run of 3DMark, 1 hour of FurMark, and a quick game of SC2.
One hiccup though. After install the my PC monitor went black and would not return so I hit the restart and all is well. I guess that's why it's still beta.

and, its stuff like this why i never use a beta driver

always stick with the latest release of the stable driver, and i have NEVER had any problems.

 

[Bottomsup]

What is a 3d vision profile? Sorry for the stupid question

 

[TonyMc]

So far nothing has reared it's ugly head. Seems to be a good driver. Playing a good 2 hours of SC2 showed not glitches.
Other than the "quirk" I had during install it seems to be good.

 

[Woomack]

Anyone checked if it's faster on GTX470 ? ... weird that is only info about improvements for GTX460 and GTX480 ... I just had no time to test it myself and probably won't find any in next days

 

[Zantal]

generally if you improve the performance on a chip the downgraded chip is improved as well. the way resources are used is nearly the same in the same gpu generation.

 

[pwnmachine]

The betas have been out for a week or so, but I just got to installing them. Dead Rising had a huge performance boost. Also many other scaling issues in other games have been fixed.

 

[kiru]

I'm tempted to install the new beta drivers but I don't want to get into the trouble of doing a rollback due to bugs and such DX

 

[EarthDog]

beta drivers arent as bad as some make it out to be... and neither is reinstalling the drivers... contrary to other's experiences, I dont recall having an issue with beta drivers on either side of the fence. But then again, I only play a couple of games and they are the more common ones too...

 

[Marshmallow64]

Cool, I'll download it tonight.

 

[Zantal]

you can choose to do a clean install from the installer options when you start it,
you can even choose what to install, for example you need only the physX drivers, so check only physX,
let's be clear, software doesn't ruin in time, you can install these beta drivers and if you find out some issues just get the latest release drivers and select the option to make a clean install. these perfomance boosts are nice and i don't see why you shouldn't be able to make use of them NOW.

this said, unless there is another beta driver coming out soon (which is highly unlikely)
release drivers should come out in about 2 weeks.

P.S. Someone knows why i can't use any Nvidia demos with beta drivers? looks like
if (driver_version != RELEASE) then BOOOOOM();

wanted to see if there were any performance gains in ray tracing =)