New Forceware 180.48 Drivers Released, Claims up to 80% Improvement, Enables SLI Multi-Monitor Support
Posted 11/20/08 at 12:30:55 PM | by Paul Lilly
Nvidia has released new WHQL-certified videocards driver for GeForce 200-series, 9-series, and 8800-series GPUs only (owners of older videocards need not apply). The approximately 73MB download enables finally brings to fruition a license agreement between Nvidia and Intel by enabling SLI on SLI-certified Intel X58-based motherboards. The new driver also supports multi-monitor support in an SLI-configuration, which previously had only been available with beta drivers. PhysX acceleration is also enabled when installing the new driver.
On the gaming front, Nvidia claims double-digit percentage performance gains in a number of titles, including a giant 80 percent boost in Lost Planet: Colonies. Far Cry 2 is the other big beneficiary with a purported 38 percent performance gain. Devil May Cry 4, Assassin's Creed, BioShock, Comapny of Heroes: Opposing Fronts, Crysis Warhead, Race Driver: GRID, and World of Conflict all receive performance gains ranging from 10 percent to 25 percent, according to Nvidia. And for you benchmarking gurus, 3DMark Vantage's performance preset should perform 10 percent better as well.
Vista 32-bit download
Vista 64-bit download
XP 32-bit download
XP 64-bit download
Image Credit: Nvidia
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not only no performance boost but crashes....
Submitted by Phil_Mcfly on Fri, 2008-11-28 08:42
intalled the new drivers (P5N-E SLI, Q6600, 2 X 8800 GTS 640 MB, W XP pro,, etc) and tried to play Crysis to see the performance boost....Well, not only I did not see xx% of increase, I saw a 100% reduction as Crysis kept on crashing....so I rolled everything back to previous version. Hints anyone? Already have the latest patches for XP and the game....
Try checking your fan...
Submitted by Devo85x on Sat, 2008-12-06 20:00
Yes, I'm the origonal person who started "whining", but I would still sugest checking if the fan is lower than normal or even off... i know when i play crysis my card gets hot with 100% fan, you could just simply be overheating
Submitted by Primus2112 on Tue, 2008-11-25 19:45
Hey all, I appreciate the feedback on the results and findings of the new drivers. even though some think of the comments as whining which is totally bogus.
anyhow I was playing COD5 on my system and it crashed once yesterday (vista 32 bit and 8800gtx) will have to check on that fan and later and maybe will roll back if I experience anymore crashes.
thanks also to MPC for the timely news and updates!
fan issues
Submitted by K0BALT on Tue, 2008-11-25 13:54
I also did some more research on the subject. Some people have used nVidia's "system tools" program to control their fans with the new drivers successfully. I tried myself, however I had some conflicts with the multiple montior SLI option. I need to look into other people's experiences to help me work out the issues. Also, I don't think it's really whining. It's merely feedback on the user's personal experience with the topic at hand. Whether the comments are positive or negative, they can still provide some help to other people with a similar problem.
Submitted by Primus2112 on Tue, 2008-11-25 19:44
Yes KOBALT. I agree totally with you on the fact that its not really whining. And appreciate the comments that have helped me with these new drivers. :)
Submitted by wickedss on Tue, 2008-11-25 09:15
<5 minutes of searching shows that RivaTuner 2.20 is working fine with the new drivers. It is a free download from guru3d. Like most problems....the tiniest effort can get you what you want far better that whining on a comment list.
Submitted by K0BALT on Sun, 2008-11-23 17:39
LMAO.... anything's possible. Well, as for the new driver's situation, I rolled mine back to the 178.24 version. Perhaps I'll give the new driver another try in the near future. Maybe it's a bad thing to download something as soon as it comes out before all the bugs get worked out. I don't know enough about it to make a logical argument. However, a friend of mine has 32bit XP and the new driver crashed his computer the next day. Hope everything works out well for everyone else. :)
Submitted by K0BALT on Sat, 2008-11-22 21:50
I guess you're right.... I don't know how I paid for the parts to build a $2000 computer system without a job. I make more money in one day, then you do in a week, buddy. Maybe when you move out of your mom's basement one day, you will too. If you're gonna bash me, then email me. Don't waste the space here that's supposed to be used for responding to the articles above...... like I just did replying to your immature comment.
Submitted by K0BALT on Sat, 2008-11-22 21:43
i also used nVidia's "nTune" program on my 8800's before adding any aftermarket coolers. my coolers have nothing to do with the problem. it's the clash of the new drivers and nvidia's tuning program. I'm not complaining really, i'm just putting the word out there so nvidia could address the problem and for anyone else who like their GPU fans running at more than the 30% default setting. With my fans set at full speed, my cards run at 45C under full load. I just want to keep it that way.
Submitted by K0BALT on Sat, 2008-11-22 21:33
i'm using nVidia's "nTune" program to control my gpu fans. with the new driver release it's disabled certain options within this program.
Well I'm running WinXP32
Submitted by Keith E. Whisman on Fri, 2008-11-21 21:44
Well I'm running WinXP32 again with 4gigs of DDR2 800. 2xGeforce 8800GTS 640mb Video cards in SLI, Asus P5N-D 750I MB, Xfi ExtremeGamer Sound Card, and the myriad hard drives and dvd burners.
Anyhow uninstalled the previous 180.43beta driver and used Driver Sweeper from Guru3d to remove all traces and installed this driver.
I love to play Crysis Wars and with this driver I experienced game crashes and bad artifacts and choppy play. I uninstalled these drivers and used Driver Sweeper to completely remove all traces of this driver and reinstalled 180.43 and all the problems went away. I'm running the latest system bios with SP3 and all the latest updates.
Perhaps these drivers were optimized for the Geforce200 series?
Things like this happen some times. It shouldn't but it does.
Am I only only one with these problems?
What i REALLY want to see in
Submitted by vistageek on Thu, 2008-11-20 22:02
What i REALLY want to see in nVidia drivers in the horizontal span in Vista so we can game across multiple screens without a $300 TH2GO.
To Kobalt
Submitted by XSV DBLs on Thu, 2008-11-20 20:46
Maybe you should get a job so you can buy a fan controller or something, instead of sitting on your ass all day gaming and complaining about free drivers.
Drivers are free but the
Submitted by dankers on Fri, 2008-11-21 23:15
Drivers are free but the video cards they support are not.
2nd that
Submitted by ericmckenna on Fri, 2008-11-21 08:35
2nd that
Submitted by Devo85x on Fri, 2008-11-21 06:13
You do realize that using a fan controler on your GPU ether means you have to use software (which we have ruled out as a posibility because it will ether turn our fans off or keep us from changing them), the only other option would be to use a physical fan controler which in some cases (some more than others since the 200 series cards have no room for cables to come out from the cooler) and even then they would have to be ether compatible with the fan contoler normally (extreamly unlikely), modded for a mobo fan connection (anoying), or modded to use a molex connection (extreamly annoying)... have you ever tried using your own advice? (sry if it seemed like I was bashing, I was only meaning to point out the flaws)
Submitted by K0BALT on Thu, 2008-11-20 19:38
I got a window on the side of my case. I have aftermarket VGA coolers and can see that they are spinning. However, i rolled back my drivers because I like my fans to be set at 100%.
Submitted by K0BALT on Thu, 2008-11-20 17:38
After installing these new drivers, the nVidia control panel has disabled my ability to turn up the speed on my fans. Not good since my gear is oc'd and I game all day everyday.
Submitted by Devo85x on Thu, 2008-11-20 19:27
If you read the previous comment that I left, I had the same problem except my fan wasn't even turning on... you might want to check
Submitted by Devo85x on Thu, 2008-11-20 16:12
When I saw this article, I was so excited that I went straight to Nvidia's website to download the drivers! I install and restart and what would you guess? The fan on my GTX 260 has stoped working! My card is running at 57-59 degrees C IDLE!!! (and thats in a cold room and no heat from a CPU fan since I have liquid cooling on my CPU). After rolling back the drivers the fan started working again perfectly, so a small warning (*looks up*) well maby not so small... but anyways... If you are using Vista 32Bit (dont know about XP or vista 64bit) then be sure to check your fan after installing the new drivers (thank god I didn't start up Far Cry 2 before seeing this) Thank you for your time and be careful!
Submitted by dankers on Thu, 2008-11-20 16:37
Vista 32-bit user here, I have a 9600GT and i just updated to the 180 drivers. So far so good on the fan, that is a bit scary though, my system is pretty quiet and if the fan stopped working I would never know without pulling open the case and sticking my finger inside(which is what I did just now). Thanks for the heads up.
Submitted by StealthSilver on Thu, 2008-11-20 14:33
I wonder if we will be getting Fallout 3-optimized drivers anytime soon.
Submitted by jlatores on Thu, 2008-11-20 13:43
Using the Far Cry 2 benchmark, I actually saw a slight decrease in performance with these updated drivers! 38 percent perfromance boost? Yeah. Right. 8800GT Superclocked...
Submitted by PDeath on Thu, 2008-11-20 13:40
Is it odd that I find new drivers erotic?
Submitted by jcollins on Thu, 2008-11-20 12:15
SLI multimonitor sounds nice, but meh, Vista required...
*Note: The following SLI features are only supported on Windows Vista: Quad SLI technology using GeForce 9800 GX2, 3-way SLI technology, Hybrid SLI, and SLI multi-monitor support.
Submitted by Digital-Storm on Thu, 2008-11-20 11:55
Dont put aproxamate download sizes. Vista 64 bit drivers are around 90MB.
Submitted by dankers on Thu, 2008-11-20 16:17
I would hope that anyone using 64-bit Vista and reading Maximum PC would know that 64-bit drivers are usually a bit larger.
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