NVIDIA GeForce 301.42 WHQL Drivers

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NVIDIA sends word that its new GeForce 301.42 WHQL drivers are now available for your downloading pleasure.

This is the first WHQL-certified unified driver from the R300 family of drivers (versions 300.00 to 301.99).

GeForce R300 drivers are packed with new industry-leading, GeForce-exclusive features as well as some really nice performance increases in top games.

  • New in R300 Drivers: New GPU Support: GeForce GTX 690, GeForce GTX 680, GeForce GTX 670, GeForce GT 600-series GPUs.
  • Performance Boost – Increases performance for GeForce 400 Series and 500 Series GPUs in several PC games vs. GeForce 296.10 WHQL-certified drivers. Results will vary depending on your GPU and system configuration.
  • NVIDIA FXAA Technology – shader-based anti-aliasing technology available from the NVIDIA Control Panel that enables ultra-fast anti-aliasing in hundreds of PC games. FXAA delivers similar quality to 4x multi-sample antialiasing (MSAA) but is up to 60% faster, enabling substantially higher performance in games. FXAA is supported on all GeForce 8-series and later GPUs. Note: This feature is disabled for games that already have built-in support for FXAA. Visit to learn more.
  • NVIDIA Adaptive Vertical Sync – dynamically enables vertical sync based on your current frame rates for the smoothest gaming experience. Adaptive VSync is supported on all GeForce 8-series and later GPUs. Visit to learn more.
  • NVIDIA Frame Rate Target – dynamically adjusts frame rate to a user specified target. Support for this feature is enabled via third party applications via NVAPI. Visit to learn more.
  • NVIDIA Surround Technology – Adds the following new Surround capabilities.Visit to learn more.
  • Add in a fourth accessory display with GeForce GTX 600-series to get access to your email, web, or other applications while you game.
  • Maximize an application to a single physical display when in Surround mode (enabled by default).
  • Confine the Windows Taskbar to the center display (enabled by default).
  • Enable bezel peeking – a feature which enables users to temporarily peek behind the monitor bezels using a hotkey (Ctrl + Alt + B). This feature is designed to be used in conjunction with bezel corrected resolutions.
  • Add or remove resolutions from the list of Surround resolutions (only those selected will be available to applications).
  • Full center display acceleration for single wide display modes (center display must be connected to the master GPU).

Installs PhysX System Software v9.12.0213.
Installs HD Audio v1.3.16.0.
Supports OpenGL 4.2
Supports DisplayPort 1.2 for GeForce GTX 600-series.
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.
Click to expand...
 
Nice job on your promised feature set nvidia,

AMD, time to learn from this.
 
fwrigley said:
You are probably thinking about the 301.24 beta drivers a few threads down.
Click to expand...

No, there was already a thread on this driver that was at least two pages long.

Anyways, the drivers seem to be working fine for me.
 
The newest posts on the driver thread for this at Guru3d indicate this still has the "50mhz" clock bug from the previous beta. If you don't know what that is, it's where on many 400 & 500 series GPU's, your card clocks down to it's lowest speed after exiting a game and stays that way. So far the only solutions have been minor overclocking or forcing clock rates with 3rd party utils, or rebooting. This is a show stopper for me.

On a side note, I was extremely surprised at just how good a framerate I could get with a GTX 460 @ 50mhz in Source games. Almost 20fps! :).
 
So far this seems to have resolved some minor issues I was having with the 296.xx drivers and my GTX 560 Ti 1GB. I was getting driver not responding errors and this weird purple screen glitch that both would happen now and then. A performance boost on top is nice as well. GJ on the drivers Nvidia I expect no less.
 
lawless2142 said:
The newest posts on the driver thread for this at Guru3d indicate this still has the "50mhz" clock bug from the previous beta. If you don't know what that is, it's where on many 400 & 500 series GPU's, your card clocks down to it's lowest speed after exiting a game and stays that way. So far the only solutions have been minor overclocking or forcing clock rates with 3rd party utils, or rebooting. This is a show stopper for me.
Click to expand...

Install MSI AB, add 1MHz on boot-up automatically? Sure it's silly and annoying, but easily worked around, yes? Show-stopper is when it TDRs every 10 minutes using a web browser, and the only solution is to peg the card to 3D mode burning an extra 70W of power. (That should be fixed these days for non-faulty cards.)
 
dj_2004 said:
No, there was already a thread on this driver that was at least two pages long.

Anyways, the drivers seem to be working fine for me.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I think the admins may have deleted it :confused: to place this thread instead? EDIT yep they did, original link from google was http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?p=1038754815 :rolleyes: and posted around 12 hours before this thread . I have installed the driver set and it seems to have given me a bit better BF3 performance, haven't tried much else with them yet since I only installed them today. Rock-solid stability at the same OC on my Gigabyte WindForce GTX 670 OC (1354mhz core pegged during games at silent fan levels) that I had with 301.34 :D.
 
In the 301.24 beta, I had the 50mhz problem. I removed the driver, went to save mode, cleaned with CCleaner and Driver Sweeper, then rebooted and re-installed the driver. Haven't had the problem since.

I've installed both 301.42 on my laptop and desktop. Did a light test on the laptop (GT 130M) and everything seems fine. Will run the desktop (GTX 560) through the battery tonight or tomorrow.
 
Nice, adaptive V sync is a really valuable feature. I had the beta drivers but I got crazy lag after a few days so had to go back to older WHQL.
 
With any luck this has also fixed the black-screen issue with the MadVR MPC-HC renderer that were introduced with the 300.xx series drivers.
 
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I wished they would include Frame Rate Limiter in the driver's control panel itself (which can be set in custom profile), rather than having to launch EVGA Precision each time I want to enable it for a particular game.
 
lawless2142 said:
The newest posts on the driver thread for this at Guru3d indicate this still has the "50mhz" clock bug from the previous beta. If you don't know what that is, it's where on many 400 & 500 series GPU's, your card clocks down to it's lowest speed after exiting a game and stays that way. So far the only solutions have been minor overclocking or forcing clock rates with 3rd party utils, or rebooting. This is a show stopper for me.

On a side note, I was extremely surprised at just how good a framerate I could get with a GTX 460 @ 50mhz in Source games. Almost 20fps! :).
Click to expand...

Oh, so thats a driver bug? It sometimes even happens to me when I go to an ingame screen thats not graphics accelerated, so when I go back into game, clocks are stuck at the idle speed.

Also is anyone having issues installing these on 560 Ti? I had to re-download 301.24s and install those because I ran into a host of issues getting them to install.
 
Tried these out for the new power features which I thought were only for the new Kepler cards. Well, they're listed in the menu but not sure if they work with a 480. (I hope.) I did notice I got some chop on cut scenes in Diablo but I'm not sure if its the Adaptive vsync or the power feature I turned on.

Can anyone do some testing on a non kepler card (400 or 500 series card) and see if the new power features work? I honestly do not have any means of seeing if the card pulls less power or not when it's not being fully utilized.
 
Also, the document list GPU Power boost but doesn't mention the 600 cards specifically. Anyone verify it works on 400/500 cards? Would really be great for this 480 monster in my raven. (I miss my small box but needed back my raven for this behemoth.)
 
GPU Boost only works on 600 series cards. It relies on specific hardware that isn't present in 400/500 series cards.
 
Burticus said:
I wish they would allow Surround with 2 displays :(
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Surround is only needed for games. You can have two monitors for desktop. In game surround for two monitors is HORRIBLE. You have a bezel running down the middle of your image that's why no one uses it.
 
Does this included the fix for the shitty SLi shutdown issue that was fixed in .40 beta?
 
OFaceSIG said:
Does this included the fix for the shitty SLi shutdown issue that was fixed in .40 beta?
Click to expand...

I was running the 301.34 driver and I also noticed the computer would not shut down.

I updated to the 301.42 last night and that problem seems to be gone now.:D
 
I had been using 296.10 and everything was fine on my gtx 580 matrix but when i installed 301.42, everything went to hell. actually had to spend all of yesterday trying to figure it out. in the end i got too frustrated and rolled back to 296.10.
 
Pingis said:
I had been using 296.10 and everything was fine on my gtx 580 matrix but when i installed 301.42, everything went to hell. actually had to spend all of yesterday trying to figure it out. in the end i got too frustrated and rolled back to 296.10.
Click to expand...
What exactly were you experiencing? Can't really help you when you describe your problem as "everything went to hell".
 
M249SAW said:
So far this seems to have resolved some minor issues I was having with the 296.xx drivers and my GTX 560 Ti 1GB. I was getting driver not responding errors and this weird purple screen glitch that both would happen now and then. A performance boost on top is nice as well. GJ on the drivers Nvidia I expect no less.
Click to expand...

This actually sounds more like a hardware problem. Might see what the warranty is on your card and report the issue to the manufacturer before the warranty expires.
 
Nice, I will have to download and test when I get home.

So what are the major changes from the 301.24 beta?
 
M249SAW said:
So far this seems to have resolved some minor issues I was having with the 296.xx drivers and my GTX 560 Ti 1GB. I was getting driver not responding errors and this weird purple screen glitch that both would happen now and then. A performance boost on top is nice as well. GJ on the drivers Nvidia I expect no less.
Click to expand...

i got the driver not responding errors in unengine when I oc'd my new 670 for the first time. No purple screen but scared me enough so i'll be doing a safe mode uninstall and driver sweep tonight.
 
lawless2142 said:
The newest posts on the driver thread for this at Guru3d indicate this still has the "50mhz" clock bug from the previous beta. If you don't know what that is, it's where on many 400 & 500 series GPU's, your card clocks down to it's lowest speed after exiting a game and stays that way. So far the only solutions have been minor overclocking or forcing clock rates with 3rd party utils, or rebooting. This is a show stopper for me.

On a side note, I was extremely surprised at just how good a framerate I could get with a GTX 460 @ 50mhz in Source games. Almost 20fps! :).
Click to expand...

Pingis said:
I had been using 296.10 and everything was fine on my gtx 580 matrix but when i installed 301.42, everything went to hell. actually had to spend all of yesterday trying to figure it out. in the end i got too frustrated and rolled back to 296.10.
Click to expand...

I would recommend you both do clean driver installs. The checkbox on the first screen "Perform a clean installation." is probably sufficient. If the problem still continues, uninstall the driver, reboot, run a driver cleanup utility, then reinstall the 301.42's.
 
So far I'm impressed. Adaptive Vsync seems to be greatly improved over the 301.24 beta for my GTX 560. In the beta I would see consistent screen tearing whenever Adaptive would flip on/off around the 60fps mark. It was annoying and would literally have this tearing crawl down my screen. I have yet to see it since upgrading in about an hour of gaming. It's "only" an hour, but with the betas the tearing was constant.

In about 15 minutes of gaming on the laptop, it didn't show up there either.
 
Running great (from one day testing, BF3 and Diablo 3) on my 670, same as the 670 release/beta drivers did.

Also (STRONG knock on wood) I have not had a single TDR crash on my new system, whereas I had them constantly for 6 months on my old Q6700 + 560Ti system, through every single driver from 280 upwards.
 
installed .42 and I can't configure SLi or surround. Gotta love that nvidia driver "superiority."
 
What about SLI? I have 560 2gb sli and would love to hear something positive. Still rocking the 296.10s.
 
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