GeForce 306.97 WHQL Drivers

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NVIDIA sends word that the new GeForce 306.97 WHQL drivers are now available to download. The new drivers are certified for Windows 8 and contain a handful of fixes and optimizations as well as a number of new and updated 3D Vision profiles. Grab em' if you need em.
 
This is the first WHQL-certified driver from the R304 family of drivers (304.xx to 306.xx) and the first WHQL-certified GeForce driver to combine support for Windows 8, Windows 7, and Windows Vista into a single driver package.

This is the recommended driver for the upcoming blockbuster PC games Borderlands 2 with PhysX and 3D Vision technology and World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria with 3D Vision and DirectX 11 support.

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 .
TXAA is supported on GeForce GTX 600-series Kepler-based GPUs.
Learn more about TXAA on .
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 Excellent
Borderlands 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 Details

Installs 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.
 
Getting some weird hiccups when moving camera around in GW2 with this driver.
 
Getting a weird error while trying to install the new drivers. It asks me where to install them, I tell it where to install and it tells me Non 7z archive and that's it, won't let me install. Any suggestions?
 
CeZemal said:
Getting a weird error while trying to install the new drivers. It asks me where to install them, I tell it where to install and it tells me Non 7z archive and that's it, won't let me install. Any suggestions?
Click to expand...

Re-download. Probably a corrupt download.
 
Does this fix the pbcl.dll crash error on all CoD games when running in surround? Probably not...
 
Astrodave said:
Does this fix the pbcl.dll crash error on all CoD games when running in surround? Probably not...
Click to expand...

Do the CoD games work in surround? When I had eyefinity setup I had to use a program to get it working and it would crash the game occasionally.
 
Isn't pbcl.dll PunkBuster related? Given that you need to use a screen hack to get surround to work properly in CoD, I'm guessing that might be the problem.
 
Widescreen Fixer worked fine for me the last time I played Black Ops, but that was a while ago. Are you using Widescreen Fixer to play COD in NVsurround? If not, try that. Also try running the Punkbuster updater.
 
I got some wierd all black screen hiccups in BF3 in surround on two 670s in SLi. However they sorted themselves out and haven't since come back. I doesn't seem much faster. If it's any faster it's negligible.
 
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Anyone have any "driver has failed and recovered" messages with black screens even out of games? I just did.
 
Of course i tried without the widescreen fixer and it still crashes. Works fine in all drivers previous to the 295 branch. CoD games will not work in surround rez now for me. Instant pbcl.dll crash. If i revert back to 290.53 and previous then all is well. Sure wish they would fix this.
 
Astrodave said:
Of course i tried without the widescreen fixer and it still crashes. Works fine in all drivers previous to the 295 branch. CoD games will not work in surround rez now for me. Instant pbcl.dll crash. If i revert back to 290.53 and previous then all is well. Sure wish they would fix this.
Click to expand...
It's probably a problem with your computer. If COD games didn't work on any NVIDIA drivers released this year, there would be a shit storm. I'd just reformat if you can't get it to work on a clean install of the drivers.
 
Doubtful there'd be a shitstorm because probly 1% of people play it in surround on 3DVS capable hardware. I'm sure they know about it but are ignoring it.
 
Astrodave said:
Doubtful there'd be a shitstorm because probly 1% of people play it in surround on 3DVS capable hardware. I'm sure they know about it but are ignoring it.
Click to expand...
Are you playing in 3D or normal Surround? If 3D, then yeah I agree. With Surround, I dunno, probably more people than you think :)

I think there is an NVIDIA rep who posted here recently.. you might want to PM him?

I played Borderlands 2 for a few hours last night and no issues @ +150/200. Seems these are better for overclocking than earlier 306 drivers.
 
No I'm not playing it in 3D surround but the hardware is capable of it. I think it has something to do with the refresh rate of anything beyond 60hz causing it in surround resolutions. I played around over the weekend with this and if I start a game in 1920x1080 at 60hz and then exit to main menu and change rez to 5760x1080 at 120hz and then join the server it works or at least seems to most of the time. TDU on the other hand is a lost f'ng cause on any driver beyond 285. Everything just worked with 285. They got their shit together in that driver after a year of performance problems with surround prior to that. These guys are a bunch of screwups when it comes to surround and 3d surround driver support though.
 
Ah, didn't realize you were running in 120hz. I have only ever used Surround on my 3x U2410 setup. which has always worked well. 60 hz though.
 
since the the last 2 updates ive been crashing whenever i play darksiders 2 and some other games i have the msi N670GTX-PM2D2GD5/OC where can i get old nvidia fw?
 
Score: X2516 (72 FPS)
Submitted by outwar6010 (anonymous mode) on October 28 2012, 9:01 pm

API 3D: OpenGL 4

Graphics score: 4582 points (100 FPS)
PhysX score: 1927 points (96 FPS, GPU PhysX)
Combined score: 1326 points (26 FPS)

Duration: 130000 ms
Resolution: 1920 x 1080
Anti-aliasing: X0
Window mode: fullscreen

Primary renderer: GeForce GTX 670/PCIe/SSE2
OpenGL version: 4.2.0
Graphics drivers: 9.18.13.697 R306.97 branch r30641-13

Number of GPUs: 1
GPU 0 - NVIDIA GeForce series (10de-1189) - GPU clock: 0 MHz - Mem clock: 0 MHz - Max GPU temp: 79 °C - Max GPU load: 99 %


CPU: IntelR CoreTM i5-2500K CPU @ 3.30GHz
CPU speed: 3310 MHz
Operating System: Windows 7 64-bit build 7601 Service Pack 1
 
hey guys so i just got this new Asus gaming laptop with Geforce GTX 660M with the driver 296.01. Well everything runs fine (I have lots of older games and SWTOR is newest of them). I get prompted to update the vid driver and as I accept it takes me to the website where i proceed to download it. I update it to 306.97 and it makes my games not work.

Specifically 40k Dawn of War, it says directx need to be installed/reinstalled or that the vid card isnt good enough. I try Dark Crusade and says it doesnt have a compatible card. I reverted to the 296 version before i tested anything else and it works again.

I keep getting the prompt to update and i might get win 8, which I hear this new driver is better for, so i was wondering what you guys think, if its just these specific games or the driver itself? google only has reference to borderlands2 and swtor, and people say both good and bad things, so Im confused....
 
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