GeForce 290.36

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pandora's box

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New drivers! 290.36. It's suggested to do a clean install when installing the drivers to get the Ambient Occlusion option for skyrim and mw3.

ManuelG said:
Today we posted a BETA NVIDIA display driver from our R290 driver branch, version R290.36. This is the first public driver release from our R290 family for Microsoft Windows OS. Although BETA, this driver will be re-released as WHQL certified drivers soon.

New in R290

NVIDIA Ambient Occlusion
• Adds NVIDIA Control Panel ambient occlusion support for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. See the comparison screenshots on .
• Adds NVIDIA Control Panel ambient occlusion support for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3. See the comparison screenshots on .

NVIDIA PhysX
• Updates PhysX System Software to version 9.11.1107 for the best PhysX experience in Batman: Arkham City.

NVIDIA Surround
• Enables NVIDIA Surround support for Intel X79 SLI-certified motherboards.

NVIDIA SLI
• Added or updated SLI profiles for Crysis 2, Heroes and Generals, Inversion, Stronghold 3, and Syndicate.

3D Vision
• Adds support for 3D Vision over native DisplayPort 1.1 connection - available on BenQ XL2420T and BenQ XL2420TX monitors.
• Added or updated the following 3D Vision game profiles:
o Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 – rated Good
o Cang Sheng (苍生) – rated Good
o Diablo 3 – rated Good
o Fei fei (飞飞) – rated Good
o Final Combat (大冲锋) – rated Good
o L.A. Noire – updated rating to 3D Vision Ready
o LEGO Harry Potter: Years 5-7 – rated Fair
o Qian Nv You Hun Online (倩女幽魂Online) – rated Good
o QQ Xi You (QQ西游) – rated Good
o Sonic Generations – rated Good
o Xian Tu (仙途) – rated Good
o Yong Bing Tian Xia Online (拥兵天下 Online) – rated Good

HD Audio
• Updates HD Audio driver to version 1.3.9.0.

Some Key Bug Fixes
• Fixes random flickering as Windows boot logo is loading or fading away.
• Fixes corruption in Crysis 2 with SLI and lower quality shadow settings.
• Fixes ability to set Surround resolutions to 5760x1080 (requires setting custom resolution).
• Fixes some random instances of triangular artifacts when playing Battlefield 3.
• Improved performance in Elders Scroll: Skyrim
• Fixes white dots appear in the edges of objects in NFS-ProStreet game with AA enabled
• Fixes blood is green color when AA is set to 4X or 8X from in-game video settings
• Fixes blank screen on certain Apple Macintosh computers running Windows
• Fixes negative SLI scaling in Anno 1404 with two-way, three-way or four-way SLI

More info available from:
http://www./News/articles/nvidia-geforce-290-32-beta-drivers-released

NVIDIA Control Panel Users Guide:
http://us.download.nvidia.com/Windows/290.36/290.36-NVIDIA-Control-Panel-Quick-Start-Guide.pdf

Release Notes:
http://us.download.nvidia.com/Windows/290.36/290.36-Win7-WinVista-Desktop-Release-Notes.pdf

Driver Feedback: If providing feedback on these drivers, please pay attention to the info we require at the bottom of this post. If you do not include this information, it may push the priority of your issue down or may make it impossible for us to reproduce your issue.

Please Note: Beginning with NVIDIA's R285 display driver branch, older laptops with NVIDIA's Hybrid SLI technology are no longer supported by the NVIDIA Verde display driver program. If you have an older laptop that uses NVIDIA's Hybrid SLI technology, please visit our software archive downloads page to download NVIDIA display driver 280.26 or older version:

NVIDIA Software Archive Downloads Page:
http://www.nvidia.com/Download/Find.aspx?lang=en-us

-A bug which has caused some users to experience TDRs in Firefox/IE9 while browsing the internet is still under investigation. We have discovered that completely removing prior NVIDIA display drivers from your system has helped some users reduce or resolve the TDR issues. Although we do not have a root cause yet, we encourage users to remove all prior drivers when upgrading to the latest divers if you have experienced TDRs with a recent driver release while using IE9 or Firefox.

http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtopic=215256

You may download the appropriate driver for your NVIDIA GPU by choosing the type and operating system from the links below.

Windows XP:
http://www.nvidia.com/object/winxp-290.36-beta-driver.html

Windows XP 64-bit:
http://www.nvidia.com/object/winxp64-290.36-beta-driver.html

Windows 7/Windows Vista 32-bit:
http://us.download.nvidia.com/Windo...op-win7-winvista-32bit-international-beta.exe

Windows 7/Windows Vista 64-bit:
http://us.download.nvidia.com/Windo...op-win7-winvista-64bit-international-beta.exe
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Moar performance makes me :D

I can't test the drivers right now but if this removes the micro stutter I get in Skyrim, I'll be happy. 60FPS and it still looks laggy/jerky when a lot is displayed.
 
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I'm about to find out if my older gtx cards still get triangles in bf3. Thanks for linking these drivers here.
 
Thank you. With the current drivers my monitor started doing this weird screen shake every one in a while, like a handshake issue.
 
Interesting that the HD audio driver got a such a major numerical increase.
I wonder if they finally implemented HD bitstreaming?

Either way, the last beta driver they released was a total mess for me. Anything has to be better than that one was. Got my first blue screen in years with that one.
 
Drivers report false resolution with SLI I set it to 1920*1200 and it reports 900*1200 change it to 1920*1080 goes ok then back to 1920*1200 and it stays ok got into battlefield 3 and the resolution is back to 900*1200 needed to change it back in game also, haven't tested any other games, and it seems that these drivers have more tearing in battlefield also I started to notice a lot of tearing.

anyway back to 285.79 and everything is 100% perfect.

btw tried updating and clean install with driver sweeper same results.
 
• Updates PhysX System Software to version 9.11.1107 for the best PhysX experience in Batman: Arkham City.
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Regardless of what GenL says, his 1.05ff patch does NOT work against Physx System Software 9.11.1107.
 
So does that mean we don't have to use NVInspector to use AO in Skyrim anymore? Should we undo what we did before to get it to work and just do it through the Control Panel?
 
MavericK96 said:
So does that mean we don't have to use NVInspector to use AO in Skyrim anymore? Should we undo what we did before to get it to work and just do it through the Control Panel?
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Looks like.

Best thing is that if this is actually adding an honest-to-gods custom AO profile for Skyrim, specifically, it MAY actually handle the 'performance' option with better quality than using the 'Fallout 3' selection. Not having to use 'high quality' to get acceptable shadows when in motion would be a major boon, as that was a MONSTROUS performance hit.
 
Although I do find it ridiculously funny that AO has been working in Skyrim for nVidia cards for a WHILE, now. Just not "enabled" in the driver control panel - you had to use nVidia inspector to add it. But it worked just fine, and nVidia was simply sitting on it.

Then, today, AMD *finally* releases their Crossfire profile for Skyrim, and...oops, here is nVidia "officially" putting out a MASSIVE image quality improvement to the game on the exact same day.

Coincidence? Maybe, but...I somehow doubt it...
 
I'm getting "Video Mode Unsupported" as soon as Windows starts on my monitor after the reboot from installing 290.36.
 
Nahawand said:
Drivers report false resolution with SLI I set it to 1920*1200 and it reports 900*1200 change it to 1920*1080 goes ok then back to 1920*1200 and it stays ok got into battlefield 3 and the resolution is back to 900*1200 needed to change it back in game also, haven't tested any other games, and it seems that these drivers have more tearing in battlefield also I started to notice a lot of tearing.

anyway back to 285.79 and everything is 100% perfect.

btw tried updating and clean install with driver sweeper same results.
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Same issue with me except I'm using a single GTX 570, not SLi. I am using two screens at 1920x1200, one for games and the other as an extended desktop. My main screen was fixed by going to 1920x1080 and back like you suggested, but my second screen wouldn't change. When set to 1920x1080 it still had that weird (squished horizontally) resolution. The second monitor went fine when changed to any resolution lower than that, but going back to 1920x1200 afterwards still produced the problem. I still had the resolution problem even using the clean install option on the drivers. 285.79 still works fine so I went back to that.
 
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Just played BF3 for about 20 minutes with new drivers. Seems okay. No new problems but still no 99% usage in SLI.

Its weird; in the game if I face an empty place on the map, like looking out over non combat area I get full 99% usage but as soon as I turn back towards the action usage on 2nd GPU dips to 80%-75%. Only played on Firestorm so maybe more testing needed. Perhaps some one in here has a solution or at least an explanation for this phenomena.
 
In the last 285 driver it said Battlefield 3 could be played in 3D. I then heard that this was not true, mainly cause I couldnt use 3D in game. Has this been fixed? If so when and where? I would like to play BF3 in 3D.
 
Rogue_Apprentice said:
Just played BF3 for about 20 minutes with new drivers. Seems okay. No new problems but still no 99% usage in SLI.

Its weird; in the game if I face an empty place on the map, like looking out over non combat area I get full 99% usage but as soon as I turn back towards the action usage on 2nd GPU dips to 80%-75%. Only played on Firestorm so maybe more testing needed. Perhaps some one in here has a solution or at least an explanation for this phenomena.
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You need more CPU horsepower. My single 580 will run my i7 920 at 4.2ghz at close to 80% cpu usage.
 
I really like the ambient occlusion in Skyrim except in first person with a bow out, there's a random small shadow that follows 2 feet in front of me and to the left. As an archer mainly it is really distracting and I might have to switch back to no AO.
 
dderidex said:
Looks like.

Best thing is that if this is actually adding an honest-to-gods custom AO profile for Skyrim, specifically, it MAY actually handle the 'performance' option with better quality than using the 'Fallout 3' selection. Not having to use 'high quality' to get acceptable shadows when in motion would be a major boon, as that was a MONSTROUS performance hit.
Click to expand...

I'd like to see/hear some accounts of whether or not that's true. Still using NVInspector to get "High Quality" here, but the performance hit is, as stated, pretty severe.

And actually, after playing Skyrim for a bit, these drivers almost seem to make performance worse. I'm getting some massive slowdowns in the wilderness (not even near a city) for seemingly no reason, as in there's nothing around.
 
MavericK96 said:
I'd like to see/hear some accounts of whether or not that's true. Still using NVInspector to get "High Quality" here, but the performance hit is, as stated, pretty severe.

And actually, after playing Skyrim for a bit, these drivers almost seem to make performance worse. I'm getting some massive slowdowns in the wilderness (not even near a city) for seemingly no reason, as in there's nothing around.
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Well, it should be pretty easy to check if you are using these. The very intro script is the best way to check - with 'performance' AO, the trees have a shadow "glow" around them that shimmers and flickers like mad. It's very, very unsightly and unmissable.

With "quality", it drops down quite a bit - as you turn that first bend and some mountains come into few, you can still see some flicker on the trees on the mountain. With "high quality", of course, there are no issues at all...but the performance hit...oof.
 
Drivers are a no go for me. I'm running nvidia surround in portrait on triple 30's and when I try to expand the monitors into surround, I get an instant BSOD 0x00000122 or 124 error. I really hoped that this fixed my BF3 surround problem since I have to play the game in windowed mode to see any of the HUD on my screen. I guess that's why it's called a beta...
 
1 of my 2 6950's booted up with only 1408 shaders last night, and core/mem speeds maxed at 840/1325. I need to check and see if I accidentally hit the switch.
 
well I can finally have 60hz back as the last couple of drivers it was 59 unless I fixed it with a custom res. I amazed how something will work fine for years and then they screw it up for a few drivers and then fix it again. makes you wonder how much other stuff gets jacked up from driver to driver.
 
saedrin said:
HT on or off? HT off (HT on causes microstutter on 1366) should 'double' that.
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Sounds like HT off. The game is very poorly threaded. On a 4-core Core i5, I've *never* seen it hit 50% usage. Ever. Usually hovers in the 25%-30% range.

That said, it's masssively, massively CPU limited. I understand most shadows in the game are rendered entirely on the CPU. It doesn't make use of a lot of threads, but those it uses, it uses HARD. Very high clock speeds, lots of cache, and plenty of memory bandwidth seem to be the name of the game (not so much # of cores - game really doesn't care about that)
 
These drivers are completely unusable for me (which hasn't happened in a while). Whenever I install them, my screens turn incredibly blurry. Text is almost unreadable. Roll back to 285.79 and it's fine. I did clean installs of both drivers. Very odd. I saw someone else on Guru3D mention they had this problem. Anyone else experience it, or have suggestions on how to fix?
 
Rizen said:
These drivers are completely unusable for me (which hasn't happened in a while). Whenever I install them, my screens turn incredibly blurry. Text is almost unreadable. Roll back to 285.79 and it's fine. I did clean installs of both drivers. Very odd. I saw someone else on Guru3D mention they had this problem. Anyone else experience it, or have suggestions on how to fix?
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I have the same problem. I've tried installing these drivers a few times and my main display is pixellated and blurry. Oddly, my 2nd display is fine.
 
These new drivers screwed up my BF3.

Whenever I alt+tab out and then back in, the UI and text is at 720p resolution. Running on a 1920x1200 monitor, it looks really awful.

On Win7 64-bit with a GTX 260 Core 216

Didn't have this issue with 285.79 so I am reverting. Plus the new driver didn't seem to offer improved performance, anyway.
 
• Updates PhysX System Software to version 9.11.1107 for the best PhysX experience in Batman: Arkham City.
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These were already out with 285.76 WHQL
 
overdriveGTO said:
I have the same problem. I've tried installing these drivers a few times and my main display is pixellated and blurry. Oddly, my 2nd display is fine.
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Same problem. Joy.

Edit: It does it even with the second monitor unplugged and the driver clean reinstalled.
 
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Drivers install fine, but when I turn on SLI the width gets squeezed down to about 1/4 of what it should be when running at 1920x1200. Lower resolutions seem fine (didn't check them all). Once it does this even turning off SLI doesn't fix the problem. Had to uninstall and go back to the previous version.
 
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