News NVIDIA Release new beta drivers

In the wake of Half-Life 2, NVIDIA has released new ForceWare BETA drivers for Windows XP and 2000. They are version 67.02, based around release 65 of the ForceWare driver. The US English package weighs in at just over of 13MB and can be downloaded over here.

The driver features some new performance and quality options as well as a number of bug fixes, here is a snippet from the release notes:

• Added new Performance and Quality option called “Negative LOD bias” to allow more user control
• Unified Compiler optimizations
• Compatibility fixes (Please view the release notes for a full list of fixes)
• Added support for SLI
• Added support for using HDTV over DVI connectors
• Added support for 512 MB frame buffer GPUs
• Added support for advanced DVI timing on all GeForce 6 series GPUs
• Added support to recognize and display monitor name in all control panels
• Added support for TV/HDTV setup in the nView Display Setup Wizard
• Updated Gridlines for easier grid setup and management
• Microsoft DirectX 9.0c and OpenGL 1.5 support

Please note this driver also has some HL2 performance optimisations in it, however NVIDIA have been eagerly awaiting final code from Valve, so the driver is not a final HL2 performance driver. There should be a new driver with bug fixes and optimisations for HL2 over the next couple of days now that the final version of Half-Life 2 has been released.