nVidia launches new ForceWare feature

nVidia has released new drivers for the GeForce series of graphics cards. The WHQL-certified ForceWare version 182.50 is available for Windows XP, Vista and Server 2003 and supports nVidia GeForce cards from the 6, 7, 8, 9 and the 200 line-ups. A beta version of 185.66 has also been released.

Ever since release 182, ForceWare completely supports OpenGL 3.0. In Windows Vista, it's become possible to use multiple monitors with SLI. The enclosed nVidia PhysX System Software v9.09.0203 allows all GeForce 8, 9 and 200 cards with atleast 256 MB of memory to be used for PhysX acceleration. 

The new version has fixed a number of bugs; drivers for the GeForce 6 and 7 AGP cards will no longer result in problematic installs and Football Manager '09 now works properly with SLI. More details on bugfixes can be found in the release notes for both Windows XP and Windows Vista. 

Beta version 185.66 has a new feature. Ambient Occlusion as it's called, allows light effects such as soft shadows to be displayed more realistically. Some games have Ambient Occlusion integrated in their engine, while others will certainly benefit from the new drivers. Examples are Company of Heroes, World in Conflict, Half-life 2, World of Warcraft and Mirror's Edge. The extra calculations of the lighting effects will cause a decrease in framerate of 20 to 40%.

A screenshot from Mirror's Edge without (left) and with (right) Ambient Occlusion