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Nvidia ForceWare for XP 32-Bit 169.09 Beta

* Beta driver for GeForce 6, 7, and 8 series GPUs.
* Recommended driver for Crysis.
* Several game and application compatibility fixes. Please read the release notes for more information on product support, features, driver fixes and known compatibility issues.
* Users without English US operating systems can select their language and download the International driver here.

Release Notes - 169.09
Control Panel User’s Guide

Download Nvidia ForceWare for XP 32-Bit 169.09 Beta

Nvidia ForceWare for Vista 64-Bit 169.09 Beta

* Beta driver for GeForce 6, 7, and 8 series GPUs.
* Recommended driver for Crysis.
* Several game and application compatibility fixes. Please read the release notes for more information on product support, features, driver fixes and known compatibility issues.
* Users without English US operating systems can select their language and download the International driver here.

Release Notes - 169.09
Control Panel User’s Guide

Download Nvidia ForceWare for Vista 64-Bit 169.09 Beta

Nvidia ForceWare for Vista 32-Bit 169.09 Beta

* Beta driver for GeForce 6, 7, and 8 series GPUs.
* Recommended driver for Crysis.
* Several game and application compatibility fixes. Please read the release notes for more information on product support, features, driver fixes and known compatibility issues.
* Users without English US operating systems can select their language and download the International driver here.

Release Notes - 169.09
Control Panel User’s Guide

Download Nvidia ForceWare for Vista 32-Bit 169.09 Beta

“The use of powerful graphics is not limited to just games anymore. Many of today’s most popular business and consumer applications, including Adobe Acrobat, Second Life, and Apple iTunes are optimized for the power of a modern GPU,” said Jon Peddie, president of Jon Peddie Research (JPR), a leading market research firm based in Tiburon, CA. “With their new GeForce mGPUs, NVIDIA is pioneering the development of new graphics technologies that are helping to evolve the capabilities of mainstream PC platforms. Customers understand that their overall PC experience is largely defined by the graphics processors. Anyone, from a seasoned IT pro to a college student can compare the PC experience delivered by NVIDIA mGPUs against any traditional integrated graphics solution and realize the dramatic impact a modern GPU can make.”

The NVIDIA GeForce 7150 mGPU delivers the performance of an entry-level discrete GPU and leading graphics compatibility when compared against traditional integrated graphics solutions. The GeForce 7150, 7100, and 7050 mGPUs are designed to support a full range of Intel CPUs (Core 2, Pentium, and Celeron CPU families), including upcoming 45nm Intel “Penryn” processors and other new features, such as 1333MHz frontside bus technology. In addition to delivering an unparalleled graphics experience to mainstream PCs, the GeForce 7-Series mGPUs support optional HDMI or DVI digital output capability to enable the playback of protected digital content directly from the PC to high- definition televisions and other displays.

Designed as single chip solutions for cost-effective PC system integration for both AMD and Intel platforms, all NVIDIA GeForce 7-Series mGPUs enable the premium graphics experience on Windows Vista, and incorporate NVIDIA nForce core-logic functionality, including advanced storage and networking features for powering today’s connected digital lifestyles…

Nvidia Names Stability as Top Priority for Windows Vista Drivers

An official from Nvidia, a leading designer of system chipsets and graphics processors, admitted that the company had underestimated resources it needed to develop proper drivers for Windows Vista, but said the issues would be shortly resolved. Besides, the company has outlined its priorities when developing drivers for the new operating system (OS).

Several days after Microsoft Windows Vista operating system was released, hundreds of end-users reported complaints about instabilities, erratic behaviour, driver bugs and other kind of issues that they faced because of Nvidia’s ForceWare drivers designed for the new OS. End-users with various graphics cards, including the latest top-of-the-range GeForce 8800-series, criticized Nvidia ForceWare for poor performance and stability, something, which logotype “Vista Ready” is not meant to say.

One person, who wanted to remain fully anonymous, even launched a web-site called NvidiaClassAction.org in early February to collect the information about ForceWare issues with Windows Vista, however, in early March the web-site has been taken down due to an unknown reason.

Nearly two months have passed since the last WHQL-certified release of Windows Vista ForceWare drivers and there is a number of end-users who still experience issues with their machines and the GeForce graphics cards. But Nvidia’s Keita Iada, who is responsible for content development at the company, said in an interview with IGN web-site that the new drivers are near.

NVIDIA has posted brand new 97.94 ForceWare drivers for Windows XP, Windows XP Media Center, Windows XP x64 and Windows Server 2003 x64. Grab them if you need them.

Supports GeForce 8800 GTX and GeForce 8800 GTS GPUs. Game and application compatibility fixes. For more information on this driver, please view the Release Notes. New PureVideo technology features allows GeForce 8800 GTX/GTS to achieve a score of 128 in the HQV video quality benchmark: Improved inverse telecine algorithms (2:2 & 3:2 Pull-down Correction) for standard and high definition content. Improved spatial-temporal de-interlacing algorithm (for standard and high definition content).

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(PRESS RELEASE) NVIDIA Corporation, the worldwide leader in programmable graphics processor technologies, today announced that it was honored with the EE Times Annual Creativity in Electronics (ACE) Award for Company of the Year. Honors were presented at the EE Times ACE Awards Gala on April 3, 2007, as part of the Embedded Systems Conference Silicon Valley, the largest electronic systems design event in North America.

NVIDIA earned the EE Times ACE Award for “Company of the Year – Large,” which recognizes a company with more than $750 million in sales that exhibits the highest degree of professionalism, staff development and retention, customer focus, technical excellence, and profitability.

“NVIDIA is an innovation leader in creating industry-changing products for computing and consumer electronics,” said Brian Fuller, editor in chief of EE Times. “The company invented the GPU, or graphics processing unit, which today is used for a range of applications, from cell phones to high-performance computing. We are pleased to bestow this high honor on a company that pushes the boundaries of technology and imagination.”

“We are very honored by this award, which salutes NVIDIA’s passion for innovation, execution, and leadership,” commented Chris Malachowsky, NVIDIA co-founder and senior vice president of engineering and operations. “NVIDIA has some of the most talented engineers in the semiconductor industry and this award recognizes their commitment to building a great company that is making a difference in the world.”

Filling the price gap between the high-end nForce 680i SLI and more affordable 650i SLI chipsets, without sacrificing any advanced features, motherboard manufacturer Asus has created a hybrid motherboard chipset in cooperation with NVIDIA, dubbed the “Dual X16 SLI”. Designed for the Intel platform, the chipset combination employed on the P5N32-E SLI Plus motherboard offers true, dual PCI Express x16 electrical connections for graphics, dual Gig-E LAN support and a slew of other features found on high-end 680i boards. HotHardware pits the P5N32-E SLI Plus up against an nForce 680i SLI to see if Asus’ hybrid chipset approach truly offers all of the performance of the more expensive 680i SLI for a fraction of the cost.

Source

If you’ve been following my coverage of the high performance computing (HPC) market—especially my coverage of the emerging market for commodity data-parallel coprocessors that are repurposed for use in HPC clusters—then know this: NVIDIA hates my line on all this stuff, and they haven’t been shy about letting me know it. Now, I reveal this not in order to be catty, but to provide some context for a new rumor (courtesy of The Street) that NVIDIA will soon launch a separate “GPU computing” brand dedicated to selling the G80 to businesses as a general-purpose data-parallel coprocessor. Knowing that NVIDIA dislikes my GPU-as-coprocessor coverage, and knowing what they don’t like about it, is key to understanding why they’re launching a whole separate brand and product line around an existing GPU part.

First, let’s contrast my typical take on the GPU in general, whether from AMD/ATI or NVIDIA, as a data-parallel coprocessor with the message that NVIDIA has been trying to attach to the G80 via their CUDA initiative:

Me: Anybody’s GPU, whether it’s from NVIDIA or AMD/ATI, is a big, hot, power-hungry, beast of a coprocessor that’s designed to do one thing extremely well: real-time 3D rendering for games. In fact, we can be even more specific and call a GPU a “Microsoft DirectX toaster.” These same DirectX toasters also just happen to offer significant speedups vs. a regular microprocessor for certain types of data-parallel workloads that are important in HPC.

NVIDIA: The G80 is a general-purpose data-parallel coprocessor that gives top-notch performance in all kinds of applications, including computational genomics, quantitative financial analysis, seismic analysis, medical imaging, simulations… and 3D games.

If one of your New Year’s resolutions involved spending a massive chunk of change to kick out as many frames per second as technologically possible, you may want to put the brakes on that impending NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTX purchase. Lvl505 got their palms on a pre-release ATI R600 graphics card and put it up against the best NVIDIA currently has to offer, and the results thus far show ATI’s device as “the clear winner.” Of course, these benchmarks have to be taken with a certain grain of salt, as the drivers used were “a modified version of a 32-bit Vista pre-build version,” which should have yielded less-than-optimal results; interestingly, the R600 still ran all over the optimized NVIDIA setup. Testing the cards on an Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6700-powered machine with 2GB of RAM, the single R600 card bested the solo 8800 GTX in basically every benchmark they tried, with common applications seeing minimal gains, but games saw between ten-percent (Half-Life 2: Lost Coast) and 42-percent (1701 A.D.) hikes. Apparently, the R600 was exceedingly impressive, as reviewers actually suggested that you “return your NVIDIA” card as soon as humanly possible while patiently waiting for January 22nd, when you can gleefully drop your $630 or so to pick up your very own R600. Oh, and you might end up paying somewhat of a monthly surcharge to use this bad boy too, as the 230-watts (which beats the estimations, actually) it’ll require to operate could kick your power bill up a notch or two.