The NVIDIA Blog

GeForce R300 Drivers Rock New Features, Performance

Posted: 09 Apr 2012 09:25 AM PDT

Cutting-edge gamers, take note: the latest NVIDIA GeForce R300 drivers bring many of the industry-leading features we launched with the-next generation GeForce GTX 680 GPU to millions of GeForce GPUs as far back as 2006. This continues our tradition of bringing new features and performance to previous generation products. The R300 drivers also boost performance in several top games – we recorded increases as high as 23 percent in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim.

All GeForce 8-series and later GPUs running on Windows 7 or Windows Vista can now take advantage of the ground-breaking benefits of NVIDIA FXAA, NVIDIA Adaptive VSync, and NVIDIA Frame Rate Target. In addition, all NVIDIA Surround-capable GPUs now support the new NVIDIA Surround features, like a fourth accessory display.

The GeForce R300 drivers are available for download today as a beta release.

Notebook customers can upgrade to the equivalent Verde R300 drivers, also available for download for on GeForce.com.

R300 highlights:

Boosts performance in several top PC games by up to 23 percent with a single GPU (tested on The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim) and by up to 23 percent with SLI (tested on Just Cause 2), when compared with the R295 drivers. Read our R300 article on GeForce.com for details and a complete list of performance increases.
Adds NVIDIA FXAA technology to the NVIDIA Control Panel, enabling ultra-fast anti-aliasing (up to 60 percent faster than MSAA).
Enables NVIDIA Adaptive VSync, which provides a smoother gaming experience by dynamically enabling and disabling vertical sync based on your current frame rate.
Enables NVIDIA Frame Rate Target in third-party applications, like EVGA Precision X, for automatic and dynamic adjustment of frame rate to a user-specified target.
Introduces several new NVIDIA Surround capabilities:
- Add a fourth accessory display for access to email, web, or other applications while you game.
- Maximize an application to a single physical display when in Surround mode.
- Confine the Windows Taskbar to the center display.
- Enable bezel peeking to temporarily peek behind the monitor bezels when using bezel-corrected resolutions.
- Add or remove resolution settings from the list of Surround resolutions.
- Full center display acceleration for single-wide display modes.
Adds or updates NVIDIA SLI support for numerous new games such as Alan Wake (previously enabled via NVIDIA Update in R295 drivers), Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, Risen 2: Dark Waters and more.
Adds or updates NVIDIA 3D Vision support for several new games such as Oil Rush (rated 3D Vision Ready), Rayman Origins (rated Good), and Wargame: European Escalation (rated Good).