Hot on the heels of the GTS 450 launch, NVIDIA has unveiled the latest beta-drivers for its GeForce graphics-cards. The first release in the 260-series boasts major increases to performance for recent GPUs and a complete overhaul of the install process.
The biggest change in this version will be to frame-rates on GTX 400-series cards. According to the company's internal testing with a GTX 460, performance should significantly improve in a whole host of recently-released games. This includes 19 per cent higher frame-rates in Starcraft II with SLI, 13 per cent in Far Cry 2 and 11 per cent in Dirt 2 when compared to version 258.96 drivers.
Along with all of the various performance-tweaks, this release will also bring a few new features for HTPCs. Graphics-cards - including the GTX 460 and above - will now be able to output 24-bit multi-channel audio at up to 192KHz over HDMI, as well as lossless DTS-HD Master Audio and Dolby TrueHD bitstreaming when playing Blu-ray 3D films. While these features are still fairly niche, there are certainly some people out there who will greatly appreciate the inclusion.
Rounding out the major changes is an overhaul of the installer package. While these features are nothing new for the AMD-faithful, NVIDIA has finally included the option of a ‘Custom' installation that allows users to choose which components of the driver to install. There is also the ability to perform a clean install that will completely remove the old drivers first.
Release notes are available from NVIDIA (PDF), along with links to download the 260.63 beta drivers for 32- and 64-bit versions of Windows.
