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The new GeForce 310.61 beta drivers are now available to download. Otherwise identical to last week's 310.54 beta driver, 310.61 beta improves compatibility in Hitman: Absolution and Planetside 2, and supports a new Black Ops II SLI profile that's available through NVIDIA update.
If you have any feedback please leave a comment at the bottom of the article, and if you have a technical issue please report the problem via the NVIDIA Display Driver Feedback Form.
Note: We're releasing the 310.61 beta drivers ahead of schedule so gamers can play Hitman: Absolution without delay. Because of this you may have difficulty finding the driver through the usual avenues, so please jump direct to the download pages via the following links:
An essential upgrade for all GeForce GTX gamers, our new 310.54 beta drivers are loaded with enhancements for over two dozen of your favorite games, including Call of Duty: Black Ops II and Assassin’s Creed III, which receive performance improvements of up to 26% compared to your current driver.
Today’s driver also adds a new and improved version of TXAA anti-aliasing to Call of Duty: Black Ops II and Assassin’s Creed III, allowing GTX 600 Series users to maximize image quality and eliminate unsightly temporal aliasing in two of the year’s most popular games. Furthermore, there’s a handy new Sparse Grid Supersampling feature for all GeForce GTX users that improves image quality when using the advanced anti-aliasing technique, and for SLI users there are new Hawken, Hitman: Absolution, Natural Selection 2 and Primal Carnage profiles.
In last month’s GeForce 310.33 beta driver we improved performance by up to 15% in nine games, and this month we’re improving performance by up to 26% in twenty games. Leading the charge in the 310.54 beta driver is a 26% boost for the upcoming and eagerly-anticipated Call of Duty: Black Ops II, which hits stores tomorrow, followed by an 18% boost for The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena, a 17.8% boost for Assassin’s Creed III, which arrives in stores November 20th, and a 12.9% boost for Battlefield 3.
Below, we detail the complete range of optimizations packed into the 310.54 beta drivers using the GeForce GTX 680 and GTX 660; at home you should expect to see performance improvements on any system utilizing a GeForce GTX 400, 500, or 600 series GPU, though obviously to varying degrees.
Results & Benchmark Settings:
Results & Benchmark Settings:
At the launch of the GeForce GTX 680 last March we announced a new form of advanced anti-aliasing called TXAA, exclusive to Kepler-based GTX 600 series video cards. Utilizing a custom anti-aliasing resolve, a temporal filter, and Multisample hardware anti-aliasing, TXAA is designed to remove almost all aliasing from a scene, and eliminate temporal aliasing, the distracting movement of aliased lines when the player’s viewpoint is in motion in-game.
In July we launched the TXAA-enabled GeForce 304.79 beta drivers, and in August The Secret World, Funcom’s technologically-advanced MMO, became the first game to support the new anti-aliasing technique. Gamers and the independent press agreed that the result was super smooth, free of troublesome aliasing, but some felt the new TXAA-enhanced image was too soft. To that end, Timothy Lottes, NVIDIA’s FXAA and TXAA mastermind, has improved the technique, making it sharper and more defined.
With today’s 310.54 beta driver installed, Kepler GTX 600 series users will be able to evaluate the fruits of Tim’s labors for the first time, in Call of Duty: Black Ops II and Assassin’s Creed III, which both feature full in-game TXAA support.
Several years ago Fullscene Sparse Grid Supersampling Anti-Aliasing was added to the GeForce drivers as an advanced anti-aliasing option for those with high-end systems. When enabled and correctly configured, SGSSAA significantly increases the quality of Multisample Anti-Aliasing, helping remove aliasing that even 8xMSAA struggles with.
Configuring SGSSAA to reach this level of detail can at times be tricky due to the need to counteract texture blurring that occurs when using the technique. With a Negative LOD Bias, applied via NVIDIA Inspector, texture quality can be restored, but unfortunately the correct value can only be ascertained through trial and error.
Following repeated calls from users for a solution, we silently introduced an automatic LOD Bias feature in last month’s 310.33 beta driver, which we’re pleased to officially announce today. Now, users need only enable Sparse Grid Supersampling in the profile of a compatible game in NVIDIA Inspector, and the new feature will do the rest.
As always, our new driver includes new profiles for today’s top titles, increasing multi-GPU performance.
As noted above, we have released a Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 SLI profile via NVIDIA Update, which is installed by default alongside the drivers. To force an immediate download of the profile, right click the NVIDIA tray icon and select "Check for updates."
The GeForce 310.54 beta drivers also include a few new bug fixes, and a PhysX package compatible with older titles, such as Trine, Unreal Tournament III, and Metro 2033.
For complete details about every change, check out the GeForce 310.54 beta driver release notes.
You can download the GeForce 310.61 beta drivers with one click from the GeForce.com homepage. If you have any feedback please drop us a note in the comments section below, and if you have a technical issue please report the problem via the NVIDIA Display Driver Feedback Form.