Details about Geforce 301.10 WHQL

[Kunal_R.One]

I am planning to buy Nvidia GeForce GTX 680 for my PC. I was doing through its specifications on the official website of Nvidia, where I came across a part in which it was written that Geforce 301.10 WHQL are the graphic drivers that are specially designed and made for Nvidia GeForce GTX 680. What does this mean? Does it mean that no other graphic driver is available for this graphic card? I would also like to know what new features are introduced in this graphic card?

[HafizaAhmed]

Nvidia boasts of making the fastest and most efficient graphic card with launch of GeForce GTX 680. It is a new product and has no series to belong to. Also the architecture and functioning f this graphic card is different from other graphic cards. That is why Nvidia had to provide only one graphic driver for this graphic card. Till this date no one has complaint of having any problem about this graphic card. In future it is obvious that Nvidia will upgrade its drivers and make more drivers available for upgrading and downgrading of the drivers. Also Nvidia will develop more graphic cards for this series which will make it possible for the Nvidia to develop common graphic drivers for all graphic cards in the series, similar to what other series of graphic cards have.

[BonnieT]

One of the new features that have been introduced in this graphic card and its driver is an improved GPU boost. This feature is designed to optimize the power consumption of the graphic card. Every graphic card is designed to work only for a specific amount of wattage. In no case will the consumption go beyond the specified level. For a high end graphic card like GeForce GTX 680, the value is 250 watts. This limitation is known as thermal design point, which is TDP. This value is maximum, but when any game runs it does not utilize the full TDP but only a part of it. Even when the TSP consumption reaches a peak point, it is never at 250 watts, it will be around 200 to 220 watts. This means that the graphic card will always try to optimize the TDP to give headroom for other applications to operate in it. Using this feature, the graphic card will automatically adjust the clock speed for the graphic card so that the TDP is properly utilized. Every graphic card has two clock speeds, which base clock and boost clock. These both clocks have to work at real time GeForce GTX 680 has a base clock of 1006 MHz and a boost clock of 1058 MHz. The base clock and boost clock are directly proportional to each other in functioning. If you increase the frequency of boost clock than it will also increase frequency of base clock.

[Dixie-R]

This new graphic card provides FXAA feature for anti-aliasing. Till now the feature of MSAA is being used in games. But in future the games will be built to have requirement of FXAA. This graphic card is designed for the future need with implementation of FXAA. Anti-aliasing is needed to clear up the jagged edges and rough edges that are created on sharp edged objects. In Geforce 301.10 WHQL display driver provides a high speed shader-based anti-aliasing technique. FXAA is developed such that it will generate output four times faster than MSAA and will also require fewer resources. When the FXAA is used at low settings it will generate output equal to full level of MSAA. As no game till date has function for FXAA level of anti-aliasing, one can start a FXAA of the graphic card which will add the smoothing effect. I tested FXAA along with MSAA in Battlefield 3 and it actually gives a realistic smoothing effect even to the small objects. It even clears up the jagged edges on the distant objects which are barely seen.

[Hayley]

This graphic card also comes with adaptive V-Sync. Many gamers keep the VSync feature in their games enabled. This helps them to keep the framerate of the game lower than refresh rate of the monitor. If the framerate of the game exceeds above the refresh rate of monitor you will notice stuttering in the graphics and page tearing in some cases. But this function would make the game heavier to run. The new function of adaptive VSync feature solves this problem. It keeps framerate in control as well as doesn’t put load on working of graphic card. This card also has the feature of Central Display Acceleration. If a user is having SLI enabled graphic card and he is using all three monitors even if not needed. If some game was not an SLI enabled, then the user would need to manually change all the settings to disable monitors that were not needed, but these display drivers and graphic card will automatically detect if the game will require three monitors or not and automatically change the settings.

[Anvita]

Many new features have been added to the 3D surround feature of this graphic card. One can add an extra accessory display to the system to view other part of the computer, like browsing internet, keeping a look on files or other process running in background. User will also be able to concentrate the taskbar only in the centre monitor while keeping the other monitors just for support of 3D surround enable games. Also a new feature called Bezel Peeking is implemented. Before it was introduced, if any user wanted to look for progress or working of any other process in background, minimizing the game was only solution. But with this feature, one can make the running application translucent and view background process. Ctrl+Alt+B are the shortcut key for it. Many times a game is designed to start in a desired resolution. It so happens that the specified resolution is not compatible with the monitor’s resolution. Now the user can remove the unwanted resolutions so that the games won’t start in that resolution. This won’t remove it permanently but will just disable it. It will also enable hardware based encoder for H.264 format.

[Bageshri27]

This display driver will install PhysX System Software v9.12.0213 in your system and also HD Audio v1.3.12.0. It supports OpenGL 4.2, DisplayPort 1.2 for GeForce GTX 680 and multiple languages and APIs for GPU computing. The languages and APIs that are supported are CUDA C, CUDA C++, CUDA Fortran, OpenCL, DirectCompute, and Microsoft C++ AMP. It will also provide support for applications that need support of DirectX 9, DirectX 10 along with DirectX11.