Download NVIDIA GeForce 182.46 BETA Drivers

[Philip21]

NVIDIA today made its GeForce 182.46 beta drivers available on its website. The new drivers bring bug fixes and optimize the installed NVIDIA GeForce hardware for upcoming games. The most notable changes are:

• Optimized single GPU and SLI support for upcoming PC games
• Bug fix specific to Windows XP 32bit: GeForce 7 series AGP, GeForce 6 Series AGP: NVIDIA graphics driver cannot be installed
• Fix specific to SLI: Football Manager 09–the game fails to run properly with SLI mode enabled. [490661]
• Fix specific to Quad-SLI, GeForce GTX 295: Fear2: Project Origin - when launching the game with Quad SLI enabled, there is brief flash of residual corruption from a previously launched application
• Fix specific to 3-way SLI and Windows Vista 64bit: nForce 780a SLI, GeForce 9800 GTX: The user cannot switch from Additional display mode to Boost performance mode when the display is connected to the GeForce 9800 GTX GPU

A complete list of changes can be found in the Release Notes document for Windows XP and Windows Vista. Be cautioned, this is a beta release, the use of which is not covered by warranties.

DOWNLOAD:

• DOWNLOAD GeForce 182.46 BETA for Windows XP 32-bit
• DOWNLOAD GeForce 182.46 BETA for Windows XP 64-bit
• DOWNLOAD GeForce 182.46 BETA for Windows Vista 32-bit
• DOWNLOAD GeForce 182.46 BETA for Windows Vista 64-bit.

[jesse]

According to the release notes, the new GeForce 182.46 Beta graphics drivers add support for NVIDIA PhysX acceleration on all of the company's GeForce 8-series, 9-series and 200-series GPUs with a minimum of 256MB of dedicated graphics memory. Aside from the PhysX support, the new GeForce drivers will also enable some fixes with known issues for Windows XP 32-bit operating systems. One of those issues is related to GeForce 6 and 7 series AGP graphics cards, while the other two are related to NVIDIA's multi-GPU technology, SLI.

[Lillebror]

Sometimes they do release a beta driver that is testing a new feature that is not particularly stable. These drivers are generally not leaked to the public by nVidia, but they do show up every now and then. Some give nice performance boosts, but run pretty unstable on most systems. They then tend to slow it down a bit to gain stability. Eventually they find the middle road between speed and stability and release these to the public. Once tehy tweek the drivers in and finalize and added features, they will submit it for certification. They have something like two driver teams working on the drivers at the same time and they try to get improvements together for these drivers, but some do not make it in time, so they are released as beta drivers while the others are getting certified.

It is an ongoing cycle. They are able to get an amazing amount of performance out of the drivers. They have released some major driver updates that have boosted performance 10% or more. You add all these together from over the years and they have likely gotten about a 50% boost just from the drivers. That is the same as a full product update.

[Philip21]

Hello It has been said in the release that it Boosts performance in several 3D applications. The following are examples of improvements measured with Release 182 WHQL drivers vs. Release 181.22 WHQL drivers (results will vary depending on your GPU, system configuration, and game settings):

• Up to 8% performance increase in Fallout 3 at high resolution and AA.
• Up to 10% performance increase in F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin
• Up to 9% performance increase in Half-Life 2 at high resolution with AA.
• Up to 11% performance increase in Left 4 Dead at high resolution with AA.
• Up to 10% performance increase in Race Driver: GRID at high resolution and AA.
  
• Includes full support for OpenGL 3.0 on GeForce 8-series, 9-series, and 200-series GPUs.
• Automatically installs the new PhysX System Software version 9.09.0203.