GeForce 290.36 beta drivers improve Arkham City performance, add Ambient Occlusion for Skyrim
In more Nvidia GeForce news today, the firm has announced it's released new drivers which fix a few bugs and improve performance for Batman: Arkham City, Battlefield 3, Crysis 2, Heroes and Generals, Inversion, Modern Warfare 3, Skyrim, Stronghold 3, and Syndicate, specifically.
The 290.36 beta supports more realistic shadows by allowing the use of Ambient Occlusion in Modern Warfare 3 and Skyrim, as just one example from the list of improvements. Other changes include a SLI shadow bug in Crysis 2, and triangular effects have been removed from Battlefield 3.
NVIDIA also added or updated 3D Vision game profiles for Diablo III, LA Noire, Modern Warfare 3, and Sonic Generations among others.
Full patch notes are below, and to find out how to turn Ambient Occlusion on, head on over to the official NVIDIA post on the matter, which shows side-by-side comparisons of how the games look using the tech, as opposed to not.
NVIDIA Ambient Occlusion
- Adds NVIDIA Control Panel ambient occlusion support for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim.
- Adds NVIDIA Control Panel ambient occlusion support for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3.
NVIDIA PhysX: Updates PhysX System Software to version 9.11.1107 for the best PhysX experience in Batman: Arkham City.
NVIDIA Surround: Enables NVIDIA Surround support for Intel X79 SLI-certified motherboards.
NVIDIA SLI: Added or updated SLI profiles for Crysis 2, Heroes and Generals, Inversion, Stronghold 3, and Syndicate.
3D Vision
- Adds support for 3D Vision over native DisplayPort 1.1 connection - available on BenQ XL2420T and BenQ XL2420TX monitors.
- Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 - Rated Good
- Cang Sheng - Rated Good
- Diablo 3 - Rated Good
- Fei fei - Rated Good
- Final Combat - Rated Good
- L.A. Noire - Updated Rating To 3D Vision Ready
- LEGO Harry Potter: Years 5-7 - Rated Fair
- Qian Nv You Hun Online - Rated Good
- QQ Xi You - Rated Good
- Sonic Generations - Rated Good
- Xian Tu - Rated Good
- Yong Bing Tian Xia Online - Rated Good
HD Audio: Updates HD Audio driver to version 1.3.9.0.
Bug Fixes
- Fixes random flickering as Windows boot logo is loading or fading away.
- Fixes corruption in Crysis 2 with SLI and lower quality shadow settings.
- Fixes ability to set Surround resolutions to 5760×1080 using custom resolutions.
- Fixes some random instances of triangular artifacts when playing Battlefield 3.
- Fixes corruption and flickering of some objects in Battlefield 3 in the New York single-player level when anti-aliasing is enabled.
- Fixes corruption seen in Settlers 7 with the NVIDIA 275.33 drivers.
- Fixes playback of videos or live TV using Window Media Center resulting in a black screen.
- Fixes the issue where 1920×1080 @60Hz PC resolution mode switched down to @59Hz.
- Fixes mouse cursor flickering and shaking in Crysis 2, Battlefield: Bad Company 2, Deus Ex and Civilization V when SLI is enabled when using 3DTV Play.