NVIDIA GeForce 304.48 Beta Download & Discussion

[PhazeDelta1]

Welcome to the Guru3D AndyB.

[residentour]

These are WDDM 1.2 on Windows 8.

[sloeri]

Just got myself a GTX 680 this weekend.
great to see nVidia working so hard on drivers and further improving performance !

[-Tj-]

These are r304_00-88 and CUDA 5.0.1

[dsbig]

wow I didnt even see this I was too busy watching falling skies....


downloading now

[xankazo]

Nice, downloading now...

[VultureX]

No Dirt Showdown SLI profile? :\

[sava700]

Installing now... they look to be a good set, like the idea of performance boosts!

[PsyChoFOk]

I keep getting Driver Install Failed error. doesn't finish installing Graphics Driver and HD audio. have to revert back to WHQL.

[Frohman0905]

Nice! Been using the 300.83 drivers since launch and decided to wait until we had a win7 driver that fixes the vsync issue. Going to try these as soon as I get home from work! Thank you Nvidia!

[Prophet]

Originally Posted by AndyB

He creates and tracks the official driver threads I mention above, so post your feedback about the feature and he'll see it and add it to the feedback summary for the driver team.

Ah sorry I missed that. My health is a bit poor so sometimes stuff doesnt stick. Thanks.

[Darren Hodgson]

Typical, I turn my eye away from the forum for a few hours and come back to find a new driver is out (and new version of PhysX too by the looks of things... or is that a typo?)!

Obviously, I'm delighted as the v302.80 drivers have been great so far in terms of NOT having v-sync stuttering. However, I hope these R304 drivers contain the Bully Scholarship Edition black torso/arms fix that was in the v301.34/v301.42 drivers but not the v302.71/v302.80 ones. For most, it's not a big deal as it's a creaky old game but I've been playing and enjoying it again so it'd be annoying to have the game broken again after being fixed! Fingers crossed!

[Darren Hodgson]

"NVIDIA Control Panel Game Enhancements

With the release of the GeForce 304.48 beta drivers we are enabling NVIDIA Control Panel Ambient Occlusion support in Star Wars: The Old Republic, and Multisample Anti-Aliasing support in Diablo III, L.A. Noire, Rayman Origins, and The Secret World."

Well forced MSAA was already working for me extremely well in Diablo III since the v301.42 drivers (the blue glow around entrances doesn't work however but that's a minor issue) and it also works superbly with those drivers and the v302.80 ones in L.A. Noire as long as I use a 16:9 resolution and DX9 rendering. So I'm curious as to why they're mentioned in this release - are they improved or in the case of L.A. Noire, does forced MSAA now work under DX11?

Amusing to see Rayman Origins getting MSAA support when it's a pseudo-2D game that looks jaggy-free from what I've seen of played of it at 1920x1200. I'll obviously have to try it anyway but I can't imagine seeing much difference personally.

[Shadowdane]

Figures these would hit today, i just installed 302.80 yesterday afternoon. So is the VSync Stutter bug truely gone with these??

Anyone had a chance to test them out?

[Darren Hodgson]

@ Shadowdane - The v-sync stutter was gone in all but Unreal Engine 3 games when I installed the v302.80 drivers last week. Likely that UE3 issue is engine not driver related; I see stuttering when rotating the camera around in Bulletstorm, Mass Effect 3, Spec Ops: The Line demo, etc.

These new drivers will have the same fix so they should be just the same (it would be nice if the UE3 stutter was fixed too but I won't be holding my breath).

[MfA]

nice boost on batman ac

[dnottis]

Originally Posted by MfA

nice boost on batman ac

does it actually run smooth now though? performance increase is nice but Batman AC since the last patch is just choppy at some parts... especially when flying around outside.

[TFL Replica]

Anyone got a link to the English (not international) version?

[yosef019]

WHY MY GTX 670 DONT GO TO LOW 2D/3D CLOCKS !!! STUCK on 980 not go any lower

[Darren Hodgson]

Originally Posted by dnottis

does it actually run smooth now though? performance increase is nice but Batman AC since the last patch is just choppy at some parts... especially when flying around outside.

I thought I'd got Batman: Arkham City running nicely on my PC (1920x1200, 4xMSAA/16xAF, DX11, Extreme settings, Tess=Very High, PhysX=High, etc.) as it seemed to be maintaining 60 fps quite well. I then got to the bit where Catwoman has to fight in the vault with lots of paper flying around and it was literally running at an horrendously low 15 fps in what felt liked slow motion (it actually made the combat easier actually).

I suspect the issue was due to PhysX as I've yet to come across a single game that uses it well without having some issue or other (hitching, framerate dips, etc.). It's very poorly optimised IMO.

[MfA]

nice, aa support for both diablo3 and la noire(dx9)

[Denial]

Originally Posted by yosef019

WHY MY GTX 670 DONT GO TO LOW 2D/3D CLOCKS !!! STUCK on 980 not go any lower

I hope mine are stuck, tired of flickering.

[Netherwind]

Originally Posted by harkinsteven

Welcome AndyB. I have a question about Tera Online.
With my old GTX 570 the game ran at 80FPS+ nearly most of the time. Now with the GTX 680 it barely manages 40 fps and I was in a dungeon yesterday and it hit 10fps. Its really disheartening. My question is if its a known driver issue? Thanks.

Originally Posted by AndyB

When playing a bit of Tera on my own 680 I didn't run into anything like that, so I would suggest filing a bug when the official 304.48 thread comes online later today: http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showforum=213

Everything posted in the thread is tracked and looked into, even if you don't receive a reply.

Hi.

Sorry for off topic but I wanted to share some of my thoughts about this.

I've tried to solve my FPS issues with TERA but have no succeeded. I do know that there are a few tips here and there to slightly improve your FPS and one of those is to disable ingame AA and use different combinations of NVCPL AA which yields better FPS.

The two main problems with TERA is the flash based UI overlay which apparently is a terrible FPS hog (has nothing to do with the nVidia drivers as far as I know). Try monitoring your FPS with MSI AB and run around a town of your choice (maybe not a main capital since the overall FPS is lower there due to my second point below), then do another run with your UI disabled (Ctrl-Z) and you should notice an FPS boost.

The second problem is the number of NPCs in the vincinity of the PC. Observe that the UE3 engine seems to draw ALL NPCs in a sphere around the PC (not just FOV NPCs) which is very noticeable when running around in outdoor dungeons like Eldritch Academy or Archanea since mobs can be found on floors above and under you.

I would agree that the FPS drops when a lot of NPCs are visible on your screen but not if they are below you for example. There is an option to decrease NPC detail levels (if I remember correctly) when there are many of them about but honestly it does not seem to help much at all.

One driver related issue (maybe) would be that the set I'm running now (301.42) does not make TERA utilise the GPU to a maximum even at lower frame rates. Setting Power optionos in NVCPL to Adaptive actually makes the GPU clock down even though the FPS isnt capped at 60 (Vsync enabled) which makes little sense. Setting Power management to max does not help me that much. My GPU utilisation never exceeds 60% whereas in other games (BF3) it does just that.

I would be very interested to hear any thoughts from ManuelG or AndyB (even if it's slightly OT )

[nexus_711]

Is anyone having problem with overclocking? I could make +150MHz on core before, now I can do +80MHhz max, after that 3dMark 11 crashes. But strangelly scores are higher than before with +150MHz on core.

[HonoredShadow]

Originally Posted by Darren Hodgson

@ Shadowdane - The v-sync stutter was gone in all but Unreal Engine 3 games when I installed the v302.80 drivers last week. Likely that UE3 issue is engine not driver related; I see stuttering when rotating the camera around in Bulletstorm, Mass Effect 3, Spec Ops: The Line demo, etc.

These new drivers will have the same fix so they should be just the same (it would be nice if the UE3 stutter was fixed too but I won't be holding my breath).

What is this stutter? I am new to Nvidia and only installed one driver (the latest official) but I don't think I have seen any!