Nvidia 258.96 - *Area51* Community Gaming Forums

Win7 32Bit

WinXP 32Bit

This is a WHQL-certified release from the Release 256 family of drivers (versions 256.xx to 259.xx). This driver package supports GeForce 6, 7, 8, 9, 100, 200, 300, and 400-series desktop GPUs as well as ION desktop GPUs. Learn more about Release 256 drivers here .

New in Release 258.96

Adds support for GeForce GTX 460 .
Adds additional performance increases for GeForce GTX 400 Series GPUs in several PC games (these improvements are in addition to the previously reported Release 256 improvements). The following are examples of some of the most significant improvements measured with GeForce GTX 480. Results will vary depending on your GPU and system configuration:
- Up to 11% in Aliens vs. Predator (1920x1200 4xAA/16xAF – Tessellation on)
- Up to 7% in Crysis: Warhead (SLI – 1920x1200 4xAA/16xAF – Gamer)
- Up to 4% in H.A.W.X (SLI – 1920x1200 4xAA/16xAF – Very High)
- Up to 10% in Just Cause 2 (SLI – 1920x1200 4xAA/16xAF - Concrete Jungle)
- Up to 6% in Metro 2033 (1920x1200 4xAA/16xAF – Tessellation on)
- Up to 7% in Metro 2033 (SLI – 1920x1200 4xAA/16xAF – Tessellation on)
- Up to 10% in S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat (1920x1200 4xAA/16xAF)
- Up to 12% in S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat (SLI – 1920x1200 4xAA/16xAF)
- Up to 4% in World in Conflict (SLI – 1920x1200 4xAA/16xAF)
Upgrades PhysX System Software to version 9.10.0224.
Upgrades HD Audio driver version 1.0.15.0 (for supported GPUs).
Includes numerous bug fixes. Refer to the release notes on the documentation tab for information about the key bug fixes in this release.
Users without US English operating systems can select their language and download the International driver here .

New in Release 256 Drivers

Adds support for OpenGL 4.0 for GeForce GTX 400 Series GPUs.
Adds support for CUDA Toolkit 3.1 which includes significant performance increases for double precision math operations. See CUDA Zone for more details.
Adds a new NVIDIA Control Panel setup page for SLI and PhysX for ultimate control over multi-gpu configurations.
Adds a new NVIDIA Control Panel feature for ultimate control over CUDA GPUs, allowing the user to effectively choose which GPU will power each CUDA application.

Additional Information:

Supports the new GPU-accelerated features in Adobe CS5 .
Supports GPU-acceleration for smoother online HD videos with Adobe Flash 10.1. Learn more here .
Supports the new version of MotionDSP's video enhancement software, vReveal, which adds support for HD output. NVIDIA customers can download a free version of vReveal that supports up to SD output here .
Supports OpenCL 1.0 ( Open Computing Language ) for all GeForce 8-series and later GPUs.
Supports OpenGL 3.3 for GeForce 8-series and later GPUs.
Supports single GPU and NVIDIA SLI technology * on DirectX 9 and OpenGL.
Supports GPU overclocking and temperature monitoring by installing NVIDIA System Tools software .

*Note: The following SLI features are only supported on Windows Vista and Windows 7: Quad SLI technology using GeForce 9800 GX2 or GeForce GTX 295, 3-way SLI technology, Hybrid SLI, and SLI multi-monitor support.