New Nvidia GeForce drivers for Skyrim, MW3

By Robert Purchese Published 29 November, 2011

And for Battlefield 3, Batman: Arkham City.

New Nvidia GeForce drivers have been released that improve performance of games Batman: Arkham City, Skyrim, Modern Warfare 3 and Battlefield 3, among others.

The 290.36 beta drivers bring official support for Ambient Occlusion in Skyrim and Modern Warfare 3.

Ambient Occlusion makes shadows more realistic. To enable it, open the Nvidia Control Panel, find "Manage 3D Settings", find Skyrim or MW3 and select Ambient Occlusion. You'll be asked whether you want Performance or Quality level.

There are some snazzy slider-based before-and-after screenshots on the Nvidia website that illustrate the effect of Skyrim and Modern Warfare 3 Ambient Occlusion.

"There will be a performance impact, have no doubt," wrote Nvidia's Andrew Burnes, "though it is impossible to predict exactly how large given the millions of PC configurations, so we suggest enabling Fraps' frame rate overlay while you play, and should the frame rate drop below thirty simply undo the Ambient Occlusion changes or use the less demanding Performance mode."

Battlefield 3 no longer displays random triangular artifacts, and an SLI shadow bug has been eradicated in Crysis 2.

Skyrim timelapse video. Pretty pretty, this.

Nvidia GeForce 290.36 beta driver notes

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.
  • Added or updated the following 3D Vision game profiles:
  • 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 5760x1080 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 1920x1080 @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 5 when SLI is enabled when using 3DTV Play.
Picture of Robert.

About Robert Purchese

Bertie is Eurogamer's Senior Staff Writer. When he's not hunting down news stories he's often found playing with his kids or gabbling about fantasy games and strange online worlds. @Clert on Twitter.

Read more articles from Robert by visiting the Robert Purchese archive page.

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Comments (21) Latest comment 6 months ago

Comments for this article are now closed, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • Liquidoodle #1 6 months ago

    No fix for Batman in DX11 though :( tried it last night!

  • Ryboy #2 6 months ago

    The drivers do fuck all for Arkham City. I've had to turn DX11 off. I was getting 1fps with everything maxed on a GTX580.

    Poor form Rocksteady. Poor form indeed.

  • Toothball #3 6 months ago

    I only just managed to update to the last drivers just this weekend without other things breaking. I think I'll hold off until they're out of beta.

  • Darren #4 6 months ago

    Forced ambient occlusion in Skyrim looks poor IMO. Grassy clumps have unnaturally dark patches, the AO has a tendency to shimmer/flicker (sometimes it even disappears/reappears as you look around!) and you can still see the dark blobs where the AO is through heavy snow snows! Personally, I found it looked ugly plus the Quality setting causes the game to feel extremely laggy so I turned it off.

    I guess it's nice to have the option but it really should have been included in the game properly to look "right" as what other games don't have some kind of AO these days? I guess the lack of AO in the Creation Engine betrays its age really (seeing as it is based off the ancient Gamebryo Engine).

  • Timotei #5 6 months ago

    Just seems like a contrast change in Skyrim, other than the trees & barrels (which do look nice, so fuck it, why not?).

  • photoboy #6 6 months ago

    @Liquidoodle

    Good it's not just me then. I thought maybe my hardware just wasn't up to it.

  • Adamical #7 6 months ago

    Man, I miss PC gaming.

  • Cadence #8 6 months ago

    Think Rocksteady must be too busy preparing to shaft us with DLC to worry about DX11 patches and whatnot.

  • zoidberg #9 6 months ago

    So nVidia recommends Fraps instead of making their own simple frame-per-second directX and openGL overlay?

  • Pulsar_t #10 6 months ago

    So every time a driver update is issued a story has to be made about it?

  • arcam #11 6 months ago

    @zoidberg Why not? FRAPS works well and people have been using it for years.

    EDIT: Haha, I just used the zoidberg meme without realising it :D
    (\/) ( ;,,; ) (\/)
    Edited by arcam at 29/11/11 @ 17:05

  • bad09 #12 6 months ago

    @Liquidoodle

    Nvidia do great things but they won't fix the games for devs ;)

    DX11 won't be fixed until they've done a patch and sent it off for certification as it's GFWL.

    Still amazed they didn't see this huge problem with the extra polishing going on with that delay, to busy telling us how we should buy the spangly PC version to actually test it a bit I suppose.
    Edited by bad09 at 29/11/11 @ 16:57

  • Liquidoodle #13 6 months ago

    @photoboy

    Definitely not just you, everyone running in DX11 is reporting problems, theres a massive thread on the official AC forums. I even turned off AA and PhysX all together as a test. It seems to be to do with streaming or loading, especially noticeable during cut scenes or spinning the camera round to a view which you hadn't looked that direction yet. I'm just putting off playing it until it's fixed and going back to Battlefield while contemplating buying Serious Sam :D

  • Liquidoodle #14 6 months ago

    @bad09

    Hehe yeah I didn't think they would, but I had my balls crossed just incase ;) thought I would save anyone the hassle of downloading it and testing. I wish we could just get the un-certified patch if there was one, GFWL need to realise PC gamers don't care about certification that's why we download non WHQL drivers like these, we take risks because we can just revert it unlike consoles!

  • bad09 #15 6 months ago

    @Liquidoodle

    I find it funny the patch needs certification yet the game gets released in that state :)

    Ah well I got it for nothing so can't get annoyed they had no money from me personally, Still even without paying for it I'm still disappointed and now distrusting of Rocksteady and Warner so it's only their own image with consumers they are hurting.
    Edited by bad09 at 29/11/11 @ 17:25

  • Lamb #16 6 months ago

    So whats the big deal between the DX9 and the DX11? DX9 looks great to me. Also whats the point of SLI? I think I should I have gotten one 580 as opposed to two 570s.

  • Lucodeath #17 6 months ago

    Beta to me means not quite right so Ill wait till my pc finds it automatically.

  • Sar #18 6 months ago

    No fix for the Windows TDR issues then?

    :/

  • Nephirion #19 6 months ago

    @Lamb one 580 would be better than SLI, DX11 offers lighting and textures effects and particles that are unavailable for DX9. It does make a difference in effects, ambiance and image quality.

  • Liquidoodle #20 6 months ago

    @Nephirion

    Also don't forget the Tessellation, smooths out models so they are less polygonal looking and more importantly adds parallax occlusion so bricks and other textures/models details appear to extrude outward rather than looking flat :) as for the SLI seeing as you have two cards, could you dedicate one to the PhysX instead?

  • JHo #21 6 months ago

    Aaaahhh!! I so miss the days of my PC infatuation where no game was ever fucking PLAYED... just used as a benchmark or timedemo with whichever "new"or "beta" drivers were just released. Such fond memories of infinite graphics-card options where you spent more time wondering if there were any new "tweaks" or downloads that might make the game "even better" than actually playing it. I so miss spending hours at my real job wondering if when I got home that night NVidia or ATI might have released drivers that would make the current AAA title playable while simultaneously making the other titles on my harddrive virtually unplayable.

    Yes, I miss PC gaming.

    No, I'm not a console fanboy. I just really used to do exactly what I stated above. That's a looong time ago, though (circa Half Life 1 and Drakken.)

    Hey, what ever happened to Psygnosis and Drakken? I F'n LOVED Drakken!! No really!!!