Among the tons of new hardware stuff released these days, NVIDIA has managed to put a new BETA driver for download on its official webpage. The new GeForce/ION 186.08 BETA release supports the company's GeForce 6, 7, 8, 9, 100, and 200-series desktop GPUs and ION GPUs. This driver package is reported to fix numerous bugs and install a newer version of PhysX System Software (version 9.09.0428). You can download the 186.08 BETA driver for your OS from here.


New in Release 186.08 :

• Numerous bug fixes. More information can be found in the release documentation.
• Installs the new PhysX System Software version 9.09.0428.
• Users without US English operating systems can select their language and download the International driver here.

New in Release 185/186 drivers:

• Adds support for Ambient Occlusion – the newest NVIDIA Control Panel feature to offer enhanced 3D gaming realism exclusively to GeForce GPUs.
• Adds support for CUDA 2.2 for improved performance in GPU Computing applications. See CUDA for more details.
• Expands GPU hardware acceleration for the NVIDIA Video Encoding library to GPUs with less than 32 cores. Applications using this library include CyberLink PowerDirector 7, Nero Move it 1.5, Loilo SuperLoiloScope MARS, and CyberLink MediaShow Espresso.
• Accelerates performance in several 3D applications. The following are examples of improvements measured with Release 185/186 drivers vs. Release 181 drivers (results will vary depending on your GPU, system configuration, and game settings):
- Up to 25% performance increase in The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena
- Up to 22% performance increase in Crysis: Warhead with antialiasing enabled
- Up to 11% performance increase in Fallout 3 with antialiasing enabled
- Up to 14% performance increase in Far Cry 2
- Up to 30% performance increase in Half-Life 2 engine games with 3-way and 4-way SLI
- Up to 45% performance increase in Mirror’s Edge with antialiasing enabled

• Supports GeForce Plus Power Pack #3.

Source: NVIDIA