[Kal-EL]

NVIDIA GeForce 186.18 WHQL Drivers Released

NVIDIA released the GeForce 186.18 WHQL driver suite for Windows, close to a fortnight after the release of version 186.08 beta. This release claims to patch numerous bugs from previous versions. It packs PhysX system software version 9.09.0428, and supports the complete range of GeForce GPUs from 6-series up to the latest GTX/GTS 200 series, and NVIDIA Ion platform. The following prominent features are introduced by the 186/185 series 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.

Application performance increments advertised are: 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, and up to 45% performance increase in Mirror’s Edge with antialiasing enabled.

DOWNLOAD: NVIDIA GeForce 186.18 WHQL for Windows 7/Vista 64-bit | Windows 7/Vista 32-bit | Windows XP 64-bit | Windows XP 32-bit