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Various information regarding NVIDIAs upcoming ForceWare 90 drivers hint to a release of the first driver of this generation within the next 2 weeks.

Before I delve into details I want to stress, that part of these information are assumptions based on various factors that lead to this conclusion (at least in my opinion). However it perfectly makes sense that we'll see the release of ForceWare 90 drivers within the next 2 weeks, probably as soon as next week, coinciding with the launch of the GeForce 7300 GT. Let me explain how I come to that conclusion.

Back at CeBIT in March, NVIDIA representatives showed me some nice PureVideo features which will make their way into the Release 90 driver. It will be Edge Enhancement and Noise Reduction (interestingly ATI offers these features since Catalyst 6.4). They had some demos set up that showed how effective they work. Especially Noise Reduction yields some impressive results. Any DirectShow-based video player will be able to make use of those features. Although I don't want to go into detail about these features now, I wanted to share that info too. They also indicated, that there might be an option to disable optimizations for dual-core CPUs, which would come handy for reviewers and troubleshooting of course (the representative spoke of this as a possibility, not a directly planned feature nor when it would arrive).  Back then they hinted that ForceWare 90 will be due in two months, which would be May of course.

The launch of the GeForce 7300 GT, which is expected on Monday next week, adds another piece to the puzzle. In the NVIDIA roadmaps, it's mentioned that a ForceWare 90 driver will be required to run two of these cards in bridgeless SLI mode. This requirement is a bit odd by itself, since bridgeless SLI is actually supported by ForceWare 80 for any combination of GeForce 6600 or 7600 GS cards or higher (within the respective series). According to NVIDIA it even works on the higher end models, although it's not recommended as it hurts performance. Probably they need the driver update to allow it for a GeForce 7300 GT card, as 7300 GS had no SLI support - be it bridged or not. I don't believe that NVIDIA will let its costumers wait for this functionality. Since we can expect a so-called hard launch, there is also a high probability that NVIDIA will release the new driver on the same day in order to offer full functionality on day one.

Another upcoming product by NVIDIA, which might require a graphics driver update, is the nForce 500 chipset. Especially the SLI enabled variations of it need to be supported by the driver in order to activate SLI mode, since NVIDIA has a very strict policy concerning which chipsets are allowed to run SLI. Currently only nForce 4 SLI chipsets are allowed to run two graphics cards in SLI mode. This is actually an artificial limitation on behalf of the graphics driver, as other chipsets like Intel’s 975X or any Crossfire-enabled ATI-chipset would be technically able to run SLI. Additionally some performance enhancements of high-end nForce 590 chipset might need explicit support on the driver side. Mainboards with variations of the nForce 500 chipset will be officially announced on May, 23rd, when AMDs AM2 processors will officially launch. This is the latest date NVIDIA could put out a driver update with support for the corresponding chipsets.

The driver might also add better support for Quad SLI (in my opinion a broken show-off technology). Though neither that nor SLI support on nForce 500 chipsets necessarily require a driver coming from the ForceWare 90 series. Technically it could be any driver. However, within the 80 series NVIDIA starts to run out of numbers. The latest drivers are 84.xx versions. Previously NVIDIA released new driver series in increments of five (i.e. series 70, 75, 80). This time however, they already used version 87.xx for Windows Vista beta drivers. Consequently the introduction of a ForceWare 85 series (going all the way up to 89) would be in conflict with those beta drivers. Therefore a jump to ForceWare 90 seems reasonable. I must admit, that when I first heard that ForceWare 90 will launch in the May timeframe, I was a bit surprised, but today I'm no more.

A recent report by VR-Zone, claiming that ForceWare 90 with support for SLI physics will be released in July, brings some confusion to the table. However, I wouldn't be writing this blog item, if I hadn't an explanation for this. As I understand it, a subsequent driver version within the ForceWare 90 series will add support for SLI physics. To recap, SLI physics is the ability to dedicate one GPU of the SLI tandem to physics calculations, the other to 3D processing. I see no reason to delay 7300 GT SLI or those PureVideo enhancements because of a feature, which might not be used until late Q3 or Q4 of this year and only a very small number of people actually benefit from (there are not as many SLI users out there as NVIDIA wants us to believe).

At this point I'd like to note that generic support of Havok FX doesn't require a specific driver, as the calculations are carried out on standard-based Shader Model 3.0 shaders which could also run on ATIs X1k series GPUs. Though, who knows which forms of consumer lock-in can be made up when the right sum of money is involved (think Skype's 10-conference call feature or SLI/Crossfire on specific chipsets or...the list goes on).

That said, I'll give NVIDIA a window between May 15th and May 23rd to release their ForceWare 90 drivers. I already reported about this on German hardware site K-Hardware. In this German news item you can also find references to previous reports about the new PureVideo features from CeBIT for example.

NVIDIA's 87.25 ForceWare just went beta, by the way.