If you own a GeForce 6, 7, or 8 graphics card and went hunting for new ForceWare drivers recently, you may have been disappointed to find that Nvidia last updated its Windows drivers for those cards in December 2007. Since then, the graphics firm seems to have been focusing on its new GeForce 9 series cards, which have seen regular driver updates throughout the past few weeks.
Well, TG Daily has learned straight from the horse's mouth that Nvidia hasn't decided to abandon GeForce 6, 7, and 8 owners after all. Prompted by a request from a reader, the site got in touch with Nvidia and was told that new drivers for those older cards are currently going through Microsoft's Windows Hardware Quality Labs certification process. According to Nvidia Product Manager Chris Daniel, a public release is scheduled for next week.
Several new features have made their way into recent GeForce 9 ForceWare drivers, including new control panel options to let users manage custom resolutions, adjust television color settings, and set screen sizes and positions. Nvidia said the latest GeForce 9 ForceWare release also brought performance improvements in "many" DirectX 9, DirectX 10, and OpenGL apps as well as support for 3D Stereo technology. Considering some GeForce 9 cards have almost identical GPUs to previous GeForce 8 models, at least some of the aforementioned enhancements could apply to the older cards.
GeForce 6, 7, 8 cards finally getting new drivers next week - The Tech Report