301.10 ON WINDOWS UPDATES AND FORCAST OF NEXT UNIFIED

[Infinity7]

The 301.10 driver is now available on Windows Updates for the GTX 680 (only) on Windows 7. I'm not sure why the file size of the driver is larger there (190 MB for the 64-bit) than it is if downloaded from NVidia (160 MB).

Also, in the forums NVidia has commented saying:

"The current 301.10 driver for the Geforce GTX 680 was created as a separate branch from the rest of the current GPUs so I would not advise using it since it has not been properly tested. With that said, a unified driver will be released sometime next month. Our official reference driver is specifically for the 680 currently, with a new driver in the 300.xx branch releasing for older cards coming soon. There are plans to support some of [the new] features on the 500,400 series cards, but no ETA as of now. FXAA, Adaptive VSYNC, and many of the Surround enhancements will be made available for Fermi-based products in the upcoming UDA driver. GPU Boost and TXAA are Kepler-specific." [end of quote]

Here are the version details of the latest drivers:

301.10 is r300_68-51 DriverVer = 03/17/2012, 8.17.13.0110

300.99 is r300_95-2 DriverVer = 03/10/2012, 8.17.13.0099

300.83 is r300_68-13 DriverVer = 03/01/2012, 8.17.13.0083

It appears that the 300.99 driver is from a different driver branch as the other two. Perhaps the unified driver coming up soon will be something that has evolved from the 300.99 driver in the 95 branch.

Edited March 30, 2012 by Infinity7

[mobilenvidia]

The difference in file size is mostly due to MSUpdate has both International and English only Control Panel files included

300.99 was sent to all the reviewing websites, probably a set to get the best from the benchies, most likely what the end user would see.

300.83 and 300.65 looks like OEM board manufacturers developer drivers

301.10 was probably sent out early as 300.99 got leaked (as it was bound to)

For MSUpdate to have it, it's probably a safe driver branch

My thoughts on it