NVIDIA launches beta Forceware 180 drivers

But as great as that sounds to bug eyed gamers in theory, the catch is that if a user has two or three SLI enabled GPUs, only the first one can be hooked up to the screens which means good luck to you if you want more than two monitors!

Nvidia doesn’t see this as a problem though. Apparently, if a user might actually care to hook up as many monitors as NVIDIA originally said they could, they can simply connect to another 'different' GPU outside the SLI configuration. Messy? Well, what do you expect after a big bang?

As for which games will work across multiple screens, spinners say Microsoft Simulator X, World in Conflict and Supreme Commander will all work with SLI in multi-monitor gaming mode.

Moving on to another aspect of NVIDIA’s new 'creation', the big green headbangers say the firm has now come up with a new way for multiple graphics cards can take advantage of Physx.

Today, users can make a single graphics card or SLI rig to carry out both the graphics and PhysX calculations, however ForceWare 180 lets the user do PhysX calculations on a dedicated GPU, freeing up the main graphics card, or pair of SLI cards, to focus on graphics. Pretty good news if you have a few old graphics cards knocking about which could be used for Physx.

Keeping with Physx features, NVIDIA is also bunging a Physx configuration page in the NVIIDA control panel. This means users can decide whether they want Physx enabled or not and whether to shove it off to a separate dedicated GPU. NVIDIA reckons this can provide something in the region of a 42 per cent performance boost. We reckon seeing is believing.

Anyone who wants to have a go testing out ForceWare 180 themselves, the boys in green have released a Beta which they say will up the performance of Far Cry 2. Get your 32-bit Vista version here. Knock yer socks off.