Drivers give BF3 38% performance boost

New Nvidia drivers released today improve the performance of upcoming first-person shooter Battlefield 3 by a whopping 38 per cent.

So stark is the improvement that Battlefield developer DICE has taken to Twitter to tell PC gamers to download the drivers ahead of the Battlefield 3 beta, which launches this week.

The drivers are available from the Geforce website.

New in Release 285.38

• Increases performance in Battlefield 3 by up to 38 per cent - performance measured vs. GeForce 285.27 driver on GeForce GTX 570 at 2650x1600 (DX11)
• Improves overall stability and image quality in Battlefield 3.
• Added or updated SLI profiles for Battlefield 3, Dead Island, Diablo III, Dragon Age 2, Need for Speed: The Run, and Saints Row: The Third.
• Fixed a performance regression in 285.27 beta running Crysis 2 (DirectX 9).

Other Details

• Supports GeForce 6, 7, 8, 9, 100, 200, 300, 400, and 500-series desktop GPUs as well as ION desktop GPUs.
• Installs PhysX System Software to version 9.11.06.21.
• Installs HD Audio driver to version 1.2.24.0.
• Supports OpenGL 4.2 for GeForce 400 series and 500 series GPUs and OpenGL 3.3 for GeForce 8-series and later GPUs.
• Supports multiple languages and APIs for GPU computing: CUDA C, CUDA C++, CUDA Fortran, OpenCL, DirectCompute, and Microsoft C++ AMP.
• Supports single GPU and NVIDIA SLI technology on DirectX 9, DirectX 10, DirectX 11, and OpenGL, including 3-way SLI, Quad SLI, and SLI support on SLI-certified Intel and AMD motherboards.
• Supports GPU overclocking and temperature monitoring by installing NVIDIA System Tools software.

Battlefield 3 drivers from AMD are expected today.