Nvidia drivers boost Skyrim, add FXAA shaders, adaptive Vsync and other fancy bits

Skyrim

If you have a GeForce card you might want to grab the latest batch of beta drivers from the Nvidia site . Nvidia say they'll deliver a performance boost in Skyrim of up to 20%, which is nice, but the Nvidia FXAA functionality is perhaps a more interesting addition. That'll allow us to force a faster form of anti-aliasing across hundreds of games from the Nvidia control panel. The new shader-based antialiasing function should help to smooth out edges at speeds "60% faster than 4xMSAA."

The new drivers also add Adaptive Vsync. This monitors your framerates and switches vsync off when they start to dip, helping to maintain a consistent framerate with less stuttering. The update also makes performance improvements to a few specific titles, including Batman: Arkham City, Bulletstorm, Civilization V, Just Cause 2, StarCraft 2 and Shogun 2.

If you have a GeForce series 400 or 500, Nvidia promise some significant framerate boosts at high and ultra settings on top resolutions for Skyrim. Check out all the benchmarking graphs, and the full list of improvements made by the new drivers on the Nvidia site .

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Tom Senior

Part of the UK team, Tom was with PC Gamer at the very beginning of the website's launch—first as a news writer, and then as online editor until his departure in 2020. His specialties are strategy games, action RPGs, hack ‘n slash games, digital card games… basically anything that he can fit on a hard drive. His final boss form is Deckard Cain.