New DirectX Compute compatible NVIDIA graphics driver

Following ATI, NVIDIA is now offering a new driver for its graphics cards. Branded as the GeForce 190.62 it gives DirectX Compute support.

No doubt your first question is “What’s DirectX Compute?” Well, it’s a new feature of the DirectX 11 API that allows you to use the graphics card as a massively parallel processor. In concrete terms, it allows you to use the graphics card to accellerate processing that was previously handled by the CPU.

Now maybe you’re thinking you’ve heard about something like this before! Indeed, NVIDIA has been offering CUDA architecture on its graphics chips (as of the GeForce 8) for some time. Among other things, this means that you can use the graphics card to accellerate video encoding, photo processing and Folding@Home searches. ATI is also offering the same solution but the problem is that both companies use their own separate technology.

DirectX Compute: uniformity

This makes it difficult for developers to offer software that is compatible with both NVIDIA and ATI. Some products are therefore better adapted to one type of card or another. The idea of DirectX Compute is to offer a library that will function on all graphics cards, as long as they have a compatible driver.

And this is what brings us (at last) to the importance of this news: NVIDIA is the first to offer a graphics driver that is compatible with DirectX Compute and WHQL certified. For now support is only guaranteed in Windows 7*. This is to be expected as for now only this OS has DirectX 11 support. Windows vista will also soon be updated.

Do you also need to have a DirectX 11 graphics card?

Not necessarily. In fact, the advantage of the DirectX Compute feature is that it is backwards compatible with current graphics cards (DirectX 10 compatible). However, functionality is simplified and doesn’t have all the options that you’ll get with DirectX 11 cards. For those who own ATI graphics cards, be assured that such a driver is also under development for ATI cards.

Download GeForce 190.62 drivers (Windows XP, Vista, and 7)

Product survey: graphics cards 2009

* Currently 5% of our readers are using computers equipped with Windows 7. This figure includes the current month and represents a progression of 20.3% on the previous month.