To date Nvidia has been releasing separate drivers for desktop and notebook users. From today, each Nvidia driver release for Windows Vista and Windows 7 desktop PCs will go out with an equivalent Verde notebook driver.
These Verde drivers will support all notebook platforms including Optimus notebooks. The next driver release is coming in May, Nvidia said.
If you're not familiar with these Verde drivers, they're enabling things like smoother online video playback with GPU-accelerated Flash 10.1, and better frame rates in Battlefield: Bad Company 2. They also enable new features for your notebook, like support for NVIDIA 3D Vision and NVIDIA PhysX. Download the latest NVIDIA Verde drivers
here.
Prior to 2005, notebook manufacturers didn't allow graphics hardware vendors to release independent driver updates. Unfortunately, most notebook manufacturers only provided launch drivers.
"That's about when NVIDIA starting working with top gaming notebook manufacturers to change the playing field. From 2006 to 2008 NVIDIA released notebook driver updates for a select group of gaming notebooks. And, in 2008, as mainstream GPU-accelerated applications were growing and, for the first time, notebook PC unit sales exceeded desktop PC sales, NVIDIA announced the Verde driver program for notebook PCs," Nvidia's Chris Daniel, posted on the company's official blog. The program offered driver support for all notebook PCs from the low-end to the high-end and supported most notebook manufacturers as well as all of their customizations.
After one year, NVIDIA Verde drivers had delivered an average of a 30% performance boost across many top gaming applications and support for numerous new products and APIs like DirectCompute, CUDA 1.0/2.0/3.0, OpenCL. OpenGL 3.0/3.1/3.2, Flash 10.1, PhysX, 3D Vision, 300 SLI profiles, and SLI multi-mon support, Nvidia said.