Are you tired of rebooting your rig when you want to reconfigure your dual monitor system? Want to mix and match older cards with your latest and greatest 7800 GTX ? Then you need to upgrade to Nvidia's latest driver set, release 80. It solves these and other long-requested issues.

NVIDA has had their driver teams in high gear over the past three months with many beta and three WHQL-certified driver launches. In August, NVIDIA launched the WHQL (Windows Hardware Quality Labs) certified 77.77 driver. Less than one month later, 78.01 WHQL debuted, which resolved some issues with anti-aliasing and, more importantly, supported the GeForce 7800 GT. The beta version of the Release 80, 81.84, debuted last month. In addition to patching up driver issues associated with some games, the NVIDIA release added features that customers and the media were screaming out for.

There have been reviews showing optimizations for dual-core users that the Release 80 offers. However, the issue is that although dual- and multi-core processors are a must have for future applications, what about the single-core user base, which represents the majority of demand? Does it make a difference to switch your driver and what do you get when you make the switch?

On October 20, NVIDIA released the WHQL certified version of 81.84, driver 81.85. We've tested the new 81.85 driver and compared it to its predecessor, the 78.01, with respect to features and performance. It makes little sense to make comparisons against beta drivers or unofficial driver versions that are sporadically leaked onto the Internet, since these versions are not yet intended for public use. These stepping stone release drivers are often designed for testing purposes, to enable certain features or are even meant to help a game developer solve a driver problem with a game that is in development. Frequently, these drivers, despite their higher version numbers, do not always include all features of the main driver nor have they passed the WHQL certification process.