We all know the procedure, right? You need to update your mobile graphics driver, but when you get to the downloads section of the notebook manufacturers site, the driver is 3, 4, 5 or more revisions behind.
NVIDIA apparently heard the cries of many laptop users and are making some changes in your favor. You can now download beta ForceWare drivers for mobile GeForce 8M, 9M and Quadro NVS mobile graphics processors directly from its website. Essentially, NVIDIA will now continue to offer ForceWare for mobile platforms so that you do not have to wait on the system manufacturers.
Currently, NVIDIA has ForceWare 179.28 for the above mentioned GPUs for Windows Vista x86, Windows Vista x64, Windows XP x86 and Windows XP x64--which essentially covers everyone. However, NVIDIA warns that the drivers will not work with the Dell Vostro series, Lenovo Thinkpads, Sony VAIO, and notebooks that use Hybrid SLI technology. The completed, non-beta, set of drivers should be available in early 2009.
The current beta 179.28 drivers offers support for CUDA technology and PhysX hardware acceleration, just like the desktop counterparts.
For the record, AMD has provided mobile driver solutions for some time now, although it too, have its share of unsupported models from various manufactures, Dell included.
Links to ForceWare 179.28 BETA drivers per platform: