This is under the beta drivers on the nvidia site.

It seems the two notable changes are the new Nvidia update (so it can check if newer drivers are available) and more importantly for us, it supports cuda 4.

Given my last experience with beta drivers I am going to wait until they have a whql version.

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BOINC blog

I'm using this version on Windows XP (32 bit) since midnight, everything is ok since then (I'm only crunching, not gaming.)

Hi, I am also using this BETA, with Windows 7-64 bits and a GTX 295 and now it works perfectly. CUDA ver.4 also. Greetings.

Is there any information whether the new WHQL driver to use CUDA 4.0?

"If it works, don't touch" (freely translated from Italian, but I suppose it sounds much or less the same in other languages). Generally speaking, "do we have" to install every new drivers, even if the old ones work?

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Kiler Hello: As I mentioned the previous post the 270.51 Beta driver using CUDA 4.0 on Windows 7, but the current 266.58 WHQL, NO.

The Linux CUDA 4.0 is already in use for some time. Greetings.

"If it works, don't touch" (freely translated from Italian, but I suppose it sounds much or less the same in other languages). Generally speaking, "do we have" to install every new drivers, even if the old ones work?

The developers have said they will use Cuda 4.0 (skipping over 3.2) for the next science app. The new driver supports Cuda 4.0. You don't have to upgrade, unless you want Cuda 4.0 support. I tend to wait until they are out of beta testing (ie the WHQL version) before upgrading.

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BOINC blog

The Beta driver 270.51 adds support for the more recent cards (GTX 590, 560 Ti, 550 Ti) and for CUDA 4.0. A WHQL version should be along within a few weeks.

The CUDA 4 developers kit is presently at Release Candidate 2. This tends to get released after the supporting driver.

CUDA 4.0 will bring quite a lot for Fermi 400 and 500 cards, but the question is, what will increase performance for GPUGrid? Only the programmers would really know. Hope they can find a few tweaks.

Some of what CUDA 4 brings to Fermi's:

Easier Application Porting

Share GPUs across multiple threads
Use all GPUs in the system concurrently from a single host thread
No-copy pinning of system memory, a faster alternative to cudaMallocHost()
C++ new/delete and support for virtual functions
Support for inline PTX assembly
Thrust library of templated performance primitives such as sort, reduce, etc.
NVIDIA Performance Primitives (NPP) library for image/video processing
Layered Textures for working with same size/format textures at larger sizes and higher performance

Faster Multi-GPU Programming

Unified Virtual Addressing
GPUDirect v2.0 support for Peer-to-Peer Communication

New & Improved Developer Tools

Automated Performance Analysis in Visual Profiler
C++ debugging in CUDA-GDB
GPU binary disassembler for Fermi architecture (cuobjdump)

Spotted this,
"Support for XP on notebooks is being phased out and is therefore not available for this release". I guess this means the driver should still work for desktops, but this looks like it's the beginning of the end for XP.

Spoke too soon; today Geforce released a 270 WHQL-certified driver (270.61), but it's not yet on the NVidia site.

It is now!

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Finally they released the certified drivers. Today, when I get home, I'll install them. Guys, inform please take effect as new drivers for your graphics card in GPUGrid.
Sorry for my English, I use Google - translator.
Thank you!

No issues so far with the 270.61 WHQL-certified driver.

Is there any information whether to use CUDA 4.0 opportunities in jobs GPUGrid?

It has no improvement in GPU utilisation when running on Win 7 64 bit :(

The apps would need to be cuda 4.0 capable before you would see any benefit.
Drivers by themselves rarely produce any benefit.

The cuda 4.0 toolkit for developers is still unreleased (RC2).
When it is then the apps will be tested and released, if they are faster and stable.

Some of the Seti guys are reporting their cards down clocking when using 270.61 drivers. Something to keep an eye out for.

The last time this raised it's head it seemed to be specific to card types. CC1.2 cards often downclock with anything past the 197.45 driver (win). This did not go away with any of the last drivers, so perhaps its just the same problem, found by new crunchers/people that have not updated for some time, or perhaps it affects a greater range of cards now.

In the NVidia control panel, Power Management Mode changes means you are stuck with Adaptive. I think what was happening is that some/many cards dropped down to their lowest clocks and just stayed there, no matter what GPU usage was required.
On at least one of my GT240's I saw clocks jump and fall all over the place without apparent reason, when crunching. Sometimes the clocks stayed high for some time, but mostly not. Totally unreliable.

A few posts on what gets downclocked and what does not would be useful.

My GTX260 seems ok on Win 2003 server x64 (equivalent to XP x64)

The last time this raised it's head it seemed to be specific to card types. CC1.2 cards often downclock with anything past the 197.45 driver (win). This did not go away with any of the last drivers, so perhaps its just the same problem, found by new crunchers/people that have not updated for some time, or perhaps it affects a greater range of cards now.

In the NVidia control panel, Power Management Mode changes means you are stuck with Adaptive. I think what was happening is that some/many cards dropped down to their lowest clocks and just stayed there, no matter what GPU usage was required.
On at least one of my GT240's I saw clocks jump and fall all over the place without apparent reason, when crunching. Sometimes the clocks stayed high for some time, but mostly not. Totally unreliable.

A few posts on what gets downclocked and what does not would be useful.

My GTX260 seems ok on Win 2003 server x64 (equivalent to XP x64)

The guy reporting it was running GTX480's. Not sure what OS he was running.

Thanks Mark,
I've just started to test my GTX470's (XPx86). So far no issues.
I'm using MSI Afterburner with a very slight oc, so it might be helping the card to stay at top frequencies (615MHz, default is 607MHz), when it's in use.
Vista and Win7 behave differently when it comes to power management.

NVidia Driver 270.61 WHQL, MCP nForce 15.49 : No problem with GTX460OC on Win7 X64 Pro.
Cheers

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Lubuntu 16.04.1 LTS x64