In addition to its all-new WHQL certified Geforce 296.10 drivers for Windows 7, Windows Vista and Windows XP, our driver engineering friends over at Nvidia have also released the very first regular Nvidia driver update for Windows 8. The drivers are available for both GeForce and Quadro GPU-based desktops and notebooks on Nvidia's website as well as on Microsoft’s Windows Update.

Basically, Geforce 296.17 WHQL is a native Windows 8 driver equivalent to the simultaneously released Geforce 296.10 WHQL drivers, which we wrote about here. Improvements contain numerous performance enhancements and bug fixes for Battlefield 3 (October 2011), Blacklight: Retribution Beta (February 2012), Diablo III Beta (February 2012),Mass Effect 3 (March 2012), The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (November 2011) and more.

Geforce 296.17 WHQL for Microsoft Windows 8 Consumer Preview can be downloaded below:

Geforce 296.17 WHQL Preview Driver (Windows 8 64-bit)

Geforce 296.17 WHQL Preview Driver (Windows 8 32-bit)