Gearing up for this month's hottest games, Nvidia has unleashed a new beta driver to help ensure that you have a smooth experience. The GeForce 314.14 beta brings better performance and compatibility across no less than four upcoming releases including Tomb Raider (out tomorrow), SimCity (also due tomorrow), StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm (coming March 12), Resident Evil 6 (slated for March 22).

Additionally, Nvidia says you'll want this update if you plan to play Hawken with hardware-accelerated PhysX effects later this week, or, you know, if you care about general performance improvements. The company showed the various boosts you'll see when using a GTX 680 and a GTX 680 in SLI, though your will obviously vary. Nvidia says it'll have more benchmarks for comparison with the next WHQL release.

GeForce GTX 680:
3.1% in Just Cause 2 at 1920x1080/DX10/4xMSAA
9.1% in Sleeping Dogs at 2560x1600/Extreme/High AA
21.1% in Sniper Elite V2 at 1920x1080/Ultra/High AA

GeForce GTX 680 SLI:
4.3% in Batman: Arkham City at 1920x1080/Very High/Tess. High/FXAA High
3.8% in Battlefield 3 at 2560x1600/Ultra/4xMSAA
5.3% in Call of Duty: Black Ops II at 1920x1080/Max/4xMSAA
4.7% in Deus Ex: Human Revolution at 1920x1080/Max DX11/FXAA High
4.3% in Just Cause 2 at 1920x1080/Max DX10/8xMSAA
14.4% in Sleeping Dogs at 1920x1080/Extreme/High AA
21.4% in Sniper Elite V2 at 2560x1600/High/High AA
3.7% in The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena at 1920x1080/Max/4xMSAA.
3.2% in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim at 1920x1080/Ultra/8xMSAA

Download GeForce 314.14 beta (release notes)
Desktop: Windows XP 32-bit | Windows XP 64-bit | Windows Vista/7/8 32-bit | Windows Vista/7/8 64-bit
Mobile: Windows Vista/7/8 32-bit | Windows Vista/7/8 64-bit

Besides raw frame rate increases, the 314.14 beta packs new or updated SLI profiles for Tomb Raider, Resident Evil and Sniper Elite: Nazi Zombie Army, and it fixes a few bugs including one that caused light to shine through walls when playing Max Payne 3 with dual GTX 690s and MSAA enabled, and another that crashed the display driver when using Windows 8's Microsoft Picture Gallery with the GTX 460.